1 Topic by steve02476

  • steve02476
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Topic: Long time for NTFS partition copy?

Hi, I'm using GParted to copy a 30GB NTFS partition from one SATA drive to another on a new Lenovo box.  It takes 160 minutes (two hours twenty minutes). The copy goes fine, there are no errors reported. But this seems really slow to me.

I'm not sure, but I feel like in the past I was doing the same thing and a 30GB copy took about 20 or 30 minutes.

Which seems normal - the 160 minutes or 20 minutes?

What could be affecting this?

Thanks for any advice. -Steve

2 Reply by class413

  • class413
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Re: Long time for NTFS partition copy?

I find 160 minutes too long. Perhaps it has to do with the controller ?
What it takes long, is surely moving a partition slightly to the right.

Anyway, there is another program that does partition copies, clonezilla.
http://gparted.sf.net/

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

3 Reply by steve02476

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Re: Long time for NTFS partition copy?

I'm trying clonezilla now. It seems to be able to copy the 30GB partition (same computer, same everything) in about 15 minutes, instead of 160 minutes. The partition is only about half-full of data, and I guess clonezilla is supposed to be smart about not copying empty space - but even so its far faster. The copy seems to work fine, unless there's some weird secret problem that hasn't shown up yet.


I really prefer the UI for GParted - but I guess I'll stick to Clonezilla for now when I'm duplicating partitions.

Thanks for the help. -Steve

4 Reply by class413

  • class413
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Re: Long time for NTFS partition copy?

I'm not at all sure about data and "empty space" discrimination. A real cloning tool copies *anything*, even the filesystem errors wink

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***