The Solution to Cloned Hard Drive Shows Wrong Size

The scenario

I upgraded my Windows hard drive. In the process of upgrading, I came across a space problem. I inserted a larger new SSD to my computer and cloned my old SSD to this new one, switched the SATA cables, and turned on the computer. Everything works great with the new SSD, but it shows the old hard drive’s space for some reason in Windows Explorer, while in Disk Management it shows the correct space. I restarted my computer and it was the same. Does anyone know why the cloned hard drive shows wrong size?

Why cloned hard drive shows wrong size?

When you clone a hard drive, you clone everything on your hard drive. Your partition, data even the size of your old drive, all of them are cloned to your new SSD. But you do have some space not used in your SSD. The Windows Explorer just displays the cloned space of the old hard drive which is smaller than the right capacity of SSD. Why cloned hard drive shows wrong size? Because when we clone hard drive to SSD, we cloned everything including the size of hard drive. Therefore, most of the SSD capacity becomes the unallocated space. And the general cause of this situation is that you did not format your SSD before your clone operation. What is unallocated space? A computer describes any physical space on a hard drive that does not belong to a partition as unallocated. This means that no programs can write to the unallocated space.

The solution to cloned hard drive shows wrong size

We have found the reason that cloned hard drive shows wrong size. After finding out where the problem is, we need to think about the way to solve the problem.

How to deal with the unallocated space? We have some common ways to deal with unallcated space. The first one is to create a new partition using unallocated space. Secondly, you can also merge the unallocated space into one exist partition. How to realize creating partition or merge unallocated space into exist partition? Windows Disk Management is the first solution coming into your mind. Besides, there are some disk partition tools that can also complete these tasks. After comparing multiple disk partition tools, we find AOMEI Partition Assistant is the most suitable tool.

In order to choose the best solution to cloned hard drive shows wrong size, we need to try both of them to compare their advantages and disadvantages. And we create a new partition using unallocated space as an instance.

Create new partition using unallocated space with Windows Disk Management

Step1. Right click Computer→Manage→Storage/Disk Management.

Step2. Right click the unallocated space, select New Simple Volume.

Step3. And the program will pop up a New Simple Volume Wizard. Specify Volume size and Assign Drive Letter or Path according to the prompts.

Step4. Use the Format Partition page to determine whether and how the volume should be formatted.

Step5. Click Next, confirm your options. And then click Finish.

Tips: You may find that you need to set up the basic information of the new partition step by step. And the process is time-consuming.

Create new partition using AOMEI Partition Assistant

Step1. Download AOMEI Partition Assistant, install and launch it. Right click the unallocated space, select Create Partition in the pop up menu.

Step2. In the pop up window, specify the size of the new partition by moving the bar. Click Advanced to set up the detail of the new partition which includes Partition Label, File System and Partition Type. Choose the NTFS file system, create as logical partition.

Step3. You can preview the effect of the operation, confirm all settings are right for you, click Apply in the toolbar.

Conclusion

Having compared two solutions to cloned hard drive shows wrong size, it is obvious that AOMEI Partition Assistant is the best choice for you to solve this problem. AOMEI Partition Assistant is well designed disk partition software both in function and user interface. It is an easy to use software for its delicate design. What’s more, it is a freeware which greatly decrease the workload and save your time and energy.