Can I copy an image of a partition into a new partition of different size?

Question

The primary master of my NAS server is about to die (according to the S.M.A.R.T message I receive on boot). I have dutifully ordered a new drive and will replace the failing one as soon as I receive it.

The failing drive is a 200GB Maxtor 6B200P0 ATA disk. It is partitioned as follows:

sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda 

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        1275    10241406    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2            1276       24793   188905473    5  Extended
/dev/sda5            1276        7354    48827392    b  W95 FAT32
/dev/sda6            7354        9178    14647296   83  Linux
/dev/sda7            9178       24497   123045888   83  Linux
/dev/sda8           24497       24793     2381824   82  Linux swap / Solaris

sda1 contains an old Windows installation that I would like to keep. I am planning on making an image of sda1 and then copying that image to the new disk.

My question is, in order to do this correctly, do I need to create a partition of exactly the same size on my new drive or can I just copy the image into a larger partition? Is there anything else I need to look out for when making an image of an installed windows OS?

Answer 1

Clonezilla is extremely good for this. As long as the target is larger or the same size as the amount to write, it's happy. It'll also make the image for you and (iirc) can write it to a network drive, even.

Answer 2

You can do clone a smaller partition to a bigger partition on a new HDD with Norton Ghost, no problem. even doing disk to disk clone, you can chose what size you want for evey partition. I do it all the time changing desktop HDD. but am not sure if it works on linux partition.