Cloning an HDD w/Protected partition

I didn't see a thread specific to what I am about to ask and found the User Guide to be slightly confusing.

I have a Dell XPS Inspiron M1710. I've run out of HDD space so, have a new HDD arriving shortly. My question is, my laptop did not come with recovery disc's, it has a protected/secure partition (10 Gig) set at factory. All I am looking to do is a 1:1 clone from my old drive to my new drive. I've read many thread's that seem to state that "cloning" isn't a good idea. I will most likely be hooking up my new HDD via USB 2.0 to do the clone. Is this a good idea? Is there a safer/better way to do this? I am entirely happy with the way everything is running, just out of space.

Advice appreciated.

Thank you in advance.

btw...am using the latest version of TI Home 2009 (Build 9646)

 

Here's a personal opinion. If this were my computer, I'd make an image of the entire hard drive (all the partitions) to the external drive.

I'd then remove the internal drive and install the new drive. I'd boot from the TI Rescue CD and restore the image of the entire drive to the new drive.

Check that you can boot from the restored drive. Note that the C: partition won't be any larger than it was before., but you can boot successuflly.

Do a repeat restore, but select only the Cartition and restore it over the existing C: partition on the new drive. This wiill bring up a screen that allows you to increase the size of the C partition to the full size of the drive.

When the restore is finished and you reboot, the C: partition will be much larger, but the other partitions will still be the same size as the original disk.

 

I guess I've been concerned doing that as, it doesn't appear as though I can't select my pre-installed OS. Just really want to ensure that I have an identical 1:1 of what I currently have (size-aside of course).

 

Well, I took the bull by the horns and attempted a "clone". I used TI Home 2009 Build 9055. I plugged in my new drive directly out of the box (no formatting required) via USB, left original drive in my laptop. Created a Bootable Media and booted from CD/DVD-RW (F12 on my Dell M1710). I chose to "Clone disk". It then asked me for my "Target Drive". After a few minutes it asked me for my "Source Drive". Once my options were selected, I was then given the option to have partitions Automatically selected or Manually (I chose Manually). After that selection, it carried on to "Proportional", "As-Is" or "Manual". Initially I chose "Proportional" and what had happened is each partition that I did have doubled in size if not more. For example, my "Recovery" partition initially 10 Gig in size, after the cloning, it was 20-Gig. Rather then try and re-size then and there (Remember, my Recovery partition is protected), I decided to go back and re-clone, however using the Manual method. It gave me the option to re-size everything right off the bat. I was even able to "recover" 4 Gig worth of HDD space from the "Recovery" partition. I re-cloned and everything was an exact 1:1 of the original (obviously for the exception of the "shrunk" Recovery partition and enlarged OS partition.

All in all, EXTREMELY happy with the result and suggest it to anyone. Should anyone else have any questions (who may be reading this) , feel free to contact me (bpo.awst@gmail.com).