# Cloning drive to a specific partition **URL:** \ **Category:** balenaEtcher\ **Created:** [June 3, 2022, 11:42pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/cloning-drive-to-a-specific-partition/358545 "2022-06-03T23:42:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Wolfy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@Wolfy](https://forums.balena.io/u/Wolfy)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2022, 11:42pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/cloning-drive-to-a-specific-partition/358545/1 "2022-06-03T23:42:49Z")
Hello, I know there is an option to “Clone drive” in balenaEtcher, but I want to know more about it. Can you only clone a drive to another entire drive in particular, or can you clone a drive to a partition in another drive? ---
**Author:** ![nmaas87](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/balena/user_avatar/forums.balena.io/nmaas87/32/5570_2.png) [@nmaas87](https://forums.balena.io/u/nmaas87)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2022, 8:02am UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/cloning-drive-to-a-specific-partition/358545/2 "2022-06-04T08:02:44Z")
Welcome to the forums @Wolfy No, this is not possible. A drive itself can contain much more information like just a partition (e.g. the bootloader) and cloning a complete drive with different partitions into another partition is technical not possible. From a technical standpoint you could clone the partitions of one drive to the partition of another drive - but this would mean that a) that target partition needs to be big enough to house the “new ones” and the target partition will be deleted / replaced by your source partitions. These options are not available in balenaEtcher as they are extremely advanced / edge usecases and it is very easy to destory all files on the partitions in the process or e.g. make a drive unreadable / un-bootable. If you want to do something like you will need to use parted and dd - and you must absolutely know what you’re doing and have all things backuped. ---
**Author:** ![Wolfy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@Wolfy](https://forums.balena.io/u/Wolfy)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2022, 7:58pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/cloning-drive-to-a-specific-partition/358545/3 "2022-06-04T19:58:07Z")
Can parted and dd copy the boot partitions too? ---
**Author:** ![nmaas87](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/balena/user_avatar/forums.balena.io/nmaas87/32/5570_2.png) [@nmaas87](https://forums.balena.io/u/nmaas87)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2022, 8:01pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/cloning-drive-to-a-specific-partition/358545/4 "2022-06-04T20:01:25Z")
Parted is not meant for that, you can work with dd or better if you want to do some special cloning which is not a simple 1:1 copy, use clonezilla. However, be warned. You have to completely understand what you’re doing there - have backups of files as you will very likely use data in the process on the first trys. ---
**Author:** ![Wolfy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@Wolfy](https://forums.balena.io/u/Wolfy)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2022, 8:02pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/cloning-drive-to-a-specific-partition/358545/5 "2022-06-04T20:02:16Z")
Backups of the files on the drive being copied to, or the source drive being backed up? ---
**Author:** ![Wolfy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@Wolfy](https://forums.balena.io/u/Wolfy)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2022, 8:06pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/cloning-drive-to-a-specific-partition/358545/6 "2022-06-04T20:06:06Z")
Also what could be destroyed in the process? (P.S. I am talking about cloning a drive to a partition of another drive that is bigger in size than the source drive) ---
**Author:** ![nmaas87](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/balena/user_avatar/forums.balena.io/nmaas87/32/5570_2.png) [@nmaas87](https://forums.balena.io/u/nmaas87)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2022, 8:13pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/cloning-drive-to-a-specific-partition/358545/7 "2022-06-04T20:13:40Z")
One of the most obvious errors in using dd is mixing up the source and the target drive. So in that case you would destroy the source. I would recommend having backups of both drives if you try something more advanced. However, this is out of the scope of balenaEtcher and there is a lot of information available on the internet regarding dd and the Boot CD version called Clonezilla, so you might want to read up on that 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Wolfy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@Wolfy](https://forums.balena.io/u/Wolfy)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2022, 8:41pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/cloning-drive-to-a-specific-partition/358545/8 "2022-06-04T20:41:37Z")
Okay, question about balenaEtcher again… If the source drive I am cloning is smaller than the target drive, would the cloning still work? Also, can the source drive be destroyed with balenaEtcher drive cloning too? ---
**Author:** ![nmaas87](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/balena/user_avatar/forums.balena.io/nmaas87/32/5570_2.png) [@nmaas87](https://forums.balena.io/u/nmaas87)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2022, 9:08pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/cloning-drive-to-a-specific-partition/358545/9 "2022-06-04T21:08:25Z")
a) Yes, that should work b) There should be no problem, but I would always advise to have backups nonetheless. If the files are important, backup. ---
**Author:** ![Wolfy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@Wolfy](https://forums.balena.io/u/Wolfy)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2022, 9:09pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/cloning-drive-to-a-specific-partition/358545/10 "2022-06-04T21:09:58Z")
…Well, you see, it is actually for the exact purpose of backing up. I want to backup the entire drive to another drive, including the boot sector, so I was asking about this. ---
**Author:** ![nmaas87](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/balena/user_avatar/forums.balena.io/nmaas87/32/5570_2.png) [@nmaas87](https://forums.balena.io/u/nmaas87)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2022, 9:22pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/cloning-drive-to-a-specific-partition/358545/11 "2022-06-04T21:22:47Z")
If you want to clone the drive to an exact replica drive, you can use balenaEtcher. If you want to do anything different, you can use Clonezilla, Acronis TrueImage or something similar. But backing up multiple drives to another drive while retaining the boot sector and stuff is not possible like that. You would need to create an image of the whole drive and store that. You can do this with dd or similar tools, but not etcher. ---
**Author:** ![Wolfy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@Wolfy](https://forums.balena.io/u/Wolfy)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2022, 9:27pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/cloning-drive-to-a-specific-partition/358545/12 "2022-06-04T21:27:23Z")
Thanks! I was just making sure BalenaEtcher doesn’t touch the source drive (Like writing to it instead of reading from it) ---
**Author:** ![nmaas87](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/balena/user_avatar/forums.balena.io/nmaas87/32/5570_2.png) [@nmaas87](https://forums.balena.io/u/nmaas87)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2022, 9:39pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/cloning-drive-to-a-specific-partition/358545/13 "2022-06-04T21:39:30Z")
It does not touch the source as long as there is no user error 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Wolfy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@Wolfy](https://forums.balena.io/u/Wolfy)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2022, 9:49pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/cloning-drive-to-a-specific-partition/358545/14 "2022-06-04T21:49:12Z")
User error as in an error only caused by the user? ---
**Author:** ![nmaas87](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/balena/user_avatar/forums.balena.io/nmaas87/32/5570_2.png) [@nmaas87](https://forums.balena.io/u/nmaas87)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2022, 10:01pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/cloning-drive-to-a-specific-partition/358545/15 "2022-06-04T22:01:22Z")
Yes, the source drive will only ever be read. But mixing it up with the target drive will obviously kill it. ---
**Author:** ![jrcampen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/49beb7/32.png) [@jrcampen](https://forums.balena.io/u/jrcampen)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2022, 12:59pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/cloning-drive-to-a-specific-partition/358545/17 "2022-06-21T12:59:51Z")
Calling the option “Clone drive” is then a bit miss leading when we mostly know it to be able to clone the entire drive to another drive. So what is the purpose of this function if not to clone, or what does it clone? ---
**Author:** ![nmaas87](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/balena/user_avatar/forums.balena.io/nmaas87/32/5570_2.png) [@nmaas87](https://forums.balena.io/u/nmaas87)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2022, 2:00pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/cloning-drive-to-a-specific-partition/358545/18 "2022-06-21T14:00:22Z")
Clone drive clones a drive to another driver. Thats it, you get what you paid for 😉