Why Do We Need to Clone Hard Drive

MiniTool Drive Wipe is very easy-to-use. You can use it to erase data for disk & partition easily. MiniTool Drive Wipe could destroy all information in your chosen disks safely and permanently. MiniTool Partition Wizard Pro Mac is an easy-to-use and easy-to-use app that can help you create a better and more exceptional partition installation in just a few minutes. It is a very safe and much better version of the program that works well and simple, and we are creating a perfect and much better alternative in a few electronic minutes.

There are many reasons why we need to clone hard drive. For instance, if our hard drive contains some important data, we had better make a backup since data loss caused by various subjective or objective factors happens more and more frequently. However, do you know how to clone a hard drive safely and successfully?

Excellent Hard Drive Clone Tool

When it comes to HD clone, we can try using MiniTool Partition Wizard. This green, professional yet free disk clone tool can help to effectively and quickly copy disk because of its excellent performance and simple operation. And, this tool supports various operating systems including Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8. Next, we will show step by step guide to format a hard drive in Windows without data loss.

How to Clone Hard Drive

At first, we need to download MiniTool Partition Wizard from its official website, then install it on computer and launch it to get its main interface as follows.

In the main window, we can see all disk as well as some excellent features includingMigrate OS to SSD/HD Wizard, Copy Partition Wizard, Copy Disk Wizard, Partition Recovery Wizard and more. To clone HD, we need to select the disk which needs copying and then choose “Copy Disk” on left pane to get the following interface:

Now, select the disk that will save the copy of the source disk as the target disk and then click “Next”. Note: the target disk should be large enough to hold all content on source disk, and we also need to backup all important data on this target disk in advance, because all its data will be deleted.

In this window, we need to select a suitable copy option to decide the layout of target disk and then click “Next”. Note: it is highly suggested that SSD and advanced format HDD users keep checking the option “Force to align partitions to 1MB”. After that, click “Finish” button to go back to the main interface of this professional disk clone tool.

Finally, we need to click “Apply” button to perform all changes. Note: If we are copying system disk, MiniTool Partition Wizard will ask them to restart computer. Just click “Restart Now” button, and then the program will copy partitions and data to new disk in boot mode. When source disk has been copied successfully, the computer will reboot normally.
See! It is very simple to copy hard drive with MiniTool Partition Wizard, isn’t it?

Summary :

What is Raspberry Pi SD card format? How to reformat SD card for Raspberry Pi? In this post, we show you a brief introduction to the best Raspberry Pi as well as introduce the best SD formatter for Raspberry Pi.

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Raspberry Pi is a low cost, credit-card sized computer developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. It can be connected to a computer monitor or TV and uses a standard keyboard and mouse.

Originally, Raspberry Pi was designed aiming to promote the teaching of basic computer science in schools and in developing countries. Today Raspberry Pi has achieved great success. In July 2017, sales reached nearly 15 million, making it the 3rd best-selling 'general purpose computer'.

But one thing you need to pay attention to is that Raspberry Pi is a bare computer and you have to install Raspbian (the official supported Operating System) on an SD card to boot it.

How to install Raspbian on SD card Windows? View the official installation guide if you are interested, or you can use the easy installer NOOBS to help you simply install.

Minitool Partition How To Format For Mac Download

However, some users find their Raspberry Pi won't boot from the installed SD card, which makes them confused. Actually, the problem is caused by the unsuitable file system. Next, in this article, we show you what you are looking for.

Raspberry Pi: exFAT or FAT32?

Although we know SD card is the essential media to running Raspberry Pi, some users are still at a loss and wondering 'What format do I need my SD card to be for Raspberry Pi?' See what we extract from raspberrypi.org/forums:

Q: Will exFAT work or FAT32? I just got a 64GB Micro SD card and I'm just wondering if I should format as exFAT or FAT32, Also if they both work – What's better?
A: exFAT won't work, as the boot code simply expects an FAT32 partition, so yes FAT32 is 'better'.

As we know, FAT32 is the most commonly used file system for flash drives. However, it brings the 4GB file size limit that is we cannot save individual files larger than 4GB to FAT32 partitions. To address this issue, exFAT is introduced. According to the standards for SD capacity, SD cards larger than 32GB employ SDXC standard and are formatted to exFAT.

The problem is that FAT32 has better compatibility, compared with exFAT. And most devices including Raspberry Pi do not recognize hard drives formatted to exFAT. The Raspberry Pi's bootloader, built into the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) and non-updateable, only has support for reading from FAT file systems (both FAT16 and FAT32 included) and is unable to boot from an exFAT file system.

On this occasion, users have to format the SD card for Raspberry Pi. Next, we show you how to format SD card FAT32.

You might also be interested in 3DS SD Card Format | How to Format SD Card for 3DS.

How to Format SD Card for Raspberry Pi

In fact, no matter your SD card is larger than 32GB or not, as long as you intend to use it on Raspberry Pi, you should format it to FAT by following the guide below. Note that formatting will definitely lead to data loss. So if you are using a used SD card, you might need to back up SD card if files in it mean a lot to you.

*If your SD capacity is larger than 32GB, download MiniTool Partition Wizard Free.

If the SD card you are using has a capacity larger than 32GB, you will need a third-party partition manager to do the formatting, because Windows installed on MBR disk only allows formatting such capacity to exFAT and NTFS.

Minitool partition how to format for mac free

To get FAT32 file system for 64GB/128GB SD card, here the best SD card formatter – MiniTool Partition Wizard is recommended not only because it is easy to use but also because it offers multiple file systems. Above all, SD cards between 32GB to 2TB can be successfully formatted to FAT32 file system, breaking the limit in Windows. Press the button below and get the free SD formatter Raspberry Pi.

After installing MiniTool Partition Wizard to your PC, connect SD card to your PC and launch Partition Wizard to the main interface. Then follow the simple tutorial below which guide you through Raspberry Pi SD card format FAT32:

Step 1. Select the SD card partition and choose Format Partition from the action panel. If the SD card does not appear in the disk map area, click General > Refresh Disk button or reconnect the SD card.

Minitool Partition How To Format For Mac

Step 2. In the pop-up window, drop down the File S