Generally you cannot clone from a bigger drive to a smaller drive.

But there are workarounds.

• You can shrink (and maybe move) the partitions on the bigger drive, so that they all reside within the limits of the smaller drive (with a small amount of drive space reserved for a backup partition table at the tail end in case of a GUID partition table, GPT).

Beware, that if you move the head end of a boot partition (the root partition may be a boot partition), the bootloader must be reinstalled in order to find it. This is possible, but a complication.

• Then you can clone this part of the bigger drive, and if a GUID partition table, GPT, afterwards fix the backup partition table for example with gdisk.

I would still recommend to clone the 'whole' drive, from /dev/sdx to /dev/sdy, where x is the device letter of the source drive and y is the device letter of the target drive. Cloning with dd or similar tools will be truncated, when the target drive is full.

• There are also other things, that can create problems. A few minutes ago I wrote a list of things to watch out for, when you intend to clone a drive. See the following link, Cloning from one drive to another drive.

Generally you cannot clone from a bigger drive to a smaller drive.

But there are workarounds.

• You can shrink (and maybe move) the partitions on the bigger drive, so that they all reside within the limits of the smaller drive (with a small amount of drive space reserved for a backup partition table at the tail end in case of a GUID partition table, GPT).

  Beware, that if you move the head end of a boot partition (the root partition may be a boot partition), the bootloader must be reinstalled in order to find it. This is possible, but a complication.

• Then you can clone this part of the bigger drive, and if a GUID partition table, GPT, afterwards fix the backup partition table for example with gdisk.

  I would still recommend to clone the 'whole' drive, from /dev/sdx to /dev/sdy, where x is the device letter of the source drive and y is the device letter of the target drive. Cloning with dd or similar tools will be truncated, when the target drive is full.

• There are also other things, that can create problems. A few minutes ago I wrote a list of things to watch out for, when you intend to clone a drive. See the following link, Cloning from one drive to another drive.

Generally you cannot clone from a bigger drive to a smaller drive.

But there are workarounds.

• You can shrink (and maybe move) the partitions on the bigger drive, so that they all reside within the limits of the smaller drive (with a small amount of drive space reserved for a backup partition table at the tail end in case of a GUID partition table, GPT).

Beware, that if you move the head end of a boot partition (the root partition may be a boot partition), the bootloader must be reinstalled in order to find it. This is possible, but a complication.

• Then you can clone this part of the bigger drive, and if a GUID partition table, GPT, afterwards fix the backup partition table for example with gdisk.

I would still recommend to clone the 'whole' drive, from /dev/sdx to /dev/sdy, where x is the device letter of the source drive and y is the device letter of the target drive. Cloning with dd or similar tools will be truncated, when the target drive is full.

• There are also other things, that can create problems. A few minutes ago a wrote a list of things to watch out for, when you intend to clone a drive. See the following link, Cloning from one drive to another drive.

Generally you cannot clone from a bigger drive to a smaller drive.

But there are workarounds.

• You can shrink (and maybe move) the partitions on the bigger drive, so that they all reside within the limits of the smaller drive (with a small amount of drive space reserved for a backup partition table at the tail end in case of a GUID partition table, GPT).

Beware, that if you move the head end of a boot partition (the root partition may be a boot partition), the bootloader must be reinstalled in order to find it. This is possible, but a complication.

• Then you can clone this part of the bigger drive, and if a GUID partition table, GPT, afterwards fix the backup partition table for example with gdisk.

I would still recommend to clone the 'whole' drive, from /dev/sdx to /dev/sdy, where x is the device letter of the source drive and y is the device letter of the target drive. Cloning with dd or similar tools will be truncated, when the target drive is full.

• There are also other things, that can create problems. A few minutes ago I wrote a list of things to watch out for, when you intend to clone a drive. See the following link, Cloning from one drive to another drive.