copy hdd to external hdd

[marygg]

I tried copying hdd to external hdd. There was a difference in the volume of info copied. The original hdd used about 12 GB and the copy only ended up with 7 GB. Am I missing some important information on the copy? I slaved the hard drive to my computer to do the copy.

[bailey]

sounds like you missed all the hidden files in the OS, and other software hidden files.

[marygg]

how do I get the hidden files?

[bailey]

just copying will not get everything, you need to eather do a back-up to the external drive or use a clonning software to get everything from one drive to the other.