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I'm not sure what the technical terms are for this, but I'm having the following problem:

The internal SSD of my laptop died and set itself to readonly. It has all the recovery partitions and all that jazz in addition to my Windows and data folder.

I was able to take a disk image off of the SSD, by booting into Linux and using gnu-ddrescue.

The disk image is slightly larger than 512GB. I, of course, only noticed this, after purchasing a 500GB Samsung NVME SSD.

Now my question is, are all 512GB drives the same size (to the byte)? Or can you only really write these kinds of complete disk images to a larger disk to be sure everything lands on it?

I'm a bit out of my depth here.

Minix
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  • Yes; All 512 GB are the same size; There is no way to fit a image that is larger than 512 GB on a disk that is only 512 GB; As for it being “smaller” it’s not actually; Common misconception – Ramhound Jan 25 '21 at 17:19
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    Mount the image, then delete some files to get it below 500gig, save the new image and then apply it to the new drive. – Moab Jan 25 '21 at 17:48
  • @Ramhound With it being slightly larger I meant the image being 512.000.010.123 bytes or whatever, So if all 512GB disks are the same size, I would guess all of them would be around that mark. – Minix Jan 25 '21 at 17:53
  • @Moab The image is of the whole disk. I'm not sure that would work. – Minix Jan 25 '21 at 17:54
  • The original drive is a 512 GB drive I presume? Drives are sold as base 10 while the number you have provided is base 2, it’s the same number, just a different base. – Ramhound Jan 25 '21 at 20:48
  • @Ramhound I thought the same way, but the original disk (and its image) was 512GB base 10 and a few bytes, the new one (https://www.amazon.de/dp/B07MFBLN7K/) is about 500GB flat. – Minix Jan 25 '21 at 20:54
  • @Minix I do it all the time – Moab Jan 26 '21 at 17:58
  • @Moab Then please write an answer detailling your approach. – Minix Jan 26 '21 at 18:21
  • @Ramhound: The user space (due to SSD overprovisioning) almost certainly is smaller. – Ben Voigt Nov 03 '21 at 16:43
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    Does this answer your question? [Backing up a Windows system using DD from NVME 512 GB to SSD 500 GB](https://superuser.com/questions/1448700/backing-up-a-windows-system-using-dd-from-nvme-512-gb-to-ssd-500-gb) – Ben Voigt Nov 03 '21 at 16:45

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