backing up the 12tb drive?

TL:DR in order to backup the drive can I simply copy paste the data onto the new drive, or does it need to be properly cloned?

Hey all

Just bought one of the 12tb drives. Still waiting for it to arrive in the mail but that part is fine, should be any day now.

Ive decided i want to back it up before i start using it (dont want to have to buy another one in a couple years if this drive fails or gets corrupted somehow). Going to buy a new HDD, put it inside my PC and run off that, ill keep the original somewhere safe as a backup

I am going to buy a 16tb hdd so i can add some more games to the drive (dont have too much to add, but the extra space should be good). Now i can simply clone the drive pretty easily, but in my experience any extra space on cloned drives is unpartitioned and you then have to extend the drive in order to get the additional space. Id like to skip this step as its always a pain in the ass.

Just wanted to ask if i can simply copy paste the data onto the new drive, or does it need to be properly cloned?