how do I clone micro-sd cards?

[seandepagnier]

Thanks I will try it

You don't have to use gparted.   The simplest way is to shrink the partition, then use dd to copy it.

I had to do this a few days ago.   It's not possible to shrink the partition when it's mounted, so I first used dd to make an image to an external drive, then shrunk the partion in the image.   If you don't have an external drive, it is possible to make a ramdisk with the utilities you need, then switch to that, umounting the root filesystem.