Can you clone a HDD to a smaller SSD?

[Rooker]

I have a 1TB HDD for Windows, a 512GB SSD for games and just bought a 2TB SSD. I was planning to clone the HDD to the larger SSD, but now that I'm looking at things, I'm only using about 330GB of the HDD, which would easily fit onto the smaller SSD. I don't really think I need more than 512GB for Windows, tbh.

 

On the other hand, I'm using 360GB of the 512GB SSD and don't really have that many games installed on it. I think I'd be better off using that one for games. I've checked the benchmarks and the two drives are basically twins performance wise, so I wouldn't be giving up or gaining anything but space.

 

So, the question is, can I clone the Windows drive to the smaller SSD, since I'm only actually using 330GB of space? Am I going to be forced to repartition it first? I was planning to use Acronis True Image 2015 to do the copying, because a free license comes with the new drive.

[Varithina]

It will probably depend on true image and what it can do, it may well let you just clone from one drive to another with out any other input from you, or it may require the destination drive to already be partitioned and ready for use, your best bet would be take a look at the true image manual.

 

And yes you should be able to clone the windows drive to the smaller drive, though do take into account potential growth on that drive from windows updates and driver updates as well as, while 150gb ish may seem a lot, now it is not really that much when you actually start doing things.

 

Just for information, my setup is a 512gb ssd for windows and boot drive only, and 4 6tb for all the other stuff, with steam sitting on two of those drives.

 

My next build may well change it to 4 10tb or bigger, it will depend on hard drive prices when I buy the new pc, which will probably be next year some time.

[Guest]

Try this, this worked best for me.

 

https://www.backup-utility.com/?from=en_nav

[PcNerd]

This is how I would do it:

- Resize the partition to a smaller size, so it would fit.

- Delete any existing partitions on the 2nd drive.

- Copy the partition.

- Extend (resize) the partition to full size.

 

This should do all that as a live boot cd / usb drive:

Parted Magic

[Antrox]

Cloning a HDD to SSD is just asking for problems. You have to realize cloning takes literally everything into perspective including certain sectors of the original drive and windows drivers that were made for a Hard Disk. If you're Hard Disk is running slower than normal, cloning will only carry this problem over to the SSD, if you have bad sectors on the HDD it will carry it over to the SSD, if your windows is running slower than normal cloning will more than likely make it worse.

You just need to take into consideration these problems that you are more than likely to run into if you do this process. However if have to go through with, I would honestly just recommend a clean installation of windows which will speed up windows processes and other various things that rely on drive speeds or to Image the drives instead of cloning them. You wont run into problems if you decide to those instead. Otherwise you can just wing it and see what happens for yourself. It might work, it might not. Simple as that.

As for software, I recommend you use Macrium Reflect, it can image and clone drives for free and is a very good application when it comes to doing both.

[MaidoLover]

21 hours ago, Antrox said:

As for software, I recommend you use Macrium Reflect, it can image and clone drives for free and is a very good application when it comes to doing both.

It also has a feature that it constantly runs in the background,  "scanning your drives" aka "doing whatever"  and cannot be turned off by any means. 

 

There's also seemingly no offline installer, meaning it is rather unlikely the new version will still work should you,  God forbid,  decide to uninstall this software that constantly runs in the background, "scanning" your drives even if you don't want that nor have any scheduled backups whatsoever. 

 

 

Highly not recommended using this SPY POS tbh. 

 

Use EaseUS or Acronis instead. 

[Antrox]

2 hours ago, MaidoLover said:

It also has a feature that it constantly runs in the background,  "scanning your drives" aka "doing whatever"  and cannot be turned off by any means. 

 

There's also seemingly no offline installer, meaning it is rather unlikely the new version will still work should you,  God forbid,  decide to uninstall this software that constantly runs in the background, "scanning" your drives even if you don't want that nor have any scheduled backups whatsoever. 

 

 

Highly not recommended using this SPY POS tbh. 

 

Use EaseUS or Acronis instead. 

Those background processes are just the update service which, if you didnt know you can easily disable them by stopping hourly checks... None of those services scan your drives unless you yourself setup a routine backup which also if you, (once again) didnt already know requires its premium version to do any sort of thing.

[MaidoLover]

The process I'm talking about is Macrium Reflect UIwatcher which - to my knowledge - cannot be disabled as long you have Macrium Reflect installed. 

 

You can end this task in task manager but it will come back pretty much immediately. 

 

So if I'm wrong and there's a way to stop this process permanently then fine,  otherwise there's really no excuse for this behavior. 

[Antrox]

35 minutes ago, MaidoLover said:

The process I'm talking about is Macrium Reflect UIwatcher which - to my knowledge - cannot be disabled as long you have Macrium Reflect installed. 

 

You can end this task in task manager but it will come back pretty much immediately. 

 

So if I'm wrong and there's a way to stop this process permanently then fine,  otherwise there's really no excuse for this behavior. 

The Macrium Service and ReflectUI are processes that are essential for Macrium to function correctly. These process are lightweight and consume minimal CPU & memory resources, often waiting to be triggered by various events which does not consume resources. I'm not sure what you up to gain by stopping these? Next time read up on what the processes are for rather than assuming that they are there for no reason at all and cant be closed.

The opinion on what app to use is subjective also. In other words, use whatever the hell you want. I only recommended Macrium because of how reliable they've been to many people including myself who's used many of its features with no problems at all.

[MaidoLover]

3 hours ago, Antrox said:

The Macrium Service and ReflectUI are processes that are essential for Macrium to function correctly. These process are lightweight and consume minimal CPU & memory resources, often waiting to be triggered by various events which does not consume resources. I'm not sure what you up to gain by stopping these? Next time read up on what the processes are for rather than assuming that they are there for no reason at all and cant be closed.

The opinion on what app to use is subjective also. In other words, use whatever the hell you want. I only recommended Macrium because of how reliable they've been to many people including myself who's used many of its features with no problems at all.

The problem is I'm not running a background process on my PC if I don't absolutely need it (ie windows needs it)

 

And I really don't appreciate it that when I exit a program it just keeps running anyways without an option to turn it off. 

Now there are other programs that do this,  the difference is I actively use them, but I'm not actively using a backup program after I already made the backup. 

 

And I did some research,  it happens after several updates people have issues to actually use their backups made with macrium,  and there doesn't seem to be a fix either.  The program is not properly designed for one time backups apparently. 

 

I'd be all for it,  if it wouldn't do this background stuff,  then I could just leave it installed and be sure it actually works if I need it. 

 

 

[Antrox]

1 hour ago, MaidoLover said:

The problem is I'm not running a background process on my PC if I don't absolutely need it (ie windows needs it)

 

And I really don't appreciate it that when I exit a program it just keeps running anyways without an option to turn it off. 

Now there are other programs that do this,  the difference is I actively use them, but I'm not actively using a backup program after I already made the backup. 

 

And I did some research,  it happens after several updates people have issues to actually use their backups made with macrium,  and there doesn't seem to be a fix either.  The program is not properly designed for one time backups apparently. 

 

I'd be all for it,  if it wouldn't do this background stuff,  then I could just leave it installed and be sure it actually works if I need it. 

 

 

They dont do anything but exist to make the program usable. They dont even affect anything on the computer, and its pretty obvious they dont cause performance problems. So i dont understand what the big deal is tbh. Its really not uncommon for apps to have background processes.

As for issues with backups. Macrium was designed for consistent backups made around schedules.  If you're only needing to backup once, then make an image, its much better than just backing up anyways or disable the backup schedule all together.