#Clone hard drive to smaller ssd install#
#Clone hard drive to smaller ssd software#
#Clone hard drive to smaller ssd windows#

Just do a straight up dd sector by sector from the source drive to the SSD until the SSD is 'full' and then use parted to fix up the incorrect partition table that says the SSD has larger geometry than it really does by 'deleting' and 'recreating' the truncated partition with the correct geometry (this doesn't delete data in that partition, it simply changes the start and end of that partition).Īlternatively, as already mentioned, use a tool like GParted to shrink down the partition to less than the size of the SSD, clone it over using either dd (it will have correct geometry and no risk of data loss this time) or Clonezilla (faster than dd because it only clones the occupied areas of the drive rather than everything - you still need to resize the partition down beforehand), and then resize the partition on the SSD up again afterwards to fill any empty space below the total capacity. This is only a test to document a proper recovery plan for my whole network of about 10 PC's.You can definitely use dd, as long as the data on the larger drive is notably smaller than the SSD and that no data exists in the area that is beyond the SSD's storage limits. Super happy the original system disk is still healthy and working, if this was a restore after a crash, it would be much more stressful. Now, it is migrating the fresh restore to a smaller SSD with the Migrate tool. After fiddling with that, I rebooted and selected the Migrate tool from the basic interface and it seems to work from there. Next I tried the 'Migrate OS' tool but it would only give me the option of migrating to the USB that I booted from. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast.

#Clone hard drive to smaller ssd software#

Hi, Please can you recommend a free cloning software to clone a hard disk (hybrid) 1 TB to a smaller 512 GB SSD to replace it Thanks Archived post. I restored to a larger disk and that was a success. Free Cloning software from a disk to a smaller ssd. Hope someone has some helpful notes on this. The original disk is still functioning just fine so I can try different options without damaging the original disk. Is there a special way to to the image if I am expecting to restore to a smaller disk? Maybe I need to do something at the time of restore? Maybe this is totally impossible and I should not bother trying? Hopefully this is possible and not too difficult.

#Clone hard drive to smaller ssd install#

The other options of doing a clean install etc will require me to re-install and configure the PC which is what I am expecting to avoid by using this software. I tried my recovery USB that was made on the same PC to do a repair, but that simply is an endless loop of re-boots. Sectors and partitions are copied over, along with key files such as boot.ini, NTLDR, BCD, winload.exe. There are no actions that can be taken from here. A key feature of the software is the ability to clone a large disk to a smaller SSD drive. When it booted up, it did not get very far - just a blue screen that says:

#Clone hard drive to smaller ssd windows#

On restore, it asks if I wanted to shrink the partitions which of course I selected yes and assumed it would manage the various files that Windows needs changed to reflect the new SSD. The existing 500GB drive only has about 120GB used so I was hoping that one of my unused Samsung EVO850 256GB drives could replace the very slow system drive.

I am trying to use Hard Disk Manager 15 to move from a 500GB HDD to a 250GB SSD.