[SOLVED] Advice on cloning system drive from HDD to SSD

Cavaldi

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Nov 25, 2009
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I have an offline Windows 7 PC whose drive is failing. It would be a pain to reinstall and reconfigure this PC so I'd rather clone. Given that the PC cannot go online, I would appreciate some advice to reliably clone a drive with all of its partitions without having to reactivate Windows 7 (32, Ult) online. Next to methods and tools, I'd like some advice on transferring from HDD to SSD reliably, if it is advisable at all.

Obviously, this is entirely my own responsibility.
 
Solution
Wow....25GB for your C drive partition.
I'd change that.

But, whatever.

Yes, this can be cloned.

You can even adjust the size of that C partition in the process.
Pay attention to the middle part of the below instructions:



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Specific steps for a successful clone operation:
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Verify the actual used space on the current drive is significantly below the size of the new SSD
Download and install Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration, if a Samsung SSD)
If you are cloning from a SATA drive to PCIe/NVMe, install the relevant driver for this new NVMe/PCIe drive.
Power off
Disconnect ALL drives except the current C and the new SSD
Power up
Run the...

Cavaldi

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Nov 25, 2009
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The old drive is a WD WD1600BEVT-22ZCT0 WD 160GB SATA 2.5in

General Information
Drive Controller:Serial ATA 3Gb/s
Host Controller:ATA Channel 1
Drive Model:WDC WD1600BEVT-22ZCT0
Drive Firmware Revision:11.01A11
Drive Capacity:152,627 MBytes (160 GB)
Media Rotation Rate:5400 RPM
ATA Major Version Supported:ATA/ATAPI-5, ATA/ATAPI-6, ATA/ATAPI-7, ATA8-ACS
ATA Transport Version Supported:SATA 2.5

The kind of drives I'm considering are a good deal larger, preferably SSD and probably SATA 3. Something like a Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250GB model MZ-75E250 or a Kingston A400 SSD 1TB. Barely used/new pre-owned.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
The Samsung 850 is an older model.
Look to the 860 or 870 EVO.
Secondarily, the Crucial MX500.

500GB minimum.

New only. Don't buy a used drive, you have no idea how the previous owners treated it.


Can you post a screencap of your Disk Management window.
(upload your pic to imgur.com and post the link here)
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Wow....25GB for your C drive partition.
I'd change that.

But, whatever.

Yes, this can be cloned.

You can even adjust the size of that C partition in the process.
Pay attention to the middle part of the below instructions:



-----------------------------
Specific steps for a successful clone operation:
-----------------------------
Verify the actual used space on the current drive is significantly below the size of the new SSD
Download and install Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration, if a Samsung SSD)
If you are cloning from a SATA drive to PCIe/NVMe, install the relevant driver for this new NVMe/PCIe drive.
Power off
Disconnect ALL drives except the current C and the new SSD
Power up
Run the Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration)
Select ALL the partitions on the existing C drive

-Here is where you can adjust the size of that C partition, if desired.
If you are going from a smaller drive to a larger, by default, the target partition size will be the same as the Source. You probably don't want that
You can manipulate the size of the partitions on the target (larger)drive
Click on "Cloned Partition Properties", and you can specifiy the resulting partition size, to even include the whole thing

Click the 'Clone' button
Wait until it is done
When it finishes, power off
Disconnect ALL drives except for the new SSD
This is to allow the system to try to boot from ONLY the SSD
Swap the SATA cables around so that the new drive is connected to the same SATA port as the old drive
Power up, and verify the BIOS boot order
If good, continue the power up

It should boot from the new drive, just like the old drive.
Maybe reboot a time or two, just to make sure.

If it works, and it should, all is good.

Later, reconnect the old drive and wipe all partitions on it.
This will probably require the commandline diskpart function, and the clean command.

Ask questions if anything is unclear.
-----------------------------
 
Solution

Cavaldi

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I'll go silent until I have the opportunity to clone the drives. C is so small because nothing new gets installed on it and as you see, with almost 15GB free, it's all it needs. Thanks for assessing the situation. When I get going, a couple of weeks from now, I'll let you know how I got on.
 

Cavaldi

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Nov 25, 2009
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The cloning went well. I transferred over to a Crucial MX500 2TB. Unfortunately I did have to authenticate, and for some reason when I have my two USB drives attached the system freezes at a blinking cursor. Remove them, system boots without issue. When I reattach them once Windows is running, they are recognized without a problem.

Any idea how to figure out the issue?