[SOLVED] Best way to Clone/Migrate OS Drive?

[khodex1997]

I have Paragon Hard Disk Manager but I've never used it. I have a sata SSD that is my current boot drive. I just installed a WD blue M.2 Drive and want to migrate/clone the OS drive to it but Ive never used Paragon for that. In the past I just used a physical cloning dock. How do I go about doing this? Do I have to make some sort of boot drive to clone the OS drive while its not being used?

Also Is this a good M.2? I got it for 85$ I felt like that was a good deal at the time but now I see like a hundred different kinds of M.2 SSD's and doubt it.

 

[USAFRet]

How much space is consumed on your current C drive?
The new SSD is a 1TB?

 

[CountMike]

https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

 

[khodex1997]

How much space is consumed on your current C drive?
The new SSD is a 1TB?

They are both 1TB. My OS Drive has roughly 750GB on it. The other drive is new so empty.

 

[USAFRet]

They are both 1TB. My OS Drive has roughly 750GB on it. The other drive is new so empty.

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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 Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration)
Select ALL the partitions on the existing C drive

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.
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