Clone SSD to HDD (100 MB smaller)

[Sebastiao_1]

Hey guys,

I have been looking an looking, and found many possible solutions (in this website as well) that did not worked.

Here is the deal:
I cloned, a year ago, my Windows 10 (no cd, came w/ PC) from the original HDD to an SSD (Samsung EVO 1TB) via Samsung Migration software that came with the new disk. Perfectly working!

Now, I want to clone this same Windows 10 system just as it is to an external 1TB HDD (that unfortunately has less 100 MB than the SSD). I tried a lot of free software: EaseUS, Macrium Reflect, Clonezilla (surpassing the size problem by selecting two options in expert mode, not very size at start and just before starting the clone I chose to adjust size of partitions proportionally). In all of these cases the disk does not boot. I tried making a Windows recovery USB flash drive for all the cases and it did not work. I tried cloning partition by partition (because in the source disk I have 5 partitions 1 big for windows and other 4 extremely small ones - less than a 1gb - that I did not create but I thought they could contained some sort of boot manager...), still no positive result.

All I want is to have the HDD external drive with the Windows 10 as it is now on my internal SSD, to be able to wipe the SSD and clean install a Windows 7 Ultimate that I meanwhile bought, to surpass all troubles that Windows 10 as been giving me (I tired of being a lab rat of Microsoft).

Any ideas on how to make this happen successfully?

Thank you in advance,
Sebastião

 

[maxwellmelon]

I might be wrong but I haven't ever known windows to boot from an external hard drive.

as it would require the usb drivers to be loaded into ram before the os starts. (that's why raid systems actually load a raid driver before windows actually starts its normal boot) as windows was designed to start from a normal internal following standard hard drive commands. a usb based drive does not follow such basic standard commands due to being on a usb port.

 

[Sebastiao_1]

Yes I understand, so probably it just doesn't boot because it is an HDD, thanks man that explains a lot! *frustration goes away*
Also it would perform possibly very slowly making the whole idea sort of nonsense. I was with the cool idea of having a HDD with win10 that I can fit in my pocket and I could connect to any pc and be on my OS, and at the same time have my windows 10 account stored somewhere. But the main point is because I need my computer for work all the time and I just want to be able to access what I have right now whenever I want, and experiment with win7 on a clean drive.

I also have the original internal HDD that came with the PC (which I can connect with a caddy hdd) that is about 750 gb, so now I am commited to make the same but on that one with the objective of having both bootable options at all times. Now that I understood how to surpass the cloning to a smaller disk on clonezilla I will try to clone that one and see if it boots.

 

[Sebastiao_1]

Yes, that's it, cloned (AOMEI) the 1tb ssd to the 750 gb hdd using internal caddy hdd adaptor and it worked right away! It boots!
It seems impossible to use a cloned external hdd as boot OS

 

[Paul_259]

I just did this successfully with Macrium Reflect Free version (latest 6.x build as of six days ago), to clone a 1TB HDD to 240GB SSD (HDD had ~120GB used after doing cleanup). I created bootable Rescue media (USB flash drive) so that I could do it 'offline', but probably could have done it 'online' from Windows, too. My case had complexities in that it was a Lenovo laptop with SEVEN factory created partitions, four of which were hidden for things like system restore and diagnostics partition(s).

There was a (visible) partition named "Lenovo" that was only 25GB appeared to be repository for drivers and bundled application installers. I didn't worry about including that one since I have complete system restore DVD set including application(s) disc, plus I can download most of that stuff from Lenovo, anyway. Connected the SSD via USB external enclosure.

So when booting to Macrium, detecting available devices and all that, get to the screen where you can select to 'clone this drive' to target/destination drive. I selected source drive and it automatically checked all partitions for cloning. I cleared the check for the 25GB 'Lenovo' partition because I didn't want it. Then selected destination drive and it visually represents how the destination drive will look, giving an error that not all partitions could be copied (due to size). At this stage it is not actually cloning, just confirming/checking that all partitions will copy.

The problem was the large main partition that was like ~780GB, which Macrium resized up to the maximum space available but this left no space for partitions coming after it. So I selected that partition (on the destination/target) side, and clicked "Cloned Partition Details/Properties" which will bring up a screen allowing you to resize/customize that partition. I changed the partition size to fit the new drive, allowing for the remaining partitions to be copied (leaving 500MB as unallocated), then dragged the other outstanding partitions to their respective position on the visual representation of the destination drive. It proceeded just fine and all partitions were cloned (except that Lenovo partition). It didn't give me any error on first boot into Windows, even though Secure Boot and all that was enabled.