How to clone a brand new 500GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD

[StealthFundip]

After the excellent Black Friday deal I found, I've just installed a brand new 500gb Samsung 850 EVO SSD alongside my 1TB HDD in my desktop pc. Ideally, I'd like to copy the OS and my Steam games library to the SSD, and leave all other files on the HDD.

If that proves too difficult, I can always muddle my way through and move/delete files after completely cloning the HDD.

A few FAQ answers:
1 - Yes, the current space on the HDD is smaller than the available space on the SSD (379GB are listed as used in Windows properties, with more than 400GB available on the SSD) However, the HDD is a 1TB model - I'm not sure if that factors into the cloning bit.

2 - I have initialized the SSD as "GPT" in Disk Manager, and left it at that. No volume creation, no formatting, nada.

3 - I do not have a backup device - short of saving a few GB worth of stuff in a zip file and uploading it to Google Drive.

4 - I have no cloning software installed yet, but would prefer Samsung's cloning software.

5 - Both drives are connected via SATA3 cables on the same motherboard. No USB to SATA silly cable stuff.


Okay, hopefully this is enough info to get an excellent answer from one of the helpful people that lurk here! Don't be afraid to ask any extra questions, I might know what you're asking for! (or I can google it really quick before answering)

 

[The Original Ralph]

i recently cloned a sata 840 EVO to the new 950 PRO NVMe SSD using samsung's data migration software

I was not ready to be impressed as i'd had some screwed up experiences with their software in the past when it was sourced from acronis. It's now sourced from Clonix, and sonuva BMT, it performed flawlessly, 122 GB in under 10 minutes, and the 950 pro booted perfectly.

I've since used it to clone from the 950 PRO 512 GB to a 840 EVO 256 GB SSD, but i reduced the partitions on the 950 PRO so i had about 275 GB "unallocated". It cloned fine, no issue with the source drive being larger than the target drive. But it will only clone to a samsung supported drive (your 850 is fine). It doesn't matter what the source drive is, only the target drive

fwiw

 

[popatim]

There are a few that will migrate the OS off of the hdd and put it on the SSD.
Theirs the paid one of Paragon called Migrate OS to SSD.
Free tools that claim to be able to do this are: Acronis True Image, Easeus partition-Tool, Aomei Partition Assistant, and Mini-tool Partition Wizard.

The only one I've ever used was the paid one and it worked well the numerous times I've used it.

As always, perform a backup before you begin messing with your drives in case something goes wrong.

 

[ArtPog]

You've indicated that the total data on your 1 TB HDD (the drive that will serve as the source disk for the disk-cloning operation) is 379 GB. At least I think you've indicated 379 GB worth of total data although you refer to the "current space on the HDD".

So assuming that you would (or could) be cloning 379 GB of data to your new Samsung 500 GB SSD is there any reason why you simply couldn't carry out a disk-to-disk cloning operation so that the destination (target) SSD would contain the entire contents of your source disk? (Samsung's Data Migration Program is simple to use & quite effective for this purpose). And subsequently use your HDD as a storage and/or backup device?