How to upgrade a C: drive?

[Wibs]

I have the following:
C: drive - a nearly full 256GB SSD
D: drive - a 1TB HDD
E: drive - CD/DVD player
F: drive - a 3TB HD external drive.

I would like to clone the SSD onto the D: drive (perhaps a better term would be, create an image of my C: drive onto my D: drive), upgrade my C: drive to a 512GB SSD, restore the clone/image to the new C: drive, and make the original 256GB SSD my new G: drive

Can anyone foresee any problems with this plan, and which clone software should I use? A Google search suggests the free version Macrium Reflect, any thoughts on this? Once having cloned the C: drive, how can I boot with the new 512 SDD installed, to get the cloned image back? My head hurts just thinking about it.

 

[dorp95]

Going from an HDD to a SSD I used a software called Acronis true image, sure it was 40$ but when it comes to this kind of stuff I wanted a no Hassel option and Acronis worked great for me.
It gave you options to select what drive you wanted to clone, and where to close it at. Very simple and easy to use.

 

[aldan]

if you want to recover your c drive from your d drive you will have to create a partition on the d drive and use acronis to clone your ssd to this partition.then you simply clone that partition to your new ssd.you could always install the new ssd and clone your old one directly to it.would be simpler.acronis is free for wd hard drives.otherwise macrium is a great free alternative that works well.

 

[Wibs]

I see, I cannot clone directly to the D: HD drive, I must partition it first, into, say, D: and G: (the G: taking up the unused space on the drive), then make the G: active, then clone the C: drive to G:, then power off.

I then remove the C: drive, and install the new drive, then restart the computer and go into BIOS first and tell it to boot from the G: drive. Check that it all boots up correctly, then clone the G: drive to the new C: drive. Power off again, then restart, going into BIOS first to tell it to boot from the C: drive now. If it boots OK I delete the G: partition on my D: drive. I then power off, install the old SSD, let it get an automatic drive letter, which should be G:, and I am all done. Is that the sequence as you see it?

 

[aldan]

actually,it would be simpler to install the new ssd and clone your old one to it.

 

[Wibs]

actually,it would be simpler to install the new ssd and clone your old one to it.

After installing the new SSD it would get the next available drive letter, in my case, G:. So after cloning I would then presumably assign drive letter Z: to the new SSD, assign the old SSD to G:, then reassign the Z: drive to C: ?

Wibs