shrink partition before cloning/imaging?

[shmu26]

my windows partition has about 90 gb of data on it
but I can shrink it down only to150 gb.
I want to image/clone it to an SSD that is 120 gb.
Will it work?
Easeus support says yes, but I see a lot of people who say you need to shrink.
what do you say?

 

[nukemaster]

You most likely have a immovable file like parts of the pagefile or other system file stopping you from shrinking farther. Third party tools that reboot as run before the OS loads will get past this issue.

As long as the total data will still fit the SSD this will not be an issue.

Now a note of caution. you will also need to take your system reserved or uefi boot partition as well on most systems for this to work. Even after that the boot loader must be told to load off the new drive/partition or it may keep booting the hard drive.

I have had great luck with Reflect from Macrium for this task.
http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

I have cloned with Easeus before and it does work, but more than once, I had to edit the boot loader to get the SSD to boot it self. This is because an exact copy of the boot loader still points to the old hard drives OS partition.

You can manually edit the BCD entries on the SSD after clone using the HDD load of Windows if needed, but it may be easier to try with the other software.

Whatever you do, do not erase the hard drive until you know EVERYTHING works as expected. Remove the HDD's data/power cables to test that everything is booting right as well. I have seen users with the HDD boot loader starting the SSD. That on its own works fine, but will fail to start if the hard drive is removed or fails.

 

[PizzaTheHutt]

You can if you shrink it - maybe use a command like sfc /scannow to get some more space.

 

[shmu26]

You most likely have a immovable file like parts of the pagefile or other system file stopping you from shrinking farther. Third party tools that reboot as run before the OS loads will get past this issue.

As long as the total data will still fit the SSD this will not be an issue.

Now a note of caution. you will also need to take your system reserved or uefi boot partition as well on most systems for this to work. Even after that the boot loader must be told to load off the new drive/partition or it may keep booting the hard drive.

I have had great luck with Reflect from Macrium for this task.
http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

I have cloned with Easeus before and it does work, but more than once, I had to edit the boot loader to get the SSD to boot it self. This is because an exact copy of the boot loader still points to the old hard drives OS partition.

You can manually edit the BCD entries on the SSD after clone using the HDD load of Windows if needed, but it may be easier to try with the other software.

Whatever you do, do not erase the hard drive until you know EVERYTHING works as expected. Remove the HDD's data/power cables to test that everything is booting right as well. I have seen users with the HDD boot loader starting the SSD. That on its own works fine, but will fail to start if the hard drive is removed or fails.

thanks there!

I tried shrinking it with paragon live cd, but I still couldn't get below 150 gb
I also tried disabling page file and a bunch of other windows services, and defragmenting with 3rd party programs. No go.

Easeus partition master did get it down to 150, though, even though the native windows tool couldn't do anything at all.

But you say it doesn't really matter, as long as the total data will fit, which it does.

I usually get along pretty well with easeus, but I must admit that when the boot does get messed up, I pull out the Macrium rescue disk. It's the best!
Another thing I don't like about easeus is that if you have a brand new hard disk, it won't work with it, and it doesn't tell you why. You have to "initialize" the hard disk first, and you can do that through a simple command line. But it really shouldn't be that complicated. How does Macrium handle that situation?

you say macrium causes less boot problems in the first place?
and can macrium inject drivers, if you restore to dissimilar hardware?

 

[nukemaster]

I have never tried to restore to different hardware.

I do not remember having to fix any boot issues after using Reflect. I had more problems with EaseUS when uEFI setups started to get popular.

I always initialize new disks first in disk management.

Very strange even partition master from EaseUS did not let you shrink farther.

 

[shmu26]

" I had more problems with EaseUS when uEFI setups started to get popular"

would it help to set the bios to legacy, for the first boot?

 

[nukemaster]

I actually had one system to legacy because it also had a video card that did not have the uefi bios(would not even post without enabling legacy mode). I think it just did not like the GPT partitioning or something.

I just remember it being a pain at that point.

Funny thing is my system has a uefi bios, but I do not think I am using ANY of the the features of it.

 

[shmu26]

Very strange even partition master from EaseUS did not let you shrink farther.

after shrinking with easeus, I had an occasional blue screen, and then it went away.
then I downloaded macrium reflect and tried to make an image, and I found out why.
macrium complained that the MBR was messed up and recommended to run checkdisk.

I did so, and then macrium worked, so I assume the "problem" was fixed. macrium has some nice features, such as allowing you to pause in the middle of imaging. that's convenient!

 

[nukemaster]

Glad you like it and got everything sorted.