Whats the easiest way to clone HDD to new SSD Win 8?

[anthonyla65]

Hi everyone, I've recently bought a Acer Aspire One 725 with Windows 8 that comes with a 320GB HDD. I find the HDD to be quite slow and the spinning vibrations to be pretty annoying so I'm going to add a 64GB SSD when I have the money. But I've been puzzled with this system because it comes with 4 partitions: 400MB Recovery Partition, 300MB EFI Partition, 283GB Main Partition and 14GB Recovery partition. I wouldn't need the recovery partition as the SSD is that small anyways. But how would I clone it? I could link both drives to my PC via sata cable if needed? Also I can't seem to access the Bios in this machine, I tried to mash the F2, F12 and Del key but none work. This machine is a netbook and doesn't come with a DVD drive so I couldn't reinstall as it didn't come with disks in the first place. Could anyone guide me on how I could do this?

Thanks,
Anthony.

 

[phil22]

When you clone a hard drive or SSD, the cloning process includes all the partitions on the donor drive, you cannot leave any partitions out. So it's not possible to clone a 320GB drive on to a 64GB drive, there just isn't enough space to do it.

To access BIOS Setup you have to press the appropriate key at exactly the right moment during the boot process, and that's usually as soon as soon as the screen appears which tells you which key to press (the manufacturer's splash screen).

 

[anthonyla65]

I'm sorry I should've made it clearer, could I not shrink my OS partition and just copy that and the EFI partition? Is there any configurations I need to do? Would running without the recovery partition cause issues with the OS? I think I might connect them both up to my PC and copy partitions using EASEUS? Would that work?

Thanks!

 

[phil22]

Yes you can shrink your OS partition then clone that and any separate active partition on which Windows 7 depends on for startup (if a separate active partition exists). They are the only two partitions which must be kept intact and together on the same drive for Windows to start successfully.

Just ensure that the total size of both partitions is less than 64GB