Disk Image or Transfer

[ibanezfoo]

I would not do it this way. Get an 8gb USB stick and download the Win 10 installer to it. Take out your old drive and install the new one. Boot off the usb and install Win 10. You don’t have to license or activate it at this time. Once it’s running (use something like Driver Booster to install missing drivers if necessary) then attach you old drive and copy your profile data and other files to the new drive. Once you are completely satisfied that you have all of your old data copied then format your old drive to use as data. If you have windows 7 or 8 when you go to activate Win 10 click on the I have a key option and plug in the key from the sticker on your machine and it will activate. This is a safe way to get your data moved over. We’ve fired help desk guys for not doing it this way and losing users’ data....

I would not use any of those clone tools unless you have all of your data backed up to a 3rd drive first.

[Bushwack44]

I initially tried that. Created a Win 10 installer using a 16B stick. Then disconnected the OEM 2TB drive, had only the SSD installed, and booted up from the stick. The 'stick' would not identify the SSD (which I had already formatted). I have a hunch with OEM drives that have Win 10 pre-installed, there must be a code that makes the stick identify with the drive. I even tried booting the stick and placing Win 10 on an external 3.0 USB hard drive. No luck.

Aside from that, I don't want to re-install the third party programs (Adobe Suite, MS Office, Quickbooks, etc). I'm hoping cloning the drive will bypass that time suck.

[Dragunov]

^^^ This is another way to do it. Make SURE you get your Wi-Fi driver downloaded, and installed FIRST, otherwise, Driver Booster will not work.

[ibanezfoo]

I initially tried that. Created a Win 10 installer using a 16B stick. Then disconnected the OEM 2TB drive, had only the SSD installed, and booted up from the stick. The 'stick' would not identify the SSD (which I had already formatted). I have a hunch with OEM drives that have Win 10 pre-installed, there must be a code that makes the stick identify with the drive. I even tried booting the stick and placing Win 10 on an external 3.0 USB hard drive. No luck.

Aside from that, I don't want to re-install the third party programs (Adobe Suite, MS Office, Quickbooks, etc). I'm hoping cloning the drive will bypass that time suck.

[Dragunov]

Is secure boot disabled in the BIOS?

[Bushwack44]

Tried cloning the 2TB 7200 Hard drive (C drive) to the 1TB SSD drive E drive in second internal bay and ran into a problem during the process.

A few minutes in, I got a prompt that there wasn't enough space and the only option I had was to stop (the drive initially showed the 931GB available). I stopped, went back into Macrium and I see I can't access the 931GB from the SSD (see 1st pic below). I then went into Win 10's Disk Management and the E drive designation is gone (see 2nd Pic below). I tried the process again and now get the prompt there isn't enough space. I tried formatting the SSD and it will only format to 355MB.

I think I need to start from scratch and reformat the SSD. But only 355MB is recognized to format.

Suggestions.....please!


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This is the easiest, most reliable way to do what you want to do:

Download Macrium Reflect, and "clone" your C drive, to your new SSD. remove 2tb drive, install SSD (now the C drive). Format your 2tb drive as "D" drive. Once this is done, image your C drive, to the D drive. Once done, check the D drive, to make sure the Macrium Reflect image file is there. Make a Macrium recovery USB stick. Put in a safe place.

If you use a swap file, have it run from your D drive.
Send all your TEMP/TMP files to the D drive.
re-direct personal files (Pics, Music, Video etc.) to the D drive.
Turn off Defrag on the SSD (C) drive.
This will seriously reduce the R/W cycles on the SSD.

If you're using a Samsung SSD, download, and use the Samsung Magician software.

If you need help doing any of this, let me know, and I can talk you through it. It's not that hard.

[ibanezfoo]

Its just the partition size wrong. Right click on the small volume and delete volume. The whole drive should then show as unallocated. Then right click and create a new partition and make it full size.... You could also click on the 355 and expand the volume. Select all availible space.... or, just right click and delete it and let the clone tool build the partitions for you if it will. I haven't used that particular one but most will set up the drive for you.

[Bushwack44]

Its just the partition size wrong. Right click on the small volume and delete volume. The whole drive should then show as unallocated. Then right click and create a new partition and make it full size.... You could also click on the 355 and expand the volume. Select all availible space.... or, just right click and delete it and let the clone tool build the partitions for you if it will. I haven't used that particular one but most will set up the drive for you.

I was able to re-format the drive to make all 931GB 'unallocated'. With some additional research, I found this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh4uRhWwZT0; which pointed out to me I needed to match various partition sizes from the 2TB target drive to the 1TB destination drive to get the cloning started. Speaking of which, cloning started 5 hours ago (3:00PM Saturday) and its at 46% completed.

[usr1987]

Just bought a desktop PC that came with a 2TB 7200HD - Windows 10 pre-installed and running the current version. I've already loaded all the apps onto the drive and my documents (occupying 600MB).

I bought a 1TB SSD and installed it as a second internal drive. It formatted fine. What I would like to do is a complete transfer of all files from the HD to the SSD and be able to boot from the SSD.

Do I make a disk image of the drive or do a transfer (i.e.: https://pcmover-10.laplink.com/)? Whichever route is recommended, please suggest the best software for the job. Thanks.

acronis will do that!

[Bushwack44]

Clone was a success (I think).

I have both drives installed and still booting from the OEM 2TB (I restarted a couple times w/o a problem...just to make sure everything remains OK). To play it safe, I will shut down, 'unplug' this drive, boot up from the SSD (cloned) drive and hope for the best. It took 6:06 hours to clone 615 GB.

FWIW, the cloned SSD now has two letter designations: E (first partition is a FAT21 100MB partition and second partition os 16MB unformatted primary), and an F (which is NTSF Primary at 930GB and Recovery which is 1,024MB). In all, it has the same 4 partitions the target drive has. Only the target drive is strictly a C.

[Dragunov]

Sorry, been out of town for a few. Sounds like you did just fine.

[Bushwack44]

Success!

After cloning, I shut down the OC, disconnected the OEM 2TB and the PC naturally booted from the SSD. I then shut down again, connected the power and SATA cables to the SSD (that originally were connected to the OEM 2TB), connected the secondary power and SATA cable (that were connected to the SSD) an booted up. The SSD is now C drive and the OEM 2TB is the E drive.

I did not do anything in the BIOS. I'm assuming switching the SATA cables (and power, though I can't imagine that making a difference) is what made the SSD the C Drive (I'm assuming the BIOS is programmed to recognize the drive connected to a specific SATA power port first before looking elsewhere for a boot drive).

Thanks again all for the guidance.

[Dragunov]

You're welcome.