Free cloning software for SSD?

[dlerious]

Sorry about the delay. I have a little free time to try and play around with mini-tool. Ran into my first snag using 'migrate OS to SSD' . OS drive is in use, so I need to create a WinPE boot disk - not unexpected, but needing the pay version to create it was.

I'll have to decide whether it's worth it or not, or if I can figure out how to access the program another way (like using the WinPE disks I created with EaseUS and Macrium).

 

[dlerious]

OK, just getting home from work and I hadn't transitioned from stressed out mode to party mode.

Using Win7 and Mini-tool 10.2.1 free , copied my 480GB Sandisk Extreme Pro to 2TB Crucial MX300 via USB to SATA cable. Chose defaults - Replace system disk with another hard disk, selected destination disk, fit partitions to entire disk and align partitions to 1MB. After finishing you get 1 operation pending. Click Apply and it starts copying. When the drive C in use dialog comes up, click 'Reboot now' and it will reboot and perform the operation, then reboot back to Windows.

Everything looked OK, so I shutdown and swapped drives. Booting the new drive, I saw a windows message about installing SATA drivers I think and then a dialog to reboot for changes to take effect. I rebooted and checked the drives under Explorer, but the second partition wasn't showing up. A quick trip to Disk Manager where I assigned it a letter (same as old drive) and all was fine. I still running with the new drive. No problems yet. I'll run some programs and access some data to see if I encounter any problems. Not sure how long before I throw the old drive back in, I don't want to change too much because I had other plans for this drive (going in my Ryzen build),

Total time to copy a little over 400GB was around 28 minutes.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

OK, just getting home from work and I hadn't transitioned from stressed out mode to party mode.

Using Win7 and Mini-tool 10.2.1 free , copied my 480GB Sandisk Extreme Pro to 2TB Crucial MX300 via USB to SATA cable. Chose defaults - Replace system disk with another hard disk, selected destination disk, fit partitions to entire disk and align partitions to 1MB. After finishing you get 1 operation pending. Click Apply and it starts copying. When the drive C in use dialog comes up, click 'Reboot now' and it will reboot and perform the operation, then reboot back to Windows.

Everything looked OK, so I shutdown and swapped drives. Booting the new drive, I saw a windows message about installing SATA drivers I think and then a dialog to reboot for changes to take effect. I rebooted and checked the drives under Explorer, but the second partition wasn't showing up. A quick trip to Disk Manager where I assigned it a letter (same as old drive) and all was fine. I still running with the new drive. No problems yet. I'll run some programs and access some data to see if I encounter any problems. Not sure how long before I throw the old drive back in, I don't want to change too much because I had other plans for this drive (going in my Ryzen build),

Total time to copy a little over 400GB was around 28 minutes.

Soo-oo! Mini-Tool is good! Nothing you describe there in the last paragraph indicates anything of a shortcoming -- only that you didn't expect a drive without a letter, or the certainty that adding a new piece of hardware with the clone's target disk would throw up a new SATA driver installation. That is always to be expected, unless you're using a disk of the same model already in the system, and then again maybe it will still show installation of the same driver to the new disk.

So how do you like that MX300? I've got my eye on the same 2TB model. I will eventually let go of the ~$550 it will cost me. I really don't count on the price of that item dropping too much over the next year, but it should always be available.

 

[dlerious]

Soo-oo! Mini-Tool is good! Nothing you describe there in the last paragraph indicates anything of a shortcoming -- only that you didn't expect a drive without a letter, or the certainty that adding a new piece of hardware with the clone's target disk would throw up a new SATA driver installation. That is always to be expected, unless you're using a disk of the same model already in the system, and then again maybe it will still show installation of the same driver to the new disk.

So how do you like that MX300? I've got my eye on the same 2TB model. I will eventually let go of the ~$550 it will cost me. I really don't count on the price of that item dropping too much over the next year, but it should always be available.

I'm liking it so far. Already have another in this system as secondary storage. I'm using the Sandisk as my boot drive. I paid $516 for both mine in January. Posted my CrystalDiskMark here https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/help-me-choose-between-mx300-and-850-evo.2498214/#post-38711754 . I went with the MX300 over the Samsung because it had a higher TBW as well as being cheaper.

Still running the clone.

EDIT to add $516 each, not both.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Dual-boot systems have their occasional pitfalls, and I had a small boot-failure crisis this morning. Thank God for Macrium with monthly-full, weekly-differential and daily incremental backups.

As soon as I'm comfortable that all is rock-solid with this system, I will buy that Crucial 2TB drive. Maybe that's just my procrastinating excuse to manage my stocks and flows of money!

I've GOT two perfectly-good ~500GB SSDs -- a Crucial MX100 and an ADATA SP-550 (480GB) barely used, and I could configure them both to function just the way the 2TB would be intended. However, I only get half the storage. It's like Edward G. Robinson in "Key Largo" as the gangster Johnny Ringo, speaking about himself:

"I'll tell you about Johnny Ringo, heh-heh! He always wants More! He always wants MORE!"