Question I'm having trouble cloning to new SSD from HDD in my laptop

GunsMadeAmericaFree

Golden Member
Jan 23, 2007
1,240
290
136
I have a Wavlink HDD docking station that I've used numerous times to clone hard drives for several computers.

I found myself wanting to upgrade from HDD to SSD in a Lenovo laptop that is around 3 or 4 years old, since it seemed slow this past spring. Evidently the docking station will not properly clone a drive to a smaller drive, so someone on here suggested that I download Macrium Reflect free, hooked the docking station up using the USB cable, and clone the hard drive to SSD that way.

When I attempted this, it kept giving me a message about being unable to fit everything on the new drive. This was surprising to me at first, because of the 1TB HDD, we only used a grand total of 79 GB of space. I figured that since we were only using 8% of the drive, I might as well just buy a 500GB SSD, which would have me using 16% of that.

I was quite surprised by how many partitions were showing up on that Lenovo HDD - something like 7 different ones. However, Macrium Reflect did allow me to eventually try just cloning the NTFS Windows Partition to the new SSD, which was successful.
The only trouble was, then it wouldn't boot at all from the SSD, so I had to put the old HDD back in for now.

Is there another partition other than the NTFS/Windows one that is required for booting? I'm not sure what else to try. Thanks for any help! If I can successfully get this done, I think it will really speed things up on this laptop.
 

Billy Tallis

Senior member
Aug 4, 2015
293
146
116
You probably need the EFI System Partition which contains the bootloader, and the big Windows NTFS partition that has the OS. The rest (recovery partitions, mostly) you should be able to leave out.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Muadib

Jimminy

Senior member
May 19, 2020
335
127
86
I have a Wavlink HDD docking station that I've used numerous times to clone hard drives for several computers.

I found myself wanting to upgrade from HDD to SSD in a Lenovo laptop that is around 3 or 4 years old, since it seemed slow this past spring. Evidently the docking station will not properly clone a drive to a smaller drive, so someone on here suggested that I download Macrium Reflect free, hooked the docking station up using the USB cable, and clone the hard drive to SSD that way.

When I attempted this, it kept giving me a message about being unable to fit everything on the new drive. This was surprising to me at first, because of the 1TB HDD, we only used a grand total of 79 GB of space. I figured that since we were only using 8% of the drive, I might as well just buy a 500GB SSD, which would have me using 16% of that.

I was quite surprised by how many partitions were showing up on that Lenovo HDD - something like 7 different ones. However, Macrium Reflect did allow me to eventually try just cloning the NTFS Windows Partition to the new SSD, which was successful.
The only trouble was, then it wouldn't boot at all from the SSD, so I had to put the old HDD back in for now.

Try creating an image of the drive instead of cloning. Then, restore the image to the new ssd. Dont use the default restore, but drag each partition in the image to the new drive, one at a time, then click properties. There you can resize each partition to smaller size if needed. Do this from the left to the right so all partitions are in proper order. Dont change the size of the small partitions like system (about 100Mb), and the recovery partitions. You only need to change the size of the main windows partition so it won't take up more than the whole disk.

You probably should use another drive or usb flash drive to create the image on. I recommend creating a macrium recovery usb drive so you can boot the computer yet not have windows running. After you finish, remove the old drive, and try booting the new ssd. If you put the old drive back in, windows may put it "offline" because the ID numbers will be the same for both drives. Just run disk management and put it "online" It will automatically receive a new ID. Then delete the partitions, create a new partition(s) and format the drive, if you want to use it for storage.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Ranulf

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,229
9,990
126
Here's an alternate idea, if you can't quite get Macrium to work for you. If you're running a HDD with the OEM installation, oftentimes, they allow you to use several DVDs, or a large enough USB stick (I recommend 32GB) to make "Recovery Media". Which you can then use, if you shut down, and swap the HDD for an SSD, and then boot up off of the recovery media with a fresh SSD, and then it should be able to re-install the OEM version of Windows that came with the laptop.

However, this will not save your currently-installed programs and data, in the same way that cloning the primary drive will. You can always use a USB-SATA cable, or a USB external 2.5" HDD enclosure, to pull your data files off of the HDD afterwards. Your programs, you will have to re-install.
 

Ranulf

Platinum Member
Jul 18, 2001
2,331
1,139
136
Try creating an image of the drive instead of cloning. Then, restore the image to the new ssd. Dont use the default restore, but drag each partition in the image to the new drive, one at a time, then click properties. There you can resize each partition to smaller size if needed. Do this from the left to the right so all partitions are in proper order. Dont change the size of the small partitions like system (about 100Mb), and the recovery partitions. You only need to change the size of the main windows partition so it won't take up more than the whole disk.

This is the best and easiest way to clone a drive in Macrium and reduce the windows partition ie go from a large drive to a small one or from a small drive to a large one.
 

mikeford

Diamond Member
Jan 27, 2001
5,666
157
106
Please report back on the changes in performance you see with the SSD vs HD. I've got nice small Lenovo X120e, that does OK for most tasks, and its served well as a trip PC, but specifically Periscope drives me nuts with pausing and freezing. I put in more ram, a better wifi card, so the only thing left would be SSD.
 

GunsMadeAmericaFree

Golden Member
Jan 23, 2007
1,240
290
136
Try creating an image of the drive instead of cloning. Then, restore the image to the new ssd. Dont use the default restore, but drag each partition in the image to the new drive, one at a time, then click properties. There you can resize each partition to smaller size if needed. Do this from the left to the right so all partitions are in proper order. Dont change the size of the small partitions like system (about 100Mb), and the recovery partitions. You only need to change the size of the main windows partition so it won't take up more than the whole disk.

You probably should use another drive or usb flash drive to create the image on. I recommend creating a macrium recovery usb drive so you can boot the computer yet not have windows running. After you finish, remove the old drive, and try booting the new ssd. If you put the old drive back in, windows may put it "offline" because the ID numbers will be the same for both drives. Just run disk management and put it "online" It will automatically receive a new ID. Then delete the partitions, create a new partition(s) and format the drive, if you want to use it for storage.

Thanks guys, I will attempt to create an image of the drive, and see how it goes. I'll pop an old hard drive into the external docking station, and try to create an image on that.
 

GunsMadeAmericaFree

Golden Member
Jan 23, 2007
1,240
290
136
I finally got aroud to creating an image, then restoring the image to the SSD by dragging each partition. It seems to have resized everything to fit on the smaller drive. Tomorrow after work I'll see if it boots up. My son and I already timed how long it took to boot up, shut down, and launch a number of programs on the HDD. If it boots, it will be interesting seeing how much faster things work with the SSD.
 

GunsMadeAmericaFree

Golden Member
Jan 23, 2007
1,240
290
136
My son and I got the SSD installed this morning, and it is booting up fine. Thanks for the help! We ran several timed tests on the old HDD, and we ran them again with the new SSD:

HDD SSD
bootup 46 sec. 36, 36, 29, 24
shutdown 5 10, 8, 6
macrium 21 sec. 10, 8, 6
firefox 13.1 sec. 6.96, 4,48
Angry Birds 30.78 sec. 11.37, 9.52
Runestone Keeper 13.26 sec. 8.06, 6.06

Bootup is a definite improvement, and a lot of programs launch in half the time, which really makes the system seem a lot speedier!
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jimminy and Ranulf