Question SSD cloning software?

[Scarpozzi]

I bought a Kingston SSD drive for my laptop and would like to come the hard drive that's in it. I don't have any software and none appears to have come with the drive I bought. What's my best option? I think it has a 500gb sata and I need to selectively clone the drive to a 240GB SSD. I saw someone suggest Acronis True Image, but I don't have a license for it.

 

[corkyg]

You have to buy TrueImage, but there are very good free alternatives. Check out Macrium Reflect.

 

[Scarpozzi]

You have to buy TrueImage, but there are very good free alternatives. Check out Macrium Reflect.

I did research after I posted and found Clonezilla. I'm curious how they all stack up and compare. I'll check out Macrium....I'm still trying to figure out what it's going to take to do this (and how long)....my goal is not to mess up my laptop trying to copy the data. I just want to see how much faster SSD will make it since it takes so long to boot.

Wow....macrium free was a 5MB download? Is that just an installer or what?

 

[SeanFL]

Macrium works wonderfully. I used the free one for a while then bought the program for some other features. If clone will work in the free one, give it a try.

 

[nosirrahx]

I am posting this for OP but also for anyone interested in a completely different and free way to move an entire install from one drive to another without cloning.

I have been using a completely different way of going about this that is both legitimately free and completely bypasses any potential issue with partition sizes (you can use larger or smaller drives, it is irrelevant).

The only downside is that it is a bit technical although I look at this as a bonus as you get to learn some cool stuff that has other uses at the same time.

First the requirement to make this a lot easier, you need to have windows 10 and have it up to date (not mandatory but for these directions is it).

Download media creation tool and create an install flash drive:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

Download dism++:

http://m.majorgeeks.com/files/details/dism.html

On the bootable flash drive you created delete sources\install.esd.

Run dism++ and then select Utilities, Toolkit, System Backup.

Browse to the sources directory on your bootable flash drive and select 'install' as the file name and '.esd' as the file type.

When this completes you can use your bootable flash drive to install and exact replica on your new drive. Even your desktop icons will be in the same place.

The only hitch that can happen when doing this is the esd file being over 4GB (bootable flash drive will be FAT32 and has a 4GB per file limit). The best way to avoid this is to do a complete system cleanup first.

 

[EXCellR8]

I adhered to TI religiously until I tried Macrium Reflect and now I think I've defected. I've cloned a ton of SSD's with it and their recovery media works a charm for boot issues too.

 

[Drassx]

In my experience as others said macrium reflect free is great for cloning, all youll need is a sata to usb adapter(im assuming you have one) boot from the original drive and clone to the sdd on the adapter. As long as your ssd is big enough to hold all your data, just move the partitions in order, shrinking as needed(not always needed, but if you do there are youtube videos on how to step by step). Then of course install it, easy.

 

[Rayman30]

I have not ran into anything as good as Acronis True Image, and its not all that expensive either.