Cloning a Windows 10 drive

[Marbury]

When I had my pc built 2 and a half years ago with windows 10, I chose a 500gb sd drive for the main C system drive. Unfortunately it only has a few gb left so I have purchased a 1TB sd to replace it. My question is, can I just make a straight clone of this with Marconi Reflect and swap it over ?

Thanks

[Wonks]

Yes, as long as the new drive is the same size or bigger than the original.

SSDs take a real performance hit with 10% or less free space, so you should see a big improvement in responsiveness. But try not to let the new drive get so full. Can you keep the original as an extra drive for storage, and reformat it after a successful cloning?

[OneWorld]

When I had my pc built 2 and a half years ago with windows 10, I chose a 500gb sd drive for the main C system drive. Unfortunately it only has a few gb left so I have purchased a 1TB sd to replace it. My question is, can I just make a straight clone of this with Marconi Reflect and swap it over ?

Thanks

Yes you can clone the drive, but I would make a drive image as well, as backup. I use Reflect a lot and thus far, has only let me down once, luckily I had enough images to get me back to fully working again. It is prudent to keep a drive image anyway

Cloning v Imaging
https://blog.macrium.com/techie-tuesday ... be74abb089

[Nazard]

Ideally, keep a copy of the drive image on a separate disk, which is not plugged in, or connected, to your PC at the time you do your cloning to the new SSD.

If the new SSD is a Samsung, their 'Magician' software works well - it's their propietary cloning tool.

[Marbury]

Ok, thanks. Its a Sandisk ultra 3D ssd

I have made a clone of the current drive on a mechanical drive that is disconnected. I always thought an image the same thing. When my new 1TB drive ends up exceeding the 500gb capacity of my current, it would be then impossible to use the soon to be old 500gb for making a clone or image.

[Marbury]

Bit of a problem. I have successfully cloned the drive but the cloned drive (1TB) is showing exactly the same data that is free as the source disk (500gb) Both drives are showing 464gb used with 72.6gb free. What has happened to the extra 500gb ?

Also, I need to tell the PC to boot from the new drive.

[Jimmy B]

Your new drive now contains an exact copy of the 512GB partition on the old drive, and a lot of free space. (It may also contain a recovery partition, if the old disk had one).
You can either expand the 512GB partition to fill the entire disk, or create extra partitions to fill the space, or a combination of the two.
In any case, you need a partition editor.
I have used Easus Partition Master in the past. I believe that it was free for personal use. There are a number of other options, and your new disk may include one.
https://www.easeus.com/partition-manager/epm-free.html

Do this before you make the new disk the boot disk (which Partition Master should also be able to help you with, if I recall correctly).

[Marbury]

Thanks, I have downloaded and installed the software but when I try to merge the unallocated space with the main storage area it tells me I can't do that unless I pay money. I would have thought this was a task that could be done in Windows disc manager ?

[Jimmy B]

The free version that I have (from several years ago) can resize partitions. I'm not about to upgrade it in case that capability disappears. But according to the website you can still do this with the free version.
I assume that you are not booting from the new drive? If so, you may want to boot from your old drive and try again.
In answer to your question: Yes, Windows disk manager looks as if it can do the same thing. Did you try it?

[sonics]

Probably the best partition software for personal use is the Paragon offering, IMO.
Also check out O&O Software for very affordable (always on sale somewhere for $10!) disk software.

[Marbury]

No I wasn't booting from the new drive. Perhaps if I wipe the drive and start again with AOMEI it will give me this option before the clone ?

[Jimmy B]

You shouldn't need to do that. Didn't you say that Windows Disk Management was offering you the option to extend the volume? If so, I would take it.
Or if Partition Manager really won't do this any more, why not try Paragon as suggested by Sonics?
TBH, I would expect any of these methods to work.