Can't clone an HDD to a slightly smaller SSD

[FlpDaMattress]

Hey all. I've been trying to clone an almost loaded dying HDD for about a day now and haven't been successful. My problem is my 1tb HDD is about 40gb larger than my SSD. When i repartition the HDD to be smaller than the SSD. What am i doing wrong. I absolutely need this done at least by tomorrow.

 

tools i'm using

-Minitool Partition Wizard

-Macrium Reflect

[SSD Sean]

Gotta use a partition manager to shrink the partitions to be smaller and move that last partition away from the end. Those tools don’t do well in this case. Although, simply using Acronis true image should do what you need automatically without having to perform those extra steps. Often times drive manufacturers offer it for free for their products. But...if it’s dying, it might not work. In that case just try to backup the files first. You can use free file sync or just drag n drop. Or try HDD Raw copy 

[mariushm]

I'd suggest using O&O Defrag or other defragmenting tools to compact the files on your big partition (basically get the files from the end of your partition towards the front of the drive) and then you should be able to shrink that partition by a few GB and then you should be able to clone that partition

 

The freeware Defraggler may do a decent job of it - see options Defrag Freespace  and Defrag Freespace (allow fragmentation)  - the last will cause more fragmentation but will be faster and with a dying drive speed is more important... and how fragmented your drive is doesn't matter on SSDs

 

[Dedayog]

Macrium reflect doesn't care about partition size, it cares about data size. I've cloned a 2TB HDD to a 250GB SSD with Macrium without issue.

[mariushm]

5 minutes ago, jstudrawa said:

Macrium reflect doesn't care about partition size, it cares about data size. I've cloned a 2TB HDD to a 250GB SSD with Macrium without issue.

Does it change the NTFS records to point files to new sectors or something like that? Cool if it does.

 

In that case, maybe move a few GB to a USB stick or burn some DVDs to free a few GB and try again?

 

Alternatively, maybe find some folders that can compress a bit and make some 7zip / RAR archives of some folders that aren't critical (like windows folder or program files)

maybe run disk cleanup to remove temporary files, uninstall some programs you can reinstall once you migrated to SSD,..

 

Go in Windows Explorer options and check the box to show hidden files and then delete pagefile.sys , hiber something.sys from the root of the drive (page file and hibernation file - they'll be recreated when you boot from ssd )

[SSD Sean]

3 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Does it change the NTFS records to point files to new sectors or something like that? Cool if it does.

 

In that case, maybe move a few GB to a USB stick or burn some DVDs to free a few GB and try again?

 

Macrium is just hung up on that last small partition. It doesn’t know what to do with it, so it fails the clone.

[FlpDaMattress]

4 minutes ago, SSD Sean said:

Macrium is just hung up on that last small partition. It doesn’t know what to do with it, so it fails the clone.

I deleted that last partition and it seems to be running now, I've had good luck with it in the past so i don't want to take chances on a drive i don't own

7 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Alternatively, maybe find some folders that can compress a bit and make some 7zip / RAR archives of some folders that aren't critical (like windows folder or program files)

maybe run disk cleanup to remove temporary files, uninstall some programs you can reinstall once you migrated to SSD,..

It's not my drive, don't have the authority to mess with anything on it. plus windows keeps trying to check disk whenever i boot. takes a few rounds before it's successful. like i said, failing HDD.

[Dedayog]

3 minutes ago, SSD Sean said:

Macrium is just hung up on that last small partition. It doesn’t know what to do with it, so it fails the clone.

With Macrium, order matters.  Set the cloning to handle the small partitions first, and the data partition last.  It'll size it all properly.

[SSD Sean]

Just now, jstudrawa said:

With Macrium, order matters.  Set the cloning to handle the small partitions first, and the data partition last.  It'll size it all properly.

Oh, you can do that? I never seen the option. Mind sharing? 

 

Thanks ahead!

[Dedayog]

1 minute ago, SSD Sean said:

Oh, you can do that? I never seen the option. Mind sharing? 

 

Thanks ahead!

When you're cloning, you can drop and drag the partitions from the source drive to the target drive.  I don't have it installed on my work PC so I can't screenshot anything, sorry.

 

I think it's right after you select what the target drive is, then instead of hitting GO or START. (which lets Macrium do it automatically), you can do the drop/drag thing.

[FlpDaMattress]

I just gave up. As i was trying Acronis true image the drive started unmounting and remounting itself. Client gets a clean install of windows and i'll just throw the old drive back in to copy as much over as i can. dying drives FTW.

 

even still, it was going to take almost 9 hours to clone and i already left my laptop at work the night before to finish unallocating that other 40gb to make it fit. It's for the better if it's less strain on the drive. running short on time as it is.

[SpookyCitrus]

40 minutes ago, FlpDaMattress said:

I just gave up. As i was trying Acronis true image the drive started unmounting and remounting itself. Client gets a clean install of windows and i'll just throw the old drive back in to copy as much over as i can. dying drives FTW.

 

even still, it was going to take almost 9 hours to clone and i already left my laptop at work the night before to finish unallocating that other 40gb to make it fit. It's for the better if it's less strain on the drive. running short on time as it is.

When dragging and dropping the partitions into the empty drive in macrium there should be an advance partition options button when it's selected and you can use that to resize the partition and it's literally click and drag. You can resize the first and second partition to fit the third easily.