Cloning to ssd troubles

[Carter]

Hi. Firstly I'm not 100% sure if this is the right place, but here goes: I have been trying to clone my 500gb hitachi hdd in my laptop (see below) to my new 480gb seagate 600 series ssd. I would prefer to clone but after trying 3 different programs I can't do it... First was seagate disk wizard, which is basically acronis true image. This failed to complete the process on reboot, something about a missing dll - I tried to reinstall but it now won't install due to a "fatal error". Then I tried clonezilla but this failed I believe because my ssd is 20gb smaller than my hdd, so I can't do a bit by bit copy it seems. Then I tried maricum reflect, which does not do what it says on the tin as a clone would include the MBR but this just did partitions, basically copy and paste which was disappointing. So that's where we are. I need to sort this quickly and I would prefer to clone, so if anyone can tell me where I went wrong with any of these programs or another *free* program that you can help me use I would be grateful.

Also I have tonnes of space on C:/, if I made some unallocated space at the end of the drive would this allow clonezilla to work? Or will it still fail because the source drive is larger. Thanks for any help.

[Glenwing]

Use a partition manager to split your 500GB drive into a 479GB drive + the extra, then try using clonezilla on the new partition.

[Carter]

I should probably add that I have done quite a bit of research but I'm a bit of a newbie with this stuff

[Carter]

Use a partition manager to split your 500GB drive into a 479GB drive + the extra, then try using clonezilla on the new partition.

Ok. My hdd already has a 25gb recovery partition that I don't mind if it doesn't get copied over, but how do I make clonezilla exclude this partition, but include the others and the mbr so I can boot from the ssd. I think I tried a bit by bit copy last time. Thanks

[Carter]

I tried using clonezilla again in advanced mode, selecting -icds to skip the partition size check, but still had the same problem, is says something along the lines of could not copy partition because dev/sdc whatever was not found. I think it was talking about the target disk which doesn't make sense because all of the space is Unallocated. Do I need to format if first? I admit I'm lost now...

[Carter]

Ok guys I've got it working, I used EaseUs Todo backup, which worked first time, the free edition. I recommend this over acronis/disk wizard and definately over maricum reflect. Not saying clonezilla is bad, just perhaps not quite the right tool.

[qthree]

I think aomei backupper could do this to.