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How to change boot drive?

Stefzia
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So I have a 512gb SSD WD drive on an old laptop of mine and my boot drive is a 128gb Patriot SSD which are both boot drives on each respective system. I also have another desktop that uses an HDD boot drive. So my question is;

 

How can I back up all of them (cloning or something) -provided that the 512 GB SSD is already out of the laptop and on my main desktop- and just make a switch(512 in my main rig, 128 on the second desktop) with the same operating systems on each pc ?? 

 

I mean clone the 128 on the 512 and then my HDD on the 128. Is it possible?

 

How can I do it?

Is it safe? How do I back up all of them in case of something happening?

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So to check, currently your main rig boots off a 128 GB SSD and your second desktop boots off a HDD and you want to replace the 128 GB SSD with a 512 GB SSD you have and then use the 128 GB SSD to replace the HDD?

 

What capacity is the HDD? If it is more than 128 GB, cloning it to the smaller 128 GB SSD might be an issue (I think you can clone to smaller drives provided the used capacity is below the capacity of the smaller drive, but otherwise that isn't happening).

 

If you wanted to have a backup of all the drives before overwriting stuff, you are going to need an external drive (larger than all 3 drives combined). Then clone all the drives to the external drive one at a time (keeping their orginal partition size so they all fit).

 

Macrium Reflect is the software I see recommened most of this task.

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I'm a PhD student working in the fields of reinforcement learning and traffic control. PCs are one of my hobbies and I've built many PCs and performed upgrades on a few laptops (for myself, friends and family). My personal computers include 3 windows (10/11) machines and a TrueNAS server (and I'm looking to move to dual booting Linux Mint on my main machine in future). While I believe I have an decent amount of experience in spec’ing, building and troubleshooting computers, keep in mind I'm not an expert or a professional and I make mistakes.

 

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26 minutes ago, Stefzia said:

So I have a 512gb SSD WD drive on an old laptop of mine and my boot drive is a 128gb Patriot SSD which are both boot drives on each respective system. I also have another desktop that uses an HDD boot drive. So my question is;

 

How can I back up all of them (cloning or something) -provided that the 512 GB SSD is already out of the laptop and on my main desktop- and just make a switch(512 in my main rig, 128 on the second desktop) with the same operating systems on each pc ?? 

 

I mean clone the 128 on the 512 and then my HDD on the 128. Is it possible?

 

How can I do it?

Is it safe? How do I back up all of them in case of something happening?

Clone the 128 GB SSD to the 512 GB SSD:

Download and install a disk cloning software like Macrium Reflect or EaseUS Todo Backup. Launch the software and select the option to clone a disk. Select the 128 GB SSD as the source drive and the 512 GB SSD as the destination drive.

Start the cloning process and wait for it to finish. This may take some time depending on the amount of data on the 128 GB SSD.

Clone the HDD to the 128 GB SSD Repeat the cloning process, but this time select the HDD as the source drive and the 128 GB SSD as the destination drive.

 

Shut down your PC and disconnect the power. Remove the 128 GB SSD from your main desktop and install it in the second desktop as the boot drive. Install the 512 GB SSD in your main desktop as the boot drive.

 

Turn on the second desktop and check if it boots from the 128 GB SSD. Turn on your main desktop and check if it boots from the 512 GB SSD.

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