Question about a tricky HDD to SSD migration

T

tothemax6

New Member
Hi All,

I was pleasantly surprised to find that I already had an account here. Strange to read over the old posts 5 years later, felt like I'm reading the writings of another person :D

Anyway, I have a new laptop (Asus Ultrabook) which I've recently added RAM to (was using it a bit heavy and hitting the page file).

When I added the RAM, I also asked about adding an SSD, and the clerk pointed out that the laptop has a 'mSATA socket' for these new 'mSATA SSDs'. It is however, a half-size version of that. I have since purchased one and installed it. It is 120GB sized (the biggest I could find online locally).

My current HDD is partitioned into two drives: C (372GB) and D (537GB). C contains everything - and has used 172GB. D is empty. There are also 3 other invisible partitions: 100MB EFI system partition, 900MB recovery partition, and 20GB recovery partition.

I want to keep all data on the HDD, to move the OS (Win 8.1) and all the important applications to the SSD, and to move the unimportant applications (games etc) to the HDD. I estimate that the OS + important applications is about 70GB, so it will fit OK.

So my question is: how do I play this? How do I safety move the OS to the SSD and keep everything working? Can I use the D drive to move the data off the C drive? Or will I have to find someone to borrow an external HDD off?

Many thanks
 
If you can find a copy of Acronis True Image, it's hands down the best cloning software I've ever used. Easy to use GUI and fast cloning/backup.
I would move all bulk files to D:\, then clone all partitions except D:\ to the SSD (personally I wouldn't use 20GB for recovery, but that's up to you :))
 
Funnily enough, it seems I do have a copy of "Acronis True Image Home 2012". I recall using it once on another computer to image my C drive partition and MBR partition, and then when the windows on that C drive became corrupted, I restored. However, I recall the restoration being so messed up that I had to just factory restore and repopulate the computer from scratch. So I don't trust it that much.
 
I use 2013 and 2015 at work (2015 isn't supported by our WinPE) and 2014 at home.
If you know what you're doing, it's a really powerful tool.
CloneZilla is a free alternative, but it lacks a friendly GUI in my opinion, but it should be very powerful as well.
 
Does Acronis have an alignment option for SSDs? If not you will have to allign the SSD after the clone or just use AOMEI Backuper.
 
Agent Smith said:
Does Acronis have an alignment option for SSDs? If not you will have to allign the SSD after the clone or just use AOMEI Backuper.
Click to expand...

What is this 'align the SSD'? This is part of the issue - there is going to be some obtuse little thing that I do or don't do that results in the whole project ending in ruin.
 
another option

another option is AOMEI Backupper, a free backup and restore software. as long as your ssd have enough space for the data on the hdd. If your ssd does not have that much space, you can slim your HDD by removing data to another storage device or use system clone to only migrate your operating system(OS) to the SSD instead.
If laptop can not connect both your SSD and HDD simontaneously, there is a workaround to clone hard drive to SSD with Backupper, which is tobackup your hard disk to an external USB drive and boot your laptop with a bootable media created by Backupper to restore the backup image of your hdd to SSD.
 
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