Image Backup Size of Whole Partition

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netsider

Limp Gawd
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Oct 12, 2004
Messages
466
I'm putting a small (120GB) SSD inside of a friend's laptop, to replace a 500GB slow mechanical drive. However, I don't want to have to reinstall Windows since the operating system is working fine otherwise. I'm using WinImage to make a .VHD file of the 500GB mechanical drive, but the file is taking up the whole 500GB (even though there isn't 500GB worth of data on the drive), so it won't fit on the SSD at all.

I know an image of the drive technically takes up the whole thing because it includes the free space on it as well, but is there anyway for me to do what I'm trying to do? There's less than 100GB of data on the mechanical drive, and I just want to make an image of JUST that data, and then move it to the new smaller 120GB SSD.

Thanks. Any help would be really appreciated so I can finish putting the drive in :(

Edit: Also, I know it's probably better if I DO reinstall Windows (for various reasons), but I just seriously don't want to have to go through all that right now if I can avoid it.
 
Use a real tool for backup/imaging. Macrium Reflect Free will do this in a couple steps.
 
Nate7311 said:
What kind of SSD? Many of them have Disk clone tools available to owners.
Click to expand...

Kingston. It's their SSDnow300, 120GB.

I checked on their site and all they have is their "SSD Toolbox" utility that reads the information from the drive via software, unfortunately.
 
I just bought an Intel and a Samsung SSD.

They both included software to move the HDD to the SSD painlessly, all that was moved was the existing data leaving the free space untouched.:D

Intel uses Acronis, Samsung has their own.
I'd look for a copy of Acronis somewhere.

The other option would be to do it manually, as long as your friend has a recover disc from the laptop, or at the least one of you has an OS disc.
 
This may be too late but, I figure it may help someone else later..

If the vhd isn't set to fixed you should be able to run the optimize-vhd and it will compact it down to just the space it is actually using.
You should be able to use convert-vhd to change the original vhd to dynamic and vhdx then use optimize-vhd to get it small enough to work with.
 
Fark me, all so far have missed the boat.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx

Make sure the total data volume is under ya 100GB and run the tool. It will spit out a VHD or VHDX (you can choose) that is small enough.

As for the next part, getting the VHD is easy, using it afterwards is not so easy and here comes a mess.
The laptop is not yours and you don't do this work for a living. You are not up to speed with the whole picture and thus asking questions here. Sounds blunt but your a back-yarder and the type who ends up making a mess for which I am the type who has to fix them afterwards.

  1. Reduce the lard of the HDD a lot more, run windows backup and export the backup to a USB HDD.
  2. Remove old HDD, install SSD (bigger than 120 is highly recommended!).
  3. Make sure BIOS is in AHCI.
  4. Boot off Windows Install disk.
  5. Then repair system using the backup making sure the USB HDD is connected to a USB 2.0 port as 3.0 is not supported under Win7.

Otherwise, clean load from scratch and stop being lazy.
 
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