Clone HDD to smaller SSD

kumquat

Supreme [H]ardness
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Dec 7, 2005
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I am getting a Thinkpad Yoga with a 500 GB hard drive from my school, and want to replace the HDD with a 256 GB SSD that I already have. I can't do a fresh install of Windows because there's a lot of specialized apps that I don't have access to install.

What's the best software to clone the drive? I have a USB 3.0 dock that I can use.
 
I would just use something like riplinux or the gparted live CD/USB/etc... to shrink your file-system down to a smaller size that will fit on the SSD and then just copy over the block device like a normal clone after.
 
Macrium Reflect Free is the best solution I found. Don't have to fuss with the image being cloned from a bigger drive to a smaller one, it just does that all in the background for you during the restore phase.

Paragon's Backup and Recovery Free Edition works good too, but requires user intervention and in my case it was breaking shit left and right. I'll be fair though it was some weird circumstances in my case.
 
I use TODO backup Free, it's free, super easy to use, and it properly aligns the drive and you can copy to a smaller drive assuming all the data can fit from your larger hard drive.

Thank me later ;)
 
Macrium Reflect
EaseUS
Acronis

Best way to do it is to use a bootable media for cloning.
 
I use TODO backup Free, it's free, super easy to use, and it properly aligns the drive and you can copy to a smaller drive assuming all the data can fit from your larger hard drive.

Thank me later ;)

Is TODO a good option for most operating systems?
 
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