How on earth do I use Macrium Reflect to clone to a smaller SSD?

[craigdt]

Apparently I'm not smart enough to clone a 1tb hdd to a 256gb ssd.

There's only 180gb used on the hdd and 233gb available on the ssd.

But when I try to clone, it says there is not enough room for l the partitions, and doesn't copy over the boot partition.

Is there a trick I'm missing? I don't see a lot of options....


Other free software I should try?

 

[Gavian]

It only allows to clone to larger capacity drives (I believe most if not all cloning software have this requirement)

 

[matt167]

If you have the free space. create a partition of the empty space within the drive you want to clone ( disk management if windows ). That will make the volume that you want to clone smaller than the target drive and Macrium should allow it. You can expand the partition to the full ( new ) disk also with disk management once it is cloned..

 

[doublejack]

Matt has the answer. You can't clone the whole disk, you'll get an error saying the target drive is too small. What you have to do is shrink the partition on the 1tb drive down small enough to fit on the new drive. Then you copy partitions and don't try to clone the disk.

I just did this, successfully migrating from a 320GB 2.5" mechanical drive to a 240GB SSD. This was for my oldest daughter's laptop. Worked like a charm and took all of 12 minutes to copy the data.

 

[likeman]

Nope, to all of that other posters

You can copy a 1tb disk to 250gb ssd, the important thing is the main partition size and the other partitions and how much data (if there is any extended partitions that could cause an issue)

Partitions are simply copyed at smaller partition size at the destination disk (as long as the data is not more then the destination )

Apparently I'm not smart enough to clone a 1tb hdd to a 256gb ssd.

There's only 180gb used on the hdd and 233gb available on the ssd.

But when I try to clone, it says there is not enough room for l the partitions, and doesn't copy over the boot partition.

Is there a trick I'm missing? I don't see a lot of options....


Other free software I should try?

What ssd is it, most have free cloning software like acronis true image (samsung has there own software) I used backupper as well witch is free mostly (disk to disk cloning is free)

Can you state the partition sizes and layout (assuming normal Windows 10 layout it should be 3 I think ) 180gb should fit on the 256gb ssd

I would of recommended a 500gb ssd as your not living your self with much space (they are Only £/$ 20-40 ish more normally)

If you quote me I get a notification if your responding

 

[craigdt]

thank you all so much for your help.

I finally got it cloned, after much dicking around.

however, the garbage Dell BIOS was giving me fits trying to set the boot order.

So Im doing a full Windows re-install on the new SSD, which is what I should have done in the first place.

 

[doublejack]

Nope, to all of that other posters

You can copy a 1tb disk to 250gb ssd, the important thing is the main partition size and the other partitions and how much data (if there is any extended partitions that could cause an issue)

Partitions are simply copyed at smaller partition size at the destination disk (as long as the data is not more then the destination )

I can't comment on paid versions of Macrium, but the free version absolutely does not work this way. I tried it less than a week ago and received a "target disk too small" error. You cannot copy the whole disk, it has to be done exactly like I stated.

 

[Meeho]

Matt has the answer. You can't clone the whole disk, you'll get an error saying the target drive is too small. What you have to do is shrink the partition on the 1tb drive down small enough to fit on the new drive. Then you copy partitions and don't try to clone the disk.

IIRC you don't have to shrink the original partition, just reduce its size at target when you drag it.

 

[Zepher]

I had this issue back in 2012 with the various cloning programs at the time. They just looked at partition size, not how much data was on the drive.
I ended up going with a Program called Paragon Migrate OS to SSD as it migrates the install vs cloning the drive/partitions.

I've used it probably 50 times now on mine and other peoples upgrades.
the program used to be $20 and available separately but last year or the year before it got bundled into their Hard Disk Manager suite which is $40 or $50.

I had to use just a couple of weeks ago when I was upgrading to a 1TB Samsung SSD from a 512GB Crucial. For some reason the Samsung cloning tool failed 2 times, wasted an hour and half. Fired up Migrate OS to SSD and it was done in 20 minutes with no issues.

 

[Ranulfo]

Its been awhile but if I remember right with Macrium, it is easier to make an image of the drive to be cloned first and then restore the image (to use macrium's terms) onto the new empty drive. Then it lets you set the partition sizes easily. Making a backup image first also means you have something in case the whole proceedure goes south.