Migrating Windows boot drive to larger drive

duh FooL

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Not sure if this is the right forum for this question.

I have experience with migrating regular data drives.
Normally, if I'm replacing a boot drive, I'm going full re-install.

However, I need to help a friend migrate their system and they don't want to deal with the re-installation of every app.

My question is this regarding the boot drive. More specifically, a Windows boot drive.
There are several partitions creation, some marked as reserved, etc. and very tiny compared to the main boot partition.
I'm assuming that if I select the option for the software to automatically scale the partitions, will it also scale those small partitions.
Should those partitions be scaled though?
Percentage wise, it's a drop in the bucket, but I'm just curious to know if there are hard drive cloning software that is aware of these type of partitions and don't bother resizing them, allowing for more usable space.

Or maybe these weird partitions to need to be a certain percentage of the drive? I don't know, so looking to get some understanding.
 
A lot of SSDs have migration software available to use for free
that ^^ or if you use aeomi backupper and its clone function, you can hit the adjust partitions button and it will keep the small ones small and increase the largest partition(usually c:) with the extra space
 
I use a paid app for migrating OS's from HDD's to SSD's or SSD to larger SSD.
It's called Paragon Migrate OS to SSD and used to be a separate program for $20 but it's now bundled in with their Hard Disk Suite for like $50.
I've used it well over 100 times since I first got it in 2012 when I got my first SSD. Back then regular cloning tools looked at the entire drive instead of partition size when cloning.
none of the tools would clone my 100GB OS partition on my 1TB, they would just look at the entire drive and say that it won't fit on my 128GB SSD.
Paragon's tool doesn't do a clone per say but a data migration that is bootable. It features file selection during the migration setup so you can deselect files and folders you don't need or won't fit on the destination.

I just used it 2 days ago to migrate a drive to test on a new motherboard to make sure the system would post and run since the client doesn't have access to the software to do an OS and app reinstall.
If it would have failed, we wouldn't have gone ahead with the upgrade, but it worked.
 
Thank you for all the responses.

I guess I should have added the types, in case it made a difference.
I am replacing an SSD drive and I bought an nvme enclosure to use for the new drive when I migrate.

I'll take a look at aoemi and Paragon, though free is always great.
Not a fan of purchasing something I use about every three years, since with the subscription model nowadays, I'll have to purchase again.

Macrium reflect is free and works well for this

I thought I read somewhere that the free version of Macrium Reflect did not support boot drives.
 
I thought I read somewhere that the free version of Macrium Reflect did not support boot drives.
I realize that I'm a couple days late but I just used the free version of Macrium Reflect to do that yesterday and it worked fine. It didn't extend the cloned main partition out to fill the extra space but it took just a few seconds in disk management to extend it.
 
theres almost always an option to enable that, by default it will do what you got but doing it in windows after is dead simple
Yeah I was surprised that I didn't see it in the options but I might have missed it. Regardless it's much easier to fix than it was when I've had to boot into a linux environment and use gparted to extend a partition.
 
Yeah I was surprised that I didn't see it in the options but I might have missed it. Regardless it's much easier to fix than it was when I've had to boot into a linux environment and use gparted to extend a partition.

The option is there so yes you missed it. Again as you mentiones its not a big deal and is easy to fix after
 
I realize that I'm a couple days late but I just used the free version of Macrium Reflect to do that yesterday and it worked fine. It didn't extend the cloned main partition out to fill the extra space but it took just a few seconds in disk management to extend it.
Make sure to align the partition to get the best performance, I experienced an increase of 30% after I cloned a drive and then aligned the device. Minitool for aligning worked best for me. AOMEI didn't aligned it when I used it. Minitool will check first and only align if needed.
 
It did when i used it last.
Yeah. When I got a new Lenovo laptop it came with a 256 GB NVMe drive stick. I replaced it with a 2 TB Samsung drive. Used Macrium free to clone the original drive. Worked completely and never looked back. I'm using that laptop right now to read forum posts.
 
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