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migration from system SSD to bigger system SSD: howto

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Hello

 

I'm running Windows 10 on my PC, and my 128GB SSD is almost full. I hacve ATI 2016

Is there any particular caution to save and restore it on a bigger SSD?

 

What I have in mind is straightforward: backup the SSD with ATI and restore the image on the new SSD, to be installed on the same disk port on the PC? Do I miss something?

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Hello, the main consideration with regard to your proposed actions is to ensure that you can boot from the ATIH 2016 rescue media and can see your SSD drives, so that you know that you can recover these when needed.

There are two approaches to migrating from your 128GB SSD to a new bigger SSD, one is to do as you stated, create a backup image of the 128GB drive to another place (second internal or other external drive), the restore this to the new drive either attached externally or replacing the 128GB internally booted from rescue media.

The second approach is to clone the 128GB drive directly to the new bigger SSD drive - the recommend method of doing this is to remove the 128GB drive and install the new SSD in its place.  Boot from the rescue media and take the clone option with the 128GB drive attached via USB.

See the following KB document: https://kb.acronis.com/content/56634 - this has a video tutorial showing an example of cloning.

 

I prefer Steve's option 1 above.  It has always worked for me.   

However, I just did a clone on my mother-in-laws system for the first time and had no issues with it either.  I actually cloned from a 500Gb 5400RPM drive (180GB in use) to a 250Gb SSD and it worked flawlessly as well.

Just make sure to use the offline bootable recovery media to start the process (in either case - it tends to be more reliable and cause less trouble in the long run).  If cloning, it's important that you don't boot the system with both drives attached as they will appear to be the same drive to the bios and OS and will cause issues.  That's why it's recommended you put the new drive where the original is/was and move the original to an external and then clone from the original to the new one.  Once the clone is done, shutdown completely, remove the "original" from the external and boot into Windows on the new drive - should go fine.

I still prefer the top option though as having a backup (the most current possible) before somethign like this is the safe way to go and really doesn't take any more time to complete.