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Workflow: Larger SATA to SSD

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Hi: I know these steps are covered elsewhere but it would help me for comments/guidance on the best approach to clone my current 1TB drive with about 300GB data onto a 540 GB SSD. Current HD is running pretty wimpy -- slow and frustrating. Disk Performance is constantly pegging at 100% and no solutions I've tried have worked. Next was to do a clean install of W8.1 and reload old programs. As a Hail Mary, I thought I'd put in an SSD, then clone, as is, existing HDD to the SSD. If it's still slow, the do the clean install. If it runs better then stick with the clone as is.

So, I understand it's better to boot from the Recovery CD, then clone (or full backup?) from C drive to SSD. Correct? Just to be sure, I'd create a brand new Acronis 2017 recovery CD.

Should I then do a Full Backup and put the file on my NAS drive to be accessible from Acronis (or, even, another USB drive) ==> install the SSD as C ==> then put backup onto the new C? Or should I run the Full Backup only after booting with Acronis, then transfer?

Is it pretty obvious & straightforward to resize? As noted, I've only got ~300 GB actual data on old drive and putting it on a 540GB SSD.

Is the ability to use the W 8.1 repair app (it wipes all apps and restores only 8.1 to original config) dependent on another partition other than the main C data partition? I'd then reinstall each program separately. Actual data is on NAS drive so, a pain, but no problem restoring data. Should I be sure to copy/backup all partitions so the restore function works?

OK. I've not had to run a backup restore before so want to make sure I've got it down and things don't blow up... .

Hope that's clear.... . Many thanks for advice and guidance!

George

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George, welcome to these User Forums.

Please read topic: [IMPORTANT] CLONING - How NOT to do this

Please do make a Full Disk & Partitions backup before you attempt to do anything else!

You can use Backup and Recovery as a safer alternative to using cloning.

Please do create and test that you can boot successfully from the Acronis Rescue Media (on CD or USB stick) and that you are doing so in the same way as used by your Windows OS.

If you have the capability of attaching both a backup destination drive and your new SSD drive both to your computer at the same time then one approach that you could take is as follows:

  1. Using the installed ATIH 2017 application, make a full disk & partitions backup of your current 1TB HDD drive to your external backup destination drive.
    Check that the backup is successful and that if you double-click on the backup .TIB file on your backup drive, that it opens in Explorer and you can browse the folders as if you were looking at your OS C: drive.
  2. Connect your new SSD drive using a USB dock or USB to SATA adapter as a second external drive to your computer.  Leave the SSD drive as unformatted if that is how it was supplied.
  3. In the ATIH 2017 application, select the Backup task used in step 1.  then click on the option to 'Recover disks' shown at the bottom of the main panel.
  4. In the Recovery panel shown, select your new SSD drive as the target for the Recovery.  Double check that the correct drive is selected.
  5. If all is good, then proceed with the Recovery and wait for this to complete.

2017-09-11 19_33_30-Acronis True Image 2017.png

2017-09-11 19_35_03-Acronis True Image 2017.png

The images above are from a Recovery I did earlier today in preparation for switching to a larger HDD in one of my computers.

Once the Recovery is complete, then shutdown the computer, disconnect the external drives, remove the HDD internal drive and replace with the SSD and then confirm that you can boot correctly into Windows with this drive.  Note: put the HDD to one side safely in case it is needed.

George, just to confirm that the above process worked fine for me when I did the final steps this morning and replaced a 160GB HDD with a new 1TB HDD and watched Windows 10 boot first time correctly from the new drive.  Same computer I am writing this update from.

Note: in my case because I was going from a smaller to larger drive, I ended up with my OS C: partition on the new drive being the same size, but my Data D: partition was automatically extended to fill the new space on the larger drive.  I will probably do a resize of the D: partition later but will use the free MiniTool Partition Wizard for this task.