Workflow: Larger SATA to SSD
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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In reply to George, welcome to these… by truwrikodrorow…

Steve: excellent -- really appreciate the detail. Thanks!
George
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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.
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