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Move Boot drive Sata slot

I’ve reviewed post about moving from a hdd to a ssd.  I understand the post to read That I can use clone or back up to move to ssd but I need to put new ssd on original hdd sata slot.  I am wanting to move the ssd to a 6gb Sata on the asus board as the current hdd is on sata 1 slot.  I’ve made a recovery usb and performed a full backup to external drive of win 10 ver 1709.  Destination ssd drive is large enough for backup or clone.  I will need to use the hdd as a storage drive once the ssd is good.  Would I install the ssd and use external drive and rescue usb to set up ssd.  Go to bios and set boot order then format hdd.  I admit setting up a second drive to hold docs, photos and music is new to me and was also wondering if the hdd is just one partition is there something I should do when setting up ssd.  I backed up most of my photos and music to usb and not to external drive to get hdd down under 100gb so 125 ssd will fit.

Question is how can I move from bootable hdd to bootable ssd that connects to sata that is not the original hdd sata connection.

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Mary, welcome to these User Forums.

My recommendation here would be as follows:

Run msinfo32 on your current Windows OS and identify the BIOS mode used.  See image below, the BIOS mode can show either Legacy or UEFI.  This is how your USB Rescue Media also needs to be booted.

See KB 59877: Acronis True Image 2017: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media for more information and screen shots.

2018-03-10 12_10_15 msinfo32.png

Shutdown your computer and remove or disconnect your original HDD drive.

Install your new SSD drive to connect to the spare SATA port.

Boot your Acronis Rescue Media USB stick in the correct BIOS mode as identified above.

Restore your backup from the external drive to the new SSD.

Shutdown when complete, remove the USB stick and external drive.

Open the BIOS settings on your computer and ensure that you can select the correct entry for the new SSD - this should be either the drive itself if the BIOS mode is Legacy, or else should be the Windows Boot Manager if the BIOS mode is UEFI. 

Note: I would suggest checking this for the original HDD before starting these steps, then matching this for the SSD when the restore has been done.

Verify that you are able to boot successfully into Windows with the new SSD.

Once everything is working correctly, then shutdown and reinstall or reconnect the HDD to allow you to reuse or format this as needed.

I am attempting something similar, and am installing ATI 2018 to accomplish this.  I have two questions but will give the context first. 

I have a 4TB HDD with the OS on C Partition with 175 GB of 249GB used, an F Partition with 1.5 TB of 1.75TB used, a 862MB Recovery Partition, and the rest of the HDD is 1.7TB Unallocated (probably because I didn't know how to format the drive for access beyond 2TB).  I am installing a 480GB 3D NAND Flash SSD to be used for the OS, and was thinking I would set it up as one C partition to speed things up and allow for growth.  

The SSD came with ATI OEM, and when trying to clone I manually set the sizes and saw that the C: partition could not be allocated more than 196gb.  I assume this was because it was going to clone everything and thus I was still going to need space for other partitions, even though I checked "exclude" for the whole "F" partition.  In researching that I saw there was a limit where single-partition cloning is not supported so I would need to go the "backup-to-external-restore-to-SSD" route.   

That led me to try the upgrade to 2018, and now I have three questions:

1. Am I correct in that the method here is necessary, i.e. ATI 2018 does not allow me to simply pick the C: partition and resize it on the SSD to use the whole 480GB (or 447 unallocated after initializing via Disk Management in Win 10)?

2. Before I attempt either the clone or backup-restore, I need to initialize the SSD.  Can I initialize the SSD as GUID instead of MBR?  My most recent successful cloning (for a laptop SSD upgrade using ATI OEM) failed initially, I think because I initialized the SSD as GUID instead of MBR.   With ATI 2018 will I need to do the same thing for this SSD, i.e. mirror what the old HDD's settings were?

3. Although I understood almost all of your instructions to the OP, I wanted to clarify whether this move is an opportunity to change the BIOS mode in order to make my system more current (as in #2 with moving to GUID from MBR).  Per your steps above, after running msinfo32, I see that my BIOS mode is "Legacy".  When you are describing what to do after booting from the USB, restoring to SSD, then shutting down, you then say

Open the BIOS settings on your computer and ensure that you can select the correct entry for the new SSD - this should be either the drive itself if the BIOS mode is Legacy, or else should be the Windows Boot Manager if the BIOS mode is UEFI.

By "select the correct entry for the new SSD", do you mean I have to select the drive itself since my BIOS  mode was Legacy?  Or, at this a fork in the road where I can possibly change my BIOS mode to UEFI away from Legacy, so then there'd be an entry which can be set to Windows Boot Manager and thus I'm in a better spot for future upgrades?  

Thanks for your patience in reading through this, and thanks in advance for any guidance you can give.

Peter, welcome to these User Forums.

First comment.  Cloning is a whole disk operation and is not suitable for the type of disk migration that you are considering here.  You need to use the Backup & Recovery method to migrate just your main C: OS partition but this may not be enough to give a bootable Windows OS, as there may be a required (and hidden/system) Microsoft System Reserved partition on your OS source drive too.

Please read forum topic: [IMPORTANT] CLONING - How NOT to do this for some important advice with regards to some of the perils around cloning.

Acronis True Image can be used to also migrate from a MBR booted drive to a GPT drive provided that your BIOS also supports GPT by being UEFI.

See the ATI 2018 User Guide: Migrating your system from an HDD to an SSD as a starting point for understanding what needs to be done.

See also the following sections of the ATI 2018 User Guide: Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI)  and   Migration method  - the latter is written in the context of cloning, but also applies when doing Backup & Recovery.

You may want to consider doing a simple 1:1 migration initially, i.e. keep with BIOS / MBR and get your Windows OS working correctly on the SSD (with the original 4TB drive removed), then make a backup of the SSD and attempt the migration from MBR to GPT (Legacy to UEFI) from that starting point.