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issues with cloning a drive

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I am trying to replace my current disk hard drive with a SSD and have the Acronis software to do this. The first time I tried I received an error about the size being to large, but I only have 300 GB on a 1 TB hard drive that I am transferring to a 500 GB SSD.

I went to Windows Manage Devices and tried to shrink the C partition but it would barely shrink it. I then did a full defrag with windows and now I can shrink my C to 780 GB but Acronis is still having issues.

I downloaded Mini Partition, and ran the partition reduction work but every time I did it when I opened up to look at drive after computer restarted, the C was still 780 GB and Acronis will still not work.

Any hints or ideas on this?

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John, welcome to these public User Forums.

From your description and results of your actions so far, it looks as if you either have some very large hidden files or else have a filesystem issue on your source drive.

I would strongly recommend making a disk & partitions backup image of your 1TB drive to an external backup drive.

The next recommendation here is to run CHKDSK C: /F against your main drive - this will require a restart of Windows to perform as many files etc are locked by Windows.

See if this gives any significant errors, i.e. correcting free space information?

Try again using MiniTool Partition Wizard to resize your C: drive to under 500GB and see if this is able to do so now (after restarting to perform the action).

If not, then run CHKDSK C: /R to check for bad sectors on your main drive.  This will run for some time on a 1TB drive.

An alternative would be to identify the make of drive and download / use the diagnostic software available from the drive maker support site.

Dedicated diagnostic utilities from the disk manufacturers take the longest time to complete the checks, but provide the most accurate methods of checking whether the disk is good or needs replacement:

 - Western Digital drives: Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows

 - Seagate disks: SeaTools for Windows

 - HGST disks: HGST Windows Drive Fitness Test (WinDFT)

 - Intel SSDs: Intel Solid State Drive Toolbox

 - Samsung drives: Samsung Magician

 - ADATA drives: ADATA SSD ToolBox

 - Kingston SSDs: Kingston SSD Toolbox, Kingston SSD Manager

 - Transcend SSDs: Transcend SSD Scope

 - Silicon Power disks: SP ToolBox

 - Toshiba disks: Toshiba PC Diagnostic Tool Utility

- Crucial disks: Crucial Storage Executive