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Restoring to SATA SSD from TI 2019 Full Backup from SATA HDD

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Currently I have a 1TB SATA HDD installed in a desktop running Windows 10 v1909. I backup with Acronis TI 2019. I was thinking of replacing the HDD with a SATA SSD 500GB drive to run the system. My question is : Can I do a full restore to a SATA SSD 500GB drive from a backup that was from the 1TB SATA HDD which only has about 110GB worth of data? These SSD drives are a new territory for me. I'm guessing the new SSD would be an MBR drive since it's less than 2GB as the SATA HDD is. Any help would be appreciate.    Thanks

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Mark, there should be no issue with migrating from your current 1TB SATA HDD to a new 500GB SATA SSD if the source drive only has less than 150GB used space.

The recommended approach is as follows:

  1. Identify your PC BIOS boot mode - in Windows, type msinfo32 and look in the right column of the report produced for BIOS mode.  This is normally UEFI most recent PC's, else will show either Legacy or the Drive make / name.
    This is important for when using the Acronis Rescue Media to match that mode.
     
  2. Create the ATI 2019 Rescue Media and test booting your PC from this in the correct BIOS mode, so that you are comfortable with using the tool.
     
  3. Make a new Full Disk Backup of your 1TB SATA HDD drive to an external drive as a one-off non-scheduled backup.
    I would recommend doing some disk cleanup actions first, i.e. right-click on your C: drive in Explorer, select Properties, then click on Disk Cleanup, then again on the option to cleanup system files.  This can give back several more GB of space on the drive.
     
  4. Shutdown the PC, remove the HDD and replace by the SSD.
     
  5. Boot from the Rescue Media with your backup drive connected, then do a Disk level recovery of the new backup from step 3 to the SSD.
     
  6. Check the Log messages in the rescue media before exiting (when they are lost).
     
  7. If all OK, then remove the Rescue Media & external drive, and boot into Windows from the new SSD.

Some images & links to go with the above.

See KB 61632: Acronis True Image 2019: how to create bootable media
Also KB 61621: Acronis True Image 2019: How to restore your computer with WinPE-based or WinRE-based media

KB 59877: Acronis True Image: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media

When doing the restore of your backup, this needs to be done as a Disk & Partition restore and at the top Disk selection level.

Please see forum topic: [How to] recover an entire disk backup - and in particular the attached PDF document which shows a step-by-step tutorial for doing this type of recovery / restore.

Steve,   Thank you for your quick response. That is good news! I will give that a try once I get the SSD and installed.  I checked my BIOS and it's Legacy. I made it Legacy when I installed Windows 10 because that's what I'm use to. I'm just old school.  Thanks again.     

500GB SATA SSD being delivered today. I also bought the mounting frame to fit in the SATA slot.

I'll let you know how things turn out. 

The 3.5 to 2.5 adapter arrived today and I installed the new Samsung 860EVO SSD drive and booted up using the USB I created.  Did a full restore of the entire HDD to the new SSD and rebooted.  As you can see, I am typing and everything worked OK after the reboot. I can notice a real difference in the speed of the drive compared to the HDD.  This was installed on a new Dell XPS 8930 system. Steve, thanks for all your help.  I hope I stay trouble free.   Cheers!

Mark, good to read your update, thanks for sharing and great that all is looking good!