Skip to main content

How do you clone into a larger SSD without having it partitioned?

Thread solved

My OS is installed on a 128GB SSD and I'm planning to clone it to a 500GB SSD. My question is how do you make it clone without getting partitioned? I tried cloning it already and it shrinks my newer SSD down to 128GB too and I can't extend that partition because it says something like it will make it a dynamic partition which might ruin the OS files.

0 Users found this helpful

Greis, welcome to these public User Forums.

This is a known scenario and is typically caused because Acronis encounters a Windows Recovery partition immediately after the C: partition and hasn't been able to move that recovery partition to expand the C: partition size.

If you do see unallocated space on the new drive after booting into Windows, then download a copy of the free MiniTool Partition Wizard software, install this in Windows, then use it to move the Recovery partition(s) to the end of the unallocated space on the drive, then resize the Windows partition to use the now available space.  Click on the Apply button to make the changes when done.
Note: this will probably also require a Windows restart to complete the changes.

My solution on this one is to skip the idea of doing a clone, and instead image the original drive(backup) to an external hard drive.   Pull the original, insert the new drive, do a CLEAN Windows 10 or 11 install, then restore ONLY the C partition from the backup to where the new C partition is on the drive.   This will do a clean EFI bootloader but using the Windows installation from the old drive.

Note that after you do this, you will need to go to Windows 10 settings, advanced, system protection, and turn on system restore.   The process I have laid out here will bring across your C partition perfectly, but the partition will not have the same registry key, so system protection(for system restore) will not be turned on.   You will also need to turn off system protection for the old C partition that is technically not there anymore.