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How can I stop backing up empty space?

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I'm upgrading my wife from an SSHD (1TB) to an SSD (500GB). Only around 150GB is currently used - however, the backup is taking up around 880GB of space. I'm not doing a sector-level backup and its size estimate before running the backup is ~140GB.

Unsurprisingly, when I tried to restore onto the 500GB drive it wouldn't allow me to select it. I've spent a few hours searching online and poking through settings, but (other than sector-level) I can't find anything that would cause it to backup the entire drive instead of just the disk contents.

Any help? My research included https://kb.acronis.com/content/2770 but I think the issue is during backup creation, not restoration.

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Welcome to these User Forums.

The first action I would suggest would be running a CHKDSK /F against the partitions on the SSHD drive to check for any filesystem errors, as this is essentially a small SSD coupled with a normal spinning mechanical drive.

Next, do a defragment of the SSHD, then try using Windows Disk Management to Shrink the size of the largest partition on the drive to see what size it can achieve?  You could also use one of the free partition management tools such as the MiniTool Partition Wizard to resize the partitions on the SSHD and bring these down to the equivalent size (or less than) of the new SSD drive.

Thank you Steve. I was only initially able to shrink the drive by a few gigs, but used PerfectDisk to move everything - after that, it was a piece of cake to shrink the drive by 80%, backup, restore, and expand the drive.

 

Appreciate the help!

Glad you have been able to do the migration, thanks for the feedback.