Cloning an SSD drive
 

Have my 225 GB SSD drive that is almost full. Can’t delete anything more.

Bought a 2 T SSD drive and an enclosure.

Anyone have experiences doing this? Any tips?

Principle seem simple.

Connect computer and new drive. Run software to clone. Disconnect old SSD Drive. Plug in new one. Good to go.

Or am I dreaming?

Should be that simple. I used Macrium Reflect and it was quick and painless.

If the SSD you are copying has the OS and recovery partitions, make sure to copy the recovery partitions as well (just to be safe).

Great. Thanks for the insights!

Any recommendations on the best cloning software?

Most IT persons are using Acronis these days. You have to pay for the software, but it is worth it.

Just install the software, create a usb boot drive and boot from the usb. Once in there select clone. leave all the setting at default.


https://www.acronis.com/en-us/products/true-image/

Cloning an SSD drive
 

Or use something like this.

https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX00126112

That’ll work just fine. I use Carbon Copy Cloner

You somehow have to connect the new drive to your PC/Laptop to transfer the data. It can be done using a USB adapter, or in the less likely scenario if your PC has an extra internal drive slot, you can install the new drive and do the transfer internally.
You can also use an external USB drive. In this case, data transfer goes from source drive to external drive and after you swap the drives, from external drive to the new drive.
In terms of software. If the source drive is a data drive (no OS, backup partition, UEFI) than copy and paste will do. If its OS drive, then you will need some kind of software. As mentioned above Acronis is a good one, I have also used AOMEI with good success. They are both not free. A good free alternative is Rescuezilla which I would try first.

I have a NexStar SX M.2 NVMe to USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type C Enclosure to plug into my PC and a new 2 T WD_Black San770.

Should be all I need from what I read and what the memory express guy said.

Hope that’s correct.

WD_Black San770 (your destination drive) has a NVMe interface. Your adapter should be good. Mount you drive and see if your computer recognizes it with no problems.
Next, download Rescuezilla and give it a try. I have used Clonezilla in the past with no problems. Rescuezilla is the same but with a nice user interface.

Smth else that you might do is to use some kind of Product key software to backup your MS, office and other software keys just in case they don't play nice and will wont to be reactivated again.

Docks.
 

X2, these or variations of them work well for our video production company (& subs).



Creeky....


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Work in progress.

Made a boot USB stick… seemed to hang up and go no where. Just bought a larger, newer stick. See if that helps.

Put the ssd drive into the enclosure

Found the SSD drive but needed to initialize and can now see it in the file manager screen.

Brain fried.

Will play again tomorrow.

If my life depended upon me doing this fast and efficiently… I’m long deceased.

Can’t seem to get clonezilla to work with windows 11

Trying rescuezilla.

Having trouble seeing the original ssd.

Problems ssd drive Raid mode needed in hhci mode apparently.

Seems to be going now. Should know in an hour if it finishes. Then I can swap them out.

A little more knowledge was needed than what I had to use when the click and point rescuezilla option.

Fingers crossed lol.

Looks like it successfully cloned. So can I just swap the larger cloned ssd for the old smaller one and everything should boot up on the new one?

When plugged into the computer usb slot the new drive shows in disk management but not on file explorer.

So took the old SSD out. Plugged the new one in. Restarted. Everything works. Checked file manager… partition was off. Same small size but large extra volume.

Needed to download partition wizard and moved some around and maxed out the main partition size.

Computer seems to work fast again.

Old C drive ssd was 250 GB with 2.5 GB free. Not good.

Fingers crossed it keeps working.

Thanks for the tips folks. Used the computer today without problems so good swapping.

Thinking I can use my old ssd in the enclosure as a backup drive if I need to.

I find partitioning my drives beneficial, especially if you're only running one drive.

Leave enough space on the "C: Main" partition for the OS and a few games, dedicate the rest to "D: Storage" for movies/pictures & videos/ extra games/downloads/etc.

And I highly recommend sticking with one of the top-tier brands, Samsung or Western Digital. They provide diagnostic & cloning tools like Acronis for free.

Had a major problem this morning. Guess I jinked myself. New ssd stopped working tried running chksdk and it failed on the 4th partition.

It’s now sitting as a lump of metal and plastic.

Stuck the old ssd back in. Worked for a bit and then also seized up. Not a happy camper. Returned the new ssd.

Did you remember to do a disk wipe before you returned the drive with all your information on it?

Memory express said they wipe it however just as well we didn’t do it ourselves as our old drive had a major data loss and the other disk may still have recoverable data on it.

What pain. Second SSD crashed two months after purchase.

Memory Express was great to deal with however. They did a complete system check and diagnosed an issue starting with some RAM and a hard drive.

Put in a new SSD and away we go.

I find it better to use something like 500 gb ssd for running the computer and the installed programs, then I use Seagate Iron Wolf drives for data storage. They're installed locally in the computer. If I need a bigger drive, I just add a new one, and copy the old drive to the new/bigger one, format the old one, and use it for other things.

I'm pretty specific about using the Iron Wolf drives, as the other lesser drives kept mechanically failing about every 3 years. I've had one Iron Wolf drive for (i think) 8 years. It's outlasted 2 cases and other misc computer hardware.

I can be a bit of a digital hoarder. Been keeping lots of old tv shows on my computer for the day that the internet stops.