SSD Cloning, which tools/recommendations?

Roady · 19 Oct 2016 at 12:24

Hi all

250gb 840 Evo is pretty much 90% full so about to switch out for a 500gb 850 Evo. I'm a bit of an old dog so are my usual/run of the mill cloning tools the best for this? I tended to use Ghost or Clonezilla before with SATA drives, but realise these old 'free' tools (Hiren & Ultimate Boot-CD) are quite dated now and may not be the quickest or even compatible.

See lots of mentions of Acronis Drive Image & Macrium Reflect, what does everyone prefer and which is most 'tool' like for other advanced functionality? (thinking metal->img/img->metal for backup purposes & other troubleshooting). Also, free/cheap as possible!

scrivz69 · 19 Oct 2016 at 12:31

Can you not use Samsungs own, work great.

Roady · 19 Oct 2016 at 12:34

Which/what/where? Link plz

scrivz69 · 19 Oct 2016 at 12:37

http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/tools.html a few videos on youtube if you want to check how to use it, pretty easy really.

Roady · 19 Oct 2016 at 12:56

Ok thanks, will take a look later!

Armageus · 19 Oct 2016 at 13:15

macrium reflect free edition works well for cloning between drives, but pretty sure it would be fine for image backups as well.

Acronis used to be good a few years ago, but unless you need e.g. restore to different hardware etc then isn't worth the asking price over macrium or other free solutions.

bledd · 19 Oct 2016 at 13:19

Macrium Reflect, using the clone feature.

It's a great program to be familiar with.

Good idea to take weekly or monthly backups with it.

Glanza · 19 Oct 2016 at 14:53

Acronis true image is a good one but you may have to buy that.

Roady · 19 Oct 2016 at 15:28

I'll probably use the Sysinternals Disk2VHD for backup/imaging purposes.

It's fast and worked well for backups I made at work before a W10 rollout (then used the VHD's under Hyper-V to recover anything required). I did toy with the VHD2Disk sister program once but couldn't get it to work.

Roady · 20 Oct 2016 at 14:25

Clone worked well with Macrium, around 40 minutes for ~220gb. Disk to Disk, was expecting things to go faster but I guess the 840 read just floods the 850 write buffer. Bootable.

Obviously Reflect v6 is more used for backup purposes than upgrades, there was no option to change partition sizes (coming from small source to larger destination) when in v5 there is an option. I'm now left with a 200gb+ area of unallocated space at the end of my disk (and a 'System Reserved' partition next to it so I can't resize using Disk Management) :rolleyes:

TLDR; No resize options when cloning with Macrium v6, nor afterwards. Nothing about resizing or moving partition in Acronis either! Shocked these 'modern' programs are missing something so basic! :eek:

Paragon used to make a good free product but know they got bought up & it's no longer free (not even sure if its the same product?!).

Having to go back to an older product (I'll probably just use GParted from USB bootable Hiren) because of basic functionality missing from free modern products is a bit of a joke. I know they're 'free', but the way Windows treats partitions hasn't changed for 15+ years! :rolleyes:

/rant

Armageus · 20 Oct 2016 at 15:15

Haven't got V6 in front of me, but sure I have done this before (both small to large, and also large to small).

Video and V6 manual seems to suggest you can, via the "cloned partition properties"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvTIAxVvd_0
http://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW/Cloning+a+disk

Roady · 20 Oct 2016 at 15:30

Meh, maybe I missed it when cloning... Certainly no option to do it afterwards! :rolleyes:

Roady · 21 Oct 2016 at 09:10

Ended up using this tool as couldn't get USB booting working on my board.

http://www.minitool.com/partition-manager/partition-wizard-home.html

Quick and good little tool, although not as many features as much older programs, freeloaders can't be choosers!

darael · 21 Oct 2016 at 11:27

If you used Macrium Reflect, there should have been an option to resize the partition on the destination drive - perhaps you missed it.

Once the new drive is up and running, I would run Parted Magic from within UBCD (Ultimate Boot CD) to secure erase the old SSD in preparation for whatever you have planned for it next.

To be honest, rather than cloning, I'd have just reinstalled Windows, make sure you've transferred everything you need across, then secure erase the drive as above.

rtho782 · 9 Nov 2016 at 21:14

For this, I'd just do a system image backup in windows, then restore to new drive, extend partitions.