Bullet proof method for cloning a system drive

gizmo1990 · 25 Jul 2017 at 10:30

I need to upgrade my ssd (Win7) boot drive to a larger capacity as I'm really scraping the bottom of the barrel now. It's an old 80gb which I'll be replacing with a 250gb ssd.

I've been looking for thorough cloning/migration guides which cover this subject but can't seem to find defacto versions which offer the exact task I'm looking for. I.e. I'm replacing the OS ssd boot drive and replacing it with another ssd drive. I'd also like to do this without buying any additional software, such as Acronis.

Another worry is the whole 'creating a clone of a system while it is already running'. Is this safe to do? Wouldn't some system files be locked and therefore be unable to be copied?

Any help much appreciated.

Edit. It's just struck me that this might also be suited to the software thread? However it's also about hardware.. If needed could a mod move it? Sorry for the confusion! It kinda fits both places.

gizmo1990 · 25 Jul 2017 at 10:39

Thanks for the reply joey1211. I was just looking at Macrium. I shall check it out more. Have you used it before? Is it user friendly?

gizmo1990 · 25 Jul 2017 at 10:59

Thanks for the replies guys! @joey1211 Phew, I'm glad you said that! I didn't realise the difference between cloning and imaging. I think I'll be needing imaging then. I'd rather have the original ssd safe and sound for a while, just in case.

gizmo1990 · 25 Jul 2017 at 11:56

joey1211 said:
It's the destination drive that's wiped, not the source. You'll have to clone to the destination or you won't be able to boot from it.

Ahh, yep got confused there. Righto, cloning it is.

gizmo1990 · 25 Jul 2017 at 18:06

I wish 80gb was still ok for an OS! In my opinion though, the time when that amount was sufficient is long gone. When you add on continual OS updates and throw in a few essential ssd installed programs like PS, you're already looking at a huge amount of space required. I'm so tired of scraping around trying to free a few extra gb.

gizmo1990 · 31 Jul 2017 at 11:11

Thought I'd post this here as it's kinda connected. Before I go any further I need to initialise my new ssd and the question of whether to use GPT or MBR needs to be answered. My understanding of GPT is that it's the newer method that allows disk sizes above 2tb, it's not backward compatible with pre win7, and that's pretty much it..

Which method should I use to initialise the new disk in readiness for the cloning? And also would my old disk's initialisation method have any bearing on the matter too? Say if my current drive is MBR and I try to clone it to a GBT disk?

I've tried to find out what method was used but my attempts so far have failed. I've been into disk management and chosen properties/volumes but none have showed me what initialisation method was used on my original disk. Let's face it, it's probably MBR but I can't be 100% sure.

gizmo1990 · 31 Jul 2017 at 16:35

I went with MBR. I figure I can't go wrong with that and can always change when I update to win10 at some point. I've just completed the clone using an external USB enclosure for the SSD. It went very smoothly, Macrium is a nice piece of software. As you suggested @darael I made a USB boot device and created the clone via that.

Can I now just simply swap out the old SSD and replace it with the new cloned one? Do I have to drop into the Bios first and save the settings of the new SSD? Is there anything else I need to do?

Just want to make sure I'm absolutely clear on this next step.

gizmo1990 · 1 Aug 2017 at 12:39

Thanks @darael Swapped the drives and after a odd windows repair message fail and reboot, I'm back in win7.

I now need to extend the unallocated space back to C:

Checking out the Macrium thread linked above, it says I should run Disk Management and right click on the unallocated space and expand? When I right click the unallocated space tho, I don't get any expand option?? I only get a 'New Volume' one. However, right clicking on the already partitioned part of C: (containing windows) does give me an 'Extend' option. I'm guessing this is the option I'm looking for (the guide is reversed) and I select that to extend onto the unallocated section? I'd just like someone to okay this, before I go ahead. Is this correct?

gizmo1990 · 1 Aug 2017 at 14:26

Awesome, thanks @joey1211 All done, my PC can finally breath again!

Thanks too to all the people who advised, it made it a very smooth process.

One tiny remaining issue. I've got an annoying 'System Reserved' drive letter showing up, which wasn't there before. I think windows usually hides that somehow, but the cloning made it visible as a drive. Is it an easy procedure to hide it again?

gizmo1990 · 3 Aug 2017 at 23:29

Gotcha. All done!