New SSD

joedeath332 · 27 Feb 2016 at 16:39

I am thinking on changing the 500gb hard drive in my laptop to a 250 GB ssd , is it possible for me to use some software to make and image of the old drive then transfer it to the new SSD to save me from having to reformat the laptop. the new SSD is smaller than the current installed drive is this possible to do and if so how ?

BTW atm there is only like 100 gb used on the old Hard drive as the laptop is not used for much.

melvis · 28 Feb 2016 at 06:41

you can use something like Clonezilla, but personally id just backup the appdata folders for the Apps you want to keep (browser/email/etc) and copy them to your fresh install, will be much quicker and a nice clean windows install too.

KIA · 28 Feb 2016 at 16:22

Macrium Reflect.

zangetsu19 · 28 Feb 2016 at 23:23

AOMEI Backupper. seems work alright

joedeath332 · 29 Feb 2016 at 13:37

melvis said:
you can use something like Clonezilla, but personally id just backup the appdata folders for the Apps you want to keep (browser/email/etc) and copy them to your fresh install, will be much quicker and a nice clean windows install too.

I would usually do that for a desktop but this is a laptop with auto resume , recovery partition etc.

joedeath332 · 29 Feb 2016 at 13:39

KIA said:
Macrium Reflect.

That sounds ideal . Does the free version allow me to clone a 500gb drive ( 100gb used ) then resize to fit say a 250gb ssd ...
If so happy days

joedeath332 · 29 Feb 2016 at 13:40

zangetsu19 said:
AOMEI Backupper. seems work alright

If magnum reflect can not do the job I'll try this.

KIA · 29 Feb 2016 at 16:11

joedeath332 said:
That sounds ideal . Does the free version allow me to clone a 500gb drive ( 100gb used ) then resize to fit say a 250gb ssd ...
If so happy days

Yes. The used space must not exceed the size of the new drive.

joedeath332 · 29 Feb 2016 at 18:51

KIA said:
Yes. The used space must not exceed the size of the new drive.

It will be fine then as currently the used space is 100GB , and i plan to install a 250GB SSD , so happy day,, thanks

joedeath332 · 9 Mar 2016 at 23:09

KIA said:
Macrium Reflect.

Thanks KIA got my new SSD today and the software worked flawlessly , and was easy to use, Thanks

weyland yutani · 11 Mar 2016 at 11:51

I used Macrium yesterday and it did a perfect job of cloning my Win7 HDD to a new SSD.

Had a bit of a 'mare getting the ssd to boot to windows though,would only work in IDE mode and had to make some changes in the registry to get AHCI to work.

Klo · 21 Mar 2016 at 03:33

weyland yutani said:
I used Macrium yesterday and it did a perfect job of cloning my Win7 HDD to a new SSD.

Had a bit of a 'mare getting the ssd to boot to windows though,would only work in IDE mode and had to make some changes in the registry to get AHCI to work.

I had that exact problem today. Apparently if Windows is installed when IDE mode is enabled, it decides to not bother about AHCI and refuses to boot.

weyland yutani · 21 Mar 2016 at 13:44

Yep. My original install on HDD was in IDE so the cloned install on SSD would not boot in AHCI. I might as well post the sollution I found that worked for me.

1) Run the Registry Editor (regedit.exe)
2) Navigate to Registry Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci
3) Set the "Start" value to 0 (zero)
4) Navigate to Registry Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Pciide
5) Set the "Start" value to 0 (zero)
6) Shut down
7) Start up again, but before Windows boots go into the BIOS configuration screens and change the disk mode to "AHCI". Save the new BIOS configuration and restart so that Windows boots.

When Windows starts, it will detect the change, load new disk drivers, and do one more reboot to start up with them.