Clone only Used Space on 2TB HDD to 500 GB SSD

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  1. Posts : 3
    Windows 10 Pro 64 bit
       #1

    Clone only Used Space on 2TB HDD to 500 GB SSD


    I've installed a new 500 GB Samsung SSD 850 EVO in my system. I want to clone only the "used" portion of my 2TB HDD (about 370 GB) to the SSD for faster performance when I boot, run programs, etc.

    I'm a bit of a noob, and when I go into "Disk Management" one option is to shrink the largest volume on my HDD. I'm thinking that if I shrink it down to about 370 GB from the current 1.8 TB maybe then I can go ahead and clone using, say, Macrium Reflect. Once the cloning is done, I want to boot from the SSD, back it up, and then wipe the HDD and use it as a mass storage disk.

    FYI, the HDD is encrypted by Bitlocker.

    Is it as simple as that? What issues do I need to watch out for?

    Thanks much!
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 3,367
    W10 Pro x64/W7 Ultimate x64 dual boot main - W11 Triple Boot Pending
       #2

    Hello baldredhead Welcome to the Ten Forums!

    Cloning is generally seen with drives the same size or larger especially when going to shrink the OS primary cloned down a bit afterwards. You wouldn't be able to fit a 1.831tb size partition on the 500gb drive without a great deal of compression involved which would then slow the access time down. That would work in reverse of what you looking for to boost performance.

    Your absolute best option would be to see an entirely new clean install of 10 go onto the smaller SSD drive and subsequently take advantage of the larger drive for storage and backup purposes once things are all set to go on the SSD. I run a piar of 2tb drives here for storage and backup and having just replaced a pair of 1tb drives find these two new drives are filling up fast too!

    The clean install approach however is still your best option for taking advantage of not only the fresh Windows 10 install but what you are actually wanting to see the performance gain of running 10 on an SSD type drive. Windows 10 - Clean Install - Windows 10 Forums[2]=Installation%20and%20Setup

    If you are still running the upgrade over the previous version install of 10 but didn't download and save to ISO disk image form or burn a dvd if not see a USB Installation Key made up with the Media Creation Tool you can simply keep going back to download 10 to burn to dvd then to see it go on a flash and still save the "Windows.iso" to a folder to later needs. Windows 10 ISO Download - Windows 10 Forums[2]=Installation%20and%20Setup

    Unfortunately 10 lacks the previously seen Windows Easy Transfer tool which made transferring files and settings onto a clean of Windows from an existing working install possible. But copy and paste manually of both program folders and user account sub folders for certain things can be done on the fresh install 10 before allowing the program installers to merge the new with the existing folders during the installation to pick up a good deal of where you left off on the 2tb drive.

    If you run Steam games and wonder where all that 370gb of used drive space went following the 14-17gb of space a fresh install of 10 takes up look there! On the 7 side of the dual boot here that weighs in at 114gb while down a little to 110gb on the 10 side of the equation.

    But as far as cloning or even making a full system image backup to restore onto the new drive you would need a second 2tb size drive to see any recommended working results. The encryption process may or may not end up being another problem depending on what program was used to clone or image a new drive with.

    And once you have the clean install running on the SSD which is the advisement here you might want to consider seeing a " Recovery Drive " made up with an 8gb or so usb flash drive since 10 and what to come will no longer see optical media type recovery images and tools. The Recovery Drive runs over 4gb in size. IF you ever have a time when not able to get 10 running and are not able to bring up the F8 boot options menu at post time/startup you would simply boot from the Recovery Drive where all of the repair options are seen.
      My Computers


  3. Posts : 3
    Windows 10 Pro 64 bit
    Thread Starter
       #3

    Night Hawk said:
    Hello baldredhead Welcome to the Ten Forums!

    Cloning is generally seen with drives the same size or larger especially when going to shrink the OS primary cloned down a bit afterwards. You wouldn't be able to fit a 1.831tb size partition on the 500gb drive without a great deal of compression involved which would then slow the access time down. That would work in reverse of what you looking for to boost performance.

    Your absolute best option would be to see an entirely new clean install of 10 go onto the smaller SSD drive and subsequently take advantage of the larger drive for storage and backup purposes once things are all set to go on the SSD. I run a piar of 2tb drives here for storage and backup and having just replaced a pair of 1tb drives find these two new drives are filling up fast too!

    The clean install approach however is still your best option for taking advantage of not only the fresh Windows 10 install but what you are actually wanting to see the performance gain of running 10 on an SSD type drive. Windows 10 - Clean Install - Windows 10 Forums[2]=Installation%20and%20Setup

    If you are still running the upgrade over the previous version install of 10 but didn't download and save to ISO disk image form or burn a dvd if not see a USB Installation Key made up with the Media Creation Tool you can simply keep going back to download 10 to burn to dvd then to see it go on a flash and still save the "Windows.iso" to a folder to later needs. Windows 10 ISO Download - Windows 10 Forums[2]=Installation%20and%20Setup

    Unfortunately 10 lacks the previously seen Windows Easy Transfer tool which made transferring files and settings onto a clean of Windows from an existing working install possible. But copy and paste manually of both program folders and user account sub folders for certain things can be done on the fresh install 10 before allowing the program installers to merge the new with the existing folders during the installation to pick up a good deal of where you left off on the 2tb drive.

    If you run Steam games and wonder where all that 370gb of used drive space went following the 14-17gb of space a fresh install of 10 takes up look there! On the 7 side of the dual boot here that weighs in at 114gb while down a little to 110gb on the 10 side of the equation.

    But as far as cloning or even making a full system image backup to restore onto the new drive you would need a second 2tb size drive to see any recommended working results. The encryption process may or may not end up being another problem depending on what program was used to clone or image a new drive with.

    And once you have the clean install running on the SSD which is the advisement here you might want to consider seeing a " Recovery Drive " made up with an 8gb or so usb flash drive since 10 and what to come will no longer see optical media type recovery images and tools. The Recovery Drive runs over 4gb in size. IF you ever have a time when not able to get 10 running and are not able to bring up the F8 boot options menu at post time/startup you would simply boot from the Recovery Drive where all of the repair options are seen.
    OK, so it seems I need to do a clean install of Win 10. It's not what I had in mind, but I'm not inclined to buy a 2TB SSD drive. Anyway, I think I can do that. Thanks for the advice!

    I did make a recovery drive for Win10 a month or so ago, so hopefully that can save me from myself if things go haywire. And I have all the data backed up. But I guess I need to make an ISO disk image from MS's Media Creation Tool? Is that not the same thing as the recovery drive?

    Even though I have Steam installed I'm not much of a gamer, so that part doesn't matter to me. My main occupier of space is music (about 100 GB).

    Also, when I ran the "Samsung Magician" program it told me that my new SSD was connected to a 3Gb/sec SATA II thing. But I thought this rig was SATA III. Maybe I just put that data cable in the wrong port?

    Thanks for your help!
      My Computer


  4. Posts : 823
    W11 pro 64 beta channel
       #4

    I would go for the shrink and clone, although I use MINI TOOL PARTITION MANAGER myself. Some motherboards have Sata 2 and 3 connections, if you don't have the motherboard manual to hand to check, Googling the MB will get the info.
      My Computers


  5. Posts : 3,367
    W10 Pro x64/W7 Ultimate x64 dual boot main - W11 Triple Boot Pending
       #5

    If you try shrinking a 1.831tb size primary down to 465gb approximately you will need a clean install to clean up a mess! The clone will be utterly useless! Generally when making up a full system image back up you can that type of image restored to the same size or larger drive without problems. I restored a 7 Pro onto a 1tb drive added in after 10 was up and running on the original 7 drive and then shrank that only about 80gb to allow for the second backup partition.

    A direct clone on the other hand depends larger on the program's ability as well as just how complex or simplified you can make things ahead of time. One article that goes into migrating Windows from a 1tb not a 2tb size drive to a 120gb SSD is seen at PC World. Move from a hard drive to an SSD | PCWorld

    The article there starts off by comparing how to move furniture from a large home into a small apartment. That goes into explaining how to tweak things in order to condense things where possible. With roughly 70% of the total drive space used up the performance will start off with any drives as response times and file access times take longer. Now if the 370gb of OS and files were on a 500gb part on the 2tb drive the restoration of a full system image backup of that partition and restoration to the new SSD would run into a better end result since the shrinkage is small in comparison. But that will still only leave you with about 95gb of free drive space out of the approximate 465gb seen with a 500gb drive.

    For your system there getting 10 on the SSD and seeing that it going strong will allow you to migrate over what you can from the first drive. Here in preparation for 10 I cloned the 7 host/boot drive over to the second OS that was waiting for a second OS since both are identical being same brand as well as same model and size. The clone ran just as well as the host source drive did. Unfortunately due to other complications I first assumed the clone was at fault and nuked the drive to see a clean 7 with SP1 install take place on a brand new primary which ended up seeing a buggy upgrade. That was to followed a week later with the clean install I'm booted in now!

    I think you would still want a clean install anyways so that the fresh 10 install will bond better to the hardware in that sense rather then finding a load of problems if the clone falters either immediately or later. That works to your advantage as well since while you can take your time getting things on and running good on the SSD you still have everything working on the first drive which will need to be unplugged during the 10 install of course.

    Now what the Media Creation tool offers is the on the spot upgrade option or create media screen you first run into following the choice of language and edition which will be critical as far as the upgrade path is concerned. That would be Home or Home Premium to 10 Home, Pro or Ultimate to 10 Pro. when skipping the immediate upgrade option since you are after the media the next option is to see a 4gb flash drive turned into the installation media by way of bootable flash drive. The last two when opting for the save download will be to burn the dvd or save the "Windows.iso" file to a folder on the drive. You can simply change the save as file name to Windows 10 Home or Pro.iso for easy identification purposes.

    Now besides Home, Home N, Pro, and Pro N there are two other options for seeing both the 32bit and 64bit flavors in the "both" option for either Home or Pro as well as one other Home SingleLanguage option. The both gives you the choice between running the 32bit or 64bit flavor of the edition you will be running. These are full install type ISO disk image downloads you can see turned into the live media or saved to the drive. And you can keep going back if you have other systems to upgrade or want to save the iso to the drive aftter first seeing the media made up.
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  6. Posts : 823
    W11 pro 64 beta channel
       #6

    I've changed my mind about the shrink idea, it's too risky, a clean W10 install on the ssd is the safest way.
      My Computers


  7. Posts : 1,579
    Windows 10 Pro
       #7

    tinmar49 said:
    I've changed my mind about the shrink idea, it's too risky, a clean W10 install on the ssd is the safest way.
    Your choice, but cloning in Macrium Reflect includes the ability to shrink that large partition (as long as the data contained leaves enough slack) down on the fly so that all partitions can fit on the destination disk.

    See Steps 4 & 5 here: http://knowledgebase.macrium.com/dis...Cloning+a+disk
      My Computer


  8. Posts : 3,367
    W10 Pro x64/W7 Ultimate x64 dual boot main - W11 Triple Boot Pending
       #8

    The problem there is that that is with the "Free" version while the Professional options for something like this are only seen with the paid for plus or pro versions. The compression ratio is a bit steep when you review the steps for seeing the 1tb half the size drive go to the 120gb which is even smaller 2 to 1 for the 2tb to 1tb while the 500gb to 120gb is even steeper when you match the project for each. 1tb to 120gb and 2tb to 500gb or one quarter compared to the lesst then 1/8th explained in the article but with recommendations included for how to go about thing. Risky Business!

    For any new version I simply plan to be seeing multiple clean installs over time and nothing compares to seeing working result! Due to moving into a smaller sized OS drive the consideration of the new limits on how much can be put on have to be considered as well as the stability and performance generally seen with any clean install to begin with. Turning that 2tb drive into a primary storage and backup device will be the better move since that will allow you to store complete system images of the new SSD host OS drive for safe keeping along with all of your files.
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  9. Posts : 5,478
    2004
       #9

    baldredhead said:
    I want to clone only the "used" portion of my 2TB HDD (about 370 GB) to the SSD
    You can easily transfer 370GB to a 500GB SSD. It is a fairly common practice and less time consuming than a clean install. Here is a tutorial for your consideration... Solved How to Migrate OS to new Hard disk.
      My Computer


  10. Posts : 3
    Windows 10 Pro 64 bit
    Thread Starter
       #10

    Thanks for all your responses. Very informative. In the end I did a clean install using the Media Creation Tool. Spent a good portion of last night doing it, and It was a PITA, but for the most part I've got things the way I want them.

    One issue left unresolved is how to encrypt my SSD. I can do the software encryption with Bitlocker, but I've read that causes a performance hit. I don't want that, especially since I found out that my motherboard has only SATA II sockets.

    This SSD has hardware encryption, but cruising around the Internet it's hard to find good information about how to enable that. Also, I did disable Secure Boot before I did the install. Should I re-enable it?

    Thanks again for all the help!
      My Computer


 

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