Cloning a large capacity hard disk to a small SSD

Hi looking for some advice, I have a laptop and the HD is painfully slow so I have decided to swap the hard drive for an SSD. Now the existing hard drive is a 1TB drive but for what I need the laptop for I have opted for a much smaller SSD drive (I have plenty of Network storage and the laptop is only likely to be used two or three times a month at most). I don't need all the hidden recovery partitions, I just need the one required for the boot process and the C drive.

So is this possible? Secondly if so how and finally what the best cloning software to use?

Thanks in advance

xendistar said:

So is this possible?

Yes it is easy.

xendistar said:

Secondly if so how and finally what the best cloning software to use?

You can do it manually (so you don't need any other software) but if you prefer there are plenty of free options. I would use Paragon.

Try this Solved - How to Migrate OS to new Hard disk. | Windows 8 Help Forums as this activity was more popular back in the day so you'll get a better description of the method.

What you do need to consider is how much of your current 1TB drive you have used as C. If it is considerably less than your new SSD then you can just switch. If it is more you'll need to shuffle some of it off somewhere but this is just a case of cut/paste of some of your files.

dalchina said:

The Recovery partition - the largest of those other than 'C:'- is typically around 500Mb, so it's hardly worth trying to save space with that. The others are 16Mb and 100Mb (UEFI).
How big is the used part of C: now?
How big is your SSD?A related question is what is it that appears slow to you? The greatest benefit you will probably experience with a SSD is faster boot.
You won't be cloning the disk, as a clone would require the target disk be at least the same size.

The current drive is 1TB, the SSD is 128GB as I said other than the OS, I will have very little software installed on the laptop.

All my other PC's run 24\7, starting this Laptop is slow and as it has not been run for a while everything kick off wanting to update and scan so it can be as much as 20 minutes before the hard disk has stopped thrashing itself.

xendistar said:

The current drive is 1TB,

How much space is OCCUPIED on the current C partition?

xendistar said:

The current drive is 1TB, the SSD is 128GB as I said other than the OS, I will have very little software installed on the laptop.

It isn't clear AT ALL what you want to do.

Do you want to Clean Install Windows 10 (in which case 128GB is ample) or copy ALL your existing install from your 1TB?

Or you want to copy some of it?

What exactly do you want on your new SSD when you have finished? The OS and some or all of the data? Or what?

If you don't care about data on the laptop just clean-install - you will keep your existing license.

To see how much space is in use on the C: partition:
- Open Explorer
- Right click on the C: drive - Properties

I also have a small (128G) SSD for windows+Programs on a 85G partition and Lubuntu on a 40G partition.
The C:\Users folder has been moved to D: (1T HDD). I have the speed of a SSD and the space of a HDD at low cost.
After you clone the HDD to the SSD, I can guide you to move the C:\Users from the SSD to the HDD.

Thanks for all the advice guys

When I started this the idea was then to simply clone\copy the existing C drive to the SDD and replace the current 1TB with the SSD, but as I spend more time cleaning the crud of the current C drive, it seems more likely I am going to do a fresh install. I don't think this laptop has been reinstalled since it was new so the current install is carrying a lot of crud.

So I think I will cut my loses and simply do a fresh install on the SSD.

Thanks for all the advice.