Backwards cloning of system disk?

edsager · 17 Oct 2019

Hello All,

I installed an SSD on my wife's laptop and did a clean install of Windows 10 ver. 1809 on the SSD.

I see now that free software exists to clone an HDD to an SSD (MiniTool Partition Wizard Free).

HP has made it rough to get to the hard drive and I do not fancy taking out the newly-installed SSD, reinstalling the old HDD, then clone HDD to SSD via USB, remove old HDD and replace with the new SSD.

Can I clone the former system HDD to the new system SSD by connecting the HDD via USB and, essentially, clone backwards?

Thank you,
edsager

dalchina · 17 Oct 2019

Hi, I think you would need to boot the laptop from a Minitool PW bootable disk to do that. Not sure if simply running the free version would support implementing that on restart.
However the bootable disk is only available with the paid version.
MiniTool Programs Help to Clone Hard Drive to Smaller SSD

You might want to look into using Macrium Reflect whose free version does offer a bootable disk (or perhaps Aomei Partition Assistant, which also seems to).

Note strictly 'cloning' is an exact copy, but has come to be used also to refer to making a copy of a disk on a smaller disk, where the latter is large enough to accommodate the used space on the former.