I purchased a 120 GB SSD to use for a boot disk and keep my data on an external USB drive. I'm using MiniTool Partition wiz to migrate the OS to the new disk and the wiz says that the target disk is too small. See screenshot. I'm using the option to migrate the OS only - not clone the source disk.
Surely the OS is not greater than 120 GB. What am I doing wrong?
Thanks.
Yes. I want to take only the OS from Disk 1 and place it on Disk 2. And make Disk 2 my boot disk. I'm using Option B from the wizard.
It seems to me like you might be trying to migrate the ENTIRE contents of the drive over to the new one. I think that works more like a clone of the entire disk drive, instead of just the system partitions. That's why inevitably you won't have enough space, unless you are migrating to an equally sized (or bigger) drive. You need to choose what you want to move on over to the new drive. If you just want to transfer Windows over to the new SSD you'll want to do a system partition backup/migrate, not a full disk backup/migrate.
This should ensure you just get the necessary stuff to get running on the other drive, without the entirety of your previous drive coming along for the ride.
I hate to say it but I've never had success in copying/cloning a boot/system disk or partition to a smaller drive, always worked better to install on the smaller drive. I have done several when cloning from a smaller to a larger but the cloning is Byte for Byte, no computer connected to the drive dock. Only downside, if it can be called that, is a 250GB to a 320GB leaves about 65GB unallocated but in that instance it was drive on hand being used but that could otherwise be adjusted if important [for that particular non-production machine it wasn't].Surely the OS is not greater than 120 GB. What am I doing wrong?
So disk 2 is a 120gb ssd &/or usb ssd or flash memory stick ?
Have you also removed all excess data from the operating system like software & data to lower the size of the migration ?
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Once you have removed all excess data you could use perfect disk & click "prep for shrink" so you can shrink the drive down to about 100gb then you would be transfering to a bigger drive ?
Perfect disk will do this in the 30 day trial mode FYI!
I've tried copying only the system files (199 MB) and get a different error message "destination device must be an unallocated space". What does that mean?? See screen captures below.
Delete the partition on the destination drive so it can create the small partitions
Also you C: drivesshows 250gb ish on there so you have no chance of migration unless you move the files out & reduce to about 100gb !
As @RoadBlaster stated... C: drive is what you would need to migrate to the SSD and it has 264.59 GB used. You can't stuff that onto a 120GB. Why did you purchase such a small SSD? Your F: drive contains only the system files the computer boots from initially, it does NOT contain the actual operating system (Windows).
Thanks for the education. I was under the mistaken assumption that the "system" files were all that is needed to boot the computer. I'm still thinking however that the files for booting my laptop and loading the OS are less than 120 GB. Though I don't recall actual numbers I've installed several operating systems and though they've grown I think the files still are less than 100 GB.
In answer to your question of why did I buy a small drive..... Cost and the fact that my laptop is not my main computer. I plan to have it boot from the SSD and use an existing 2 TB EHD for most programs and all data.
I'm now thinking that I need to use a different program than MiniTool for the transfer. I could try to pull the Windows directory from the retiring mechanical HDD onto the small SSD but I'd rather not do it that way, There may be some garbage in the Windows directory not needed for an OS install. Or if I can't find a program to do the migration for me I may try to simply install W10. Though this old laptop came with W7 and was upgraded to 10.
Thanks for your comments.
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