Need some advice on an mSATA SSD swap

EdTittel · 31 Mar 2017

Ladies & Gents:
I'm getting ready to decommission a desktop to give to my sister's family. Right now, it's got a Samsung EVO 850 500 GB mSATA installed as the boot/system drive. I want to swap that unit out for a spare Samsung EVO 850 250 GB mSATA, so I can put the 500 GB unit in my traveling Lenovo laptop. I plan to use Macrium to make that switch but I'm not sure if I should repartition the 500 GB unit beforehand or if I can just restore an image to the 250 GB drive (the actual on-disk footprint for the OS partition is only 61 GB or thereabouts as shown from disk management:

Need some advice on an mSATA SSD swap-disk-inf.jpg

Recommendations or suggestions on how best to make the transfer, please?
Thanks in advance for your input and advice.
--Ed--

topgundcp · 31 Mar 2017

You can do this in one sweep with Macrium.

Connect the 250GB SSD via USB.
Run Macrium and click on clone this disk under mSata 500GB and select the 250GB as destination.
Click on each partition of the 250GB then click delete existing partition. The 250GB should show empty.
Drag and drop C drive from mSata to the 250GB (this operation actually copy the partition, not cloning)
Click on C partition that you just drop to the 250GB then click on cloned partition properties. At this point, you can resize the C partition on destination as you wish.
Drag and drop the next partition until done.
Next->Finish.
Double check the new C drive is set to Active. Disconnect mSata and boot from 250GB SSD.

EdTittel · 31 Mar 2017

Thanks for the input, TopGunDCP:
I'll give it a try and report back. But I need to buy an mSATA to USB conversion/enclosure. Found a good one at Fry's for $15.
--Ed--

topgundcp · 01 Apr 2017

@EdTittel, You are welcome.
Since you did not have the USB interface for mSata. You can make a backup copy of the 500GB to a regular external USB HD then:

Replace the 500GB with the 250GB.
Boot up Macrium rescue disk, select the image to restore and 250GB as destination
Do steps 3-8 above

bobkn · 01 Apr 2017

If you're prepared to buy the mSATA to USB adapter, the free Samsung "data migration" software will probably work.

http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor...oad/tools.html

I recently used it to clone a 1TB laptop HD onto a 500GB 850 Evo (SATA, 2.5" form factor). There were 2 partitions of the HD. The Samsung software allowed me to set the target partition sizes. Worked well.

jimbo45 · 02 Apr 2017

Hi there

I think you should first with a partition manager reduce the size of the 500GB's Windows partition to something the new HDD can handle, then image and restore.

Cloning if I read correctly only works if the TARGET (DESTINATION) HDD is of the same size or bigger than the SOURCE.

So you'll need to image to say external HDD

then restore to your new SSD.

Cheers
jimbo

NavyLCDR · 02 Apr 2017

jimbo45 said:

Cloning if I read correctly only works if the TARGET (DESTINATION) HDD is of the same size or bigger than the SOURCE.

So you'll need to image to say external HDD

then restore to your new SSD.

Cheers
jimbo

Macrium Reflect Free, MiniTool Partition Wizard, and AEOMI Partition Assistant will all clone partitions to smaller size drives. I just cloned a 500 GB hard drive with a 440 GB C: drive partition to a 250 GB SSD with AEOMI Partition Assistant yesterday.

There are two methods of cloning. One is file structure cloning which allows the partition to be resized - either up or down; and there is sector by sector physical cloning which must be done between exact same size partitions, no resizing at all allowed. The three programs mentioned above, and most cloning software, defaults to file structure cloning.

EdTittel · 02 Apr 2017

I ended up using Minitool Partition Manager to reduce the size of the OS partition to 232 GB, then shifted the recovery partition to be adjacent to the OS partition. After that I ended up using the Minitool Wizard named "Migrate OS to SSD/HD" to make the switch after that because I realized the source drive is MBR and I wanted the target to be GPT. That wizard does the job quite nicely. This did the trick, except that I had to boot to the Macrium Recovery Drive to run its boot-up repairs after making the drive change. Once I took care of that, everything was fine and it's working perfectly now. Thanks for all the good advice, especially NavyLCDR and TopGunDCP.
Best wishes,
--Ed--

NavyLCDR · 02 Apr 2017

Now you might want to open a Command Prompt (Admin) and run:

reagentc /info

to make sure your recovery partition is active.

EdTittel · 03 Apr 2017

Good advice, NavyLCDR. I'll do this shortly. I just blogged about my complete experience in making the swap. Read it at Swapping Out mSATA SSDs Needs Cool Tools - Windows Enterprise Desktop. Thanks again to all who chimed in.
Best wishes,
--Ed--