Cloning 1TB hdd to 25GB ssd? Can it be done?

Hello first off yes I know 1TB is way bigger than 525Gb but my dell inspiron 3650 isn't even a month old yet and I have only used 178 Gb total from the HDD. So my question is should I still be able to clone the hdd with 178Gb used(includes hidde to the ssd which has 475Gb currently but I am assuming all will be formated. It is a crucial mx300 525Gb 2.5" drive and I have the software Acronis that cane with the SSD install kit i got from crucial..

Yes. I've used both Macrium Reflect Free and MiniTool Partition Wizard in the past to do it.

Awesome, thanks for the reply!

Acronis will do it an adjust partition size no problem

RolandJS said:

Am I behind the times? I thought that stuff only works if one does a full image [which leaves out emply byte-space, hiberfil.sys & pagefile.sys] of a source HD and then restore same onto a target HD.

There are two modes for cloning, at least in Macrium Reflect Free and MiniTool Partition Wizard. The default cloning method in both those programs is at the filesystem level. Only the files are copied over, not the free space. This has the added benefit of defragging the filesystem if you are cloning to another HDD and you can adjust the destination partition sizes.

The second method of cloning that you have to specify Macrium Reflect or MiniTool to use is forensic cloning which does a physical sector by sector clone. This not only leaves file fragmentation in place, but also the destination partitions must be the exact same size as the source partitions.

Obviously, when cloning to an SSD file fragmentation is not an issue, but I don't really see any need to use forensic physical sector by sector cloning anyway unless there is some type of file encryption being used that prevents the cloning program from being able to read and copy the files.

NavyLCDR said:

Yes. I've used both Macrium Reflect Free and MiniTool Partition Wizard in the past to do it.

Yup, me too :)