A cloning question.

[Navy Chief]

I plan to clone my SSD that has my system's OS (Win 11) to a faster SSD. My question is, once I have successfully cloned the drive, I should be able to shut my system down, install the newly-cloned SSD in place of the original SSD, and all "should" operate as normal? NC

[Allen]

When I did a clone back in end-ish of the XP days. 99% yes. IIRC one screen capture program won't work and needed a full reinstall.

[Dangerousdave26]

If this was a standard hard drive you could expect this.

Clone drive A to Drive B by whatever method the software you are using calls for.

Remove Drive A and install Drive B. The system should boot as it normally would. In some cases it will do a disk check because the cloning process leaves it in a dirty state. Let that run and when it is done it is a duplicate of Drive A

If Drive A was a 1 TB hard drive and Drive B is a 2 TB hard drive the size of the disk will still be 1 TB on the new Drive B. You need to then use the Windows disk tool to expand the partician size to the maximum size. Which should be just shy of 2 TB.

For the SSD I would expect the same but I have never cloned one yet. You might want to do a little googling to see if there are any Gotchas from cloning SSD drives.

One thing I am sure you can not do is you can't clone a drive that has bad sectors.

You cannot restore a drive to a disk that is smaller that the original.

[Navy Chief]

Thanks, Dave. You pretty much confirmed what I have read and understand how the process works. Pete

[Allen]

One thing I am sure you can not do is you can't clone a drive that has bad sectors.

For my XP back in the day I was able to. The bad sector seemed to take out part of the OS and wouldn't boot even in Safe Mode. Did a repair and let it disc check. IIRC it had 3 bad sector after the repair. Google said to do another disc check to see if the bad sectors where spreading. 2nd disc check came up with 7 bad sector.

Downloaded some cloning software than shut it down tell a new HDD came in. Was able to clone it and had to expand the partician size but after that all was good.

[SgtT]

Hi Navy Chief,

How did the cloning go? I want to buy a 2tb 2.5 SSD to replace my 2.5 1tb HDD. Any tips?

Thanks,

Rob

[Navy Chief]

Hi Navy Chief,

How did the cloning go? I want to buy a 2tb 2.5 SSD to replace my 2.5 1tb HDD. Any tips?

Thanks,

Rob

Rob, it worked fine, except I have a small, but nagging boot sequence issue that I posted about too..... Chief

[SgtT]

Navy Chief,

Could you tell me what software you used?

Thanks,

Rob

[Navy Chief]

I used Macrium Reflect. You can download and use for free for 30 days. Once I finished, in mere minutes, I deleted it.

[Navy Chief]

I also have a NAS with 4tb, but never thought of using it to clone drives.

[Sbob]

Hey, Chief (what else are ET2's supposed to say? ).

I clone my drives every couple of years, its the cheapest form of back-up.
If you made a direct clone, you *should* be able to just swap the drives and restart your rig.
I've done this hard-drive-to-hard-drive, hard-drive-to-SSD, and SSD-to-SSD.

I've never experienced boot problems when switching drives, so I wonder if you really did a direct clone?
Did you shift anything around with Macrium while you were setting up the clone job?
Also, are you talking about regular SSDs or did you clone your old SSD to an M.2 "clip in" on your mother board?
That could have caused some issues since the drives are in different locations?

BTW, I was in NavOps on the USS Barbel and USS Bremerton (Squadron 7) from 1988 to 1993 in case we ever crossed tracks.

[Navy Chief]

Hey, Chief (what else are ET2's supposed to say? ).

I clone my drives every couple of years, its the cheapest form of back-up.
If you made a direct clone, you *should* be able to just swap the drives and restart your rig.
I've done this hard-drive-to-hard-drive, hard-drive-to-SSD, and SSD-to-SSD.

I've never experienced boot problems when switching drives, so I wonder if you really did a direct clone?
Did you shift anything around with Macrium while you were setting up the clone job?
Also, are you talking about regular SSDs or did you clone your old SSD to an M.2 "clip in" on your mother board?
That could have caused some issues since the drives are in different locations?

BTW, I was in NavOps on the USS Barbel and USS Bremerton (Squadron 7) from 1988 to 1993 in case we ever crossed tracks.

Hey Sbob,

I cloned a m. 2 SSD to another, then swapped them. Worked fine. What happened with the boot issue is that it had been a long time since I worked with Bios settings, and simply selected the wrong drive sequence. But figured it out and all is ok now. I was a career airdale Aviation Structural Mech, Egress /Environmental systems. Was with tailhook squadrons mostly. Nine years at Cecil Field FL. Also tours at Patuxent River, Pensacola, Guam, and Whidbey Island.

[Dangerousdave26]

I have used Macrium Reflect in the past and for a while it worked well until it started having issues with large drive sizes and windows shadow copy. That goes way back into the Win XP and Win 7 days. I am sure that process has changed.

Now I use Clonezilla within Parted Magic. I clone to my network storage because my drive sizes are just too large to clone to USB anymore. The transfer rate is too slow.

[Sbob]

I used Acronis for HDs then Macrium for SSDs.
Both programs were pretty good for cloning but both programs now feature a lot of bloatware I don't want.

My latest SSD is a Samsung Evo which I really like.
Samsung uses a prog called Magician for monitoring and cloning.
I haven't tried the cloning proggy yet but it looks very similar to the old Macrium stuff.

Ten years ago, if you said 1 Terabyte for 45 bucks I would picture buying it out of the back of a truck in a parking lot.

BTW, Chief, I just figured out that only way we could have crossed tracks was if you flew over us. Which I wouldn't allow to happen.