[SOLVED] Changing SSD without losing Data

Community Support Question
1

Is there a way to swap out the SSD to a brand new one without having to do a full resetup?

2

What OS?

3

Windows

4

Hi and welcome to the forum.

So why change the SSD is it just for more GB?

I’m sure SSD’s can be cloned.

5

Yeah I just need more space

6

Lots more. ??

What does your current SSD have and what is used etc?
What more do you want.

I’ve always used the main memory, SSD or old hard drives just for the OS and then kept all personal data an ‘programmes’ on a separate drive.

In this case I don’t use much anyway on my 512 SSD but use a 256G for my personal data.

I have a split my NVme SSD to [128G for Windows] [384G for an OS hack] and the 256 Expansion for all the small bits I don’t want to loose and can carry away at any time to plug into any machine, Android Phone, Ubuntu . . .

7

You can try using Macrium Reflect. They may still have a free version, but in any case, there’s a 30-day free trial.

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8

Try Clonezilla Live: https://clonezilla.org
It’s FOSS and should be able to resize your partitions for the bigger new SSD automatically (I have not yet tried it myself with Windows).

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9

Caveat: make sure that the recovery partition on the old drive is at the same offset on the new drive! If the recovery partition is between the EFI partition and the data partition, then you’re fine, but if it’s after the data partition, your max data partition size is capped. In the second case, I suggest a reinstall on the new drive + migration of your files, as Windows does strange things when it can’t find its recovery partition, and moving the recovery partition is slightly involved.

10

I’m going to be that guy and respectfully suggest that Clonezilla is not an appropriate tool for a novice. Those of us that use it often tend to overlook its 90’s user interface and its jargon-infused prompt text. For those unfamiliar with the linux CLI and low level storage structures it is a bear pit.

Dino

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11

I just did this with macrium reflect. Went from a 500 gig drive to a 1 TB and just copied everything over. There’s an option in the app that says resize partitions to take up all of the space of the larger drive. Worked 100% perfectly. Just make sure your drive is not encrypted with Veracrpt or something like that because you’ll have problems. If that’s the case just decrypt the full drive remove the encryption use Macron reflect to clone the drive to a new drive resize the partition in the options and you’re done.

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