best way to replace HDD with SSD?

[Skyglider]

Ordered a Dell XPS 8900 with Win10 and a 1TB hard drive. As soon as I receive it, I will use Image for Windows to backup the HDD to an external USB3 HDD. Then I want to clone the 1TB HDD to a used 128GB SATA SSD that I already have.

1. Will it be better to restore the backup to the SSD using Image for Linux, or use IFW to copy the HDD to the SSD?
2. Do I need to format the used SSD first? IOW, what should I do to prepare the used SSD?

Thanks,
Skyglider

[Brian K]

Skyglider,

See http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=554

Use Scale to Fit with your Entire Drive Restore/Copy.

Have the SSD as entirely Free Space.

[Skyglider]

Brian K wrote:
> Skyglider,
> See http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=554
> Use Scale to Fit with your Entire Drive Restore/Copy.
> Have the SSD as entirely Free Space.

Thanks for that helpful link. Since it describes "restoring" to a smaller drive or partition, I'll do the backup/restore method instead of the copy method.

The HDD in the new Dell XPS 8900 is a 1TB drive. Having helped friends with their Dell PCs, the HDD will probably come with about 4 or 5 partitions, one of which will be the Dell recovery partition. When I backup the drive, I will do a full backup of the entire drive to have a fallback copy of the original drive.

When I do the restore from that backup to my 128GB SSD using IFL from a CD, will it be OK if I restore all of the partitions except the Dell recovery partition while using the "Scale to Fit" option?

[Brian K]

Skyglider wrote:
>
> When I do the restore from that backup to my 128GB SSD using IFL from a CD, will it
> be OK if I restore all of the partitions except the Dell recovery partition while
> using the "Scale to Fit" option?

Yes, that's fine. Restore them together to Free Space, not as individual partitions.

[Skyglider]

Brian K wrote:
> Skyglider wrote:
> When I do the restore from that backup to my 128GB SSD using IFL from a CD, will
> it be OK if I restore all of the partitions except the Dell recovery partition
> while using the "Scale to Fit" option?
>
> Yes, that's fine. Restore them together to Free Space, not as individual partitions.

Thanks for the help. Will post results.
Skyglider

[Skyglider]

Skyglider wrote:
> Brian K wrote:
> > Skyglider wrote:
> > When I do the restore from that backup to my 128GB SSD using IFL from a CD, will
> > it be OK if I restore all of the partitions except the Dell recovery partition
> > while using the "Scale to Fit" option?
> >
> > Yes, that's fine. Restore them together to Free Space, not as individual
> partitions.
>
> Thanks for the help. Will post results.
> Skyglider

The restore didn't work. It kept saying (paraphrasing) that the destination drive was too small. I tried the "Scale to fit" and "Scale to target (without scale to fit)" but same error message.

I finally was able to put Win10 on the smaller SSD by:
- Used the Dell/Win10 "Create recovery drive with system files" option to a USB flash memory stick.
- Used that to install Win10 on the SSD from scratch.
- All partitions were installed in the 120GB SSD including the Dell recovery partition. I'll have to remove it and enlarge the Win10 partition later if my C partition starts getting too full.

Skyglider

[Brian K]

Skyglider wrote:
>
> The restore didn't work. It kept saying (paraphrasing) that the destination drive
> was too small.

Skyglider,

What size did you compact the data in the OS partition?

[Skyglider]

Brian K wrote:
> Skyglider wrote:
> > The restore didn't work. It kept saying (paraphrasing) that the destination
> drive was too small.
>
> Skyglider,
> What size did you compact the data in the OS partition?

I didn't compact. Just imaged the entire 1TB HDD to an external USB drive. Then did the restore. I thought the "scale to fit" option would resize the OS partition to fit. Since it didn't, what does the "scale to fit" option do?

Thanks,
Skyglider

[Brian K]

Skyglider,

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=554

...describes compaction and MIB/GIB to Restore. Compaction moves the data so it will fit into a smaller partition on the SSD. Scale to fit resizes the partition size so it will fit on the smaller SSD. Scale to fit doesn't affect the data. There are good diagrams in "Understanding Partition Data Organization" in the above web page..

In retrospect I should have asked you to use the new "Compact Data" choice in the Restore Options.That would have been easier than using manual compaction.

[Skyglider]

Brian K wrote:
> Skyglider,
>
> http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=554
>
> ...describes compaction and MIB/GIB to Restore. Compaction moves the data
> so it will fit into a smaller partition on the SSD. Scale to fit resizes
> the partition size so it will fit on the smaller SSD. Scale to fit doesn't
> affect the data. There are good diagrams in "Understanding Partition
> Data Organization" in the above web page..
>
> In retrospect I should have asked you to use the new "Compact
> Data" choice in the Restore Options.That would have been easier than
> using manual compaction.

Thanks for all of your help Brian. I'll use manual compaction next time. The new Compact Data appears to be in version 3.03 or later of Terabyte imaging programs. When I tried to download those versions, Terabyte only showed versions 2.9 that I could download using my Terabyte order number. I'll need to contact Terabyte to see if my order number limits my downloads to versions 2.9. I thought purchasing IFW allowed getting version updates for life.

But in this case doing a fresh install of Win10 using the Recovery Drive was probably better anyway. It allowed me to change from RAID to AHCI in the BIOS for my SSD before doing the fresh install.

Thanks again,
Skyglider