So just picked up a Samsumg 850 evo 500gb. My mechanical drive is going out so I want to clone this drive to my new one. I'll preface this by saying I've never cloned a drive. Now I've read time and again how simple it is to just clone the drive over and format the old one for a storage drive. Seemed to be recommended to use EaseUS. Downloaded it. Issues began.
First, Windows didn't recognize the SSD. After some searching I was told I needed to add a volume to it? Not entirely sure what that means but I did that in disk management. Now my PC will recognize the SSD. Okay, sure.
But then I go to the clone option. Select the source drive. Then select the destination drive. Okay, sure. But that's where it stops. Continue to get the error message something to the effect of "Destination disk is too small." But...it isn't. And there's only about 100gb on my mechanical.
I must just be missing something. I've watched guide upon guide of people just throwing their drive right in and hit a few buttons and it's done.
You need to shrink the partition on the mechanical drive so that it's smaller than the SSD, it doesn't matter how much data is on there you can't clone a larger partition to a smaller one.
So the available space on the SSD is 465gb. The lowest it will allow me to shrink the C: partition is 471gb, and continues to not allow me to clone it.
Nope. Tried using the EaseUS software to shrink the partition but it just...won't. For...some reason. I've been pulling hairs out about this for a while now. Friends reply with "Yeah dude I just plugged it all in and cloned it and it just worked." Lel
Hi I recently tried unsuccessfully using EaseUS, personally I then used the given Samsung cloning tool which everyone seems to say is awful but when I used it it was great and really simple, maybe it has been updated since.
It doesn't do much else all you can do is clone and move partitions but its perfect for the job.
Yeah I'm kind of at a loss at this point. There's something I'm missing or something that isn't working correctly. I got EaseUS to actually begin the cloning process but after a couple hours or so it just gives error messages and stops doing it. I don't think the drive is dead I just think there's something I'm doing wrong.
If this is still true that is the problem as @Dexter_Kane said. The partition on the SSD is smaller than the C: on your mechanical drive.
May I ask, how much stuff do you have on the C: drive? You can try moving stuff to an external drive and see if windows will let you shrink the partition a bit more. Mind you, windows will want a lot of extra head room on its partition. For example, my windows 10 C: has 70GB on it, but windows will only let me shrink it to 188GB.
As @shu_kaze said, there is the option of booting up from a linux live environment and use a program called gparted to shrink the C: to whatever you want, BUT it is not advised as it can screw with your files on the C: partition and maybe make it unbootable. It is a risky thing, but if you have everything important backed up (which you should have anyway because cloning is not without its risks either) it is a possibility.
In all honesty I would suggest just reinstalling Windows, especially if your mechanical drive is beginning to die. If this is not an option, you need to use another tool that doesn't discriminate based on partition size such as Acronis.
There should be an option for you to choose either clone every sector or clone only used part. Maybe you can try Disk Clone in Aomei Backupper. It allows you to clone only used part to SSD.
you can shrink partition in windows' disk manager then (i use it, so i will recommend it) boot clonezilla from usb and clone i think partitions-to-drive or maybe even drive-to-drive would work if its gonna grab only assigned partitions¨
edit: if you gonna clone from smaller to larger SSD in the future, just use clonezilla drive-to-drive then expand C: (or whatever you have it called) in windows, works fine, no other software needed