SSD Cloning: Burned by Macrium Reflect, looking for options (Data drives to SSD)
I want to keep this short and sweet:
I used Macrium Reflect to clone a Windows 11 install from one bad SSD to a new one. I had to reinstall to repair the Windows install, but it's a done deal, but I feel burned by Macrium and want to find an alternative.
I was wondering if anybody had any leads on great cloning software for general use? I'm willing to pay money, and it can be online or offline software (in OS or via USB).
I have two drives, a 4TB and 1TB HDDI'm cloning to 4TB SSDs to have on newer devices, since these two are quite old and I got a deal on a pair of Crucial SSDs on Amazon (a brand/line I'm familiar with, they're good drives). These largely have games that aren't installed, legacy data old music rips I want access to, and currently active user profiles.
My goal: clone the partitions over to the new drives, pop them in with hopefully the same drive letters, and expand the partitions to use all free space and be done with it. Ideally I would also have tool I can recommend to others without concern, assuming they have basic computer literacy.
Will CloneZilla do this just fine? Is there anything better, proprietary or otherwise? Any idea how long this can be expected to take over Sata II (I've got a hotswap port I'll be cloning to outside my case, then popping it open to swap the drives).
Clonezilla should work. I haven't used it personally myself but it looks fine, albeit with a very dated interface.
another easy option would be to boot a Linux live USB, open a terminal, and run
dd. here's the man page and the Arrch wiki page about it.I'm sure there are Linux GUIs that wrap the functionality of
ddas well, but if you're comfortable with the command line it'd be a very simpleddcommand. make sure to identify the correct device paths (fdisk -lwill help) and then do the "Cloning an entire hard disk" recommendation on the Arch wiki.I've done DD as well for Windows installs, and it had issues with recovery partitions especially, but somehow the UEFI partitions were fine. I'm not sure if Clonezilla just does that or if it does anything else, or if all clone jobs are basically dd, so I'm trying to see if there's some secret sauce I don't know about, I guess.
If there's a consensus that it's all dd, I'll just run it from my SUSE install.
All clone jobs are basically
dd.The only way I can see it causing issues is if the OS remembered the specific disk it was on by serial number, and then got confused when that suddenly changed. It's totally possible to get into this situation on Linux (via
/dev/disk/by-id); I don't know what Windows does these days.everything should be remembered by GPT GUIDs in the year of our waluigi 2023.
tbh I don't know either. I know I would be able to dd a disk over to another if it was just Linux, UUID for partitions, etc, in theory, but Windows has been less than smooth.
Because I need a couple things to try to be done, I'm leaning towards the recommendation of EasUS partition manager, since my company has a license for it, making it a known quantity, but I'd be willing to take the chance to try a couple solutions (AOMEI as well).
Clonezilla works well, I used it the other week to clone a Windows install. You'll need to use the expert menu option to select the
t1flag to clone the Windows bootloader, as this tutorial shows.Here is the live USB documentation, you won't need the To RAM boot option like it says if you're booting from a separate USB drive rather than your target that you're cloning to.
I'm sure if you're familiar with
ddit might be easier but it certainly made the process easier for me.I don't recall the specifics, but Windows is fussy about some cloning operations, I think it's about SSDs and some security bs. Either way, I successfully used EaseUS Partition Master for that kind of stuff, which even has a "Migrate OS to SSD/HDD" button. It may be the thing you're looking for.
EaseUS has been reliable for me in the past as well. Worth the money.
EaseUS has been a lifesaver. I reinstalled Windows after the migration just to have it in a good state, but it used my Linux install's EFI partition (I maintain a separate one for each). EaseUS Partition Manager came in clutch with the latest version supporting repairing Windows EFI so I don't have to fuss with firing up a Windows RE and doing it myself. 10/10.
I'm currently doing a clone with it, and it's pretty straightforward. The proof will be tomorrow when I finish all the clone jobs and get the SSDs in place.
I'm thinking if it managed the OS clone properly it also managed appending recovery, partition and boot partitions/data as well? This may be the way I go. My work actually has a license for more advanced partition editing capabilities, but I haven't had to use it for anything.
While this won't help your exact case, and I think the suggestions of others are what you specifically need, I want to bring up my experience with Samsung SSDs.
To preface this, I put off cloning my old, slow, boot drive for nearly 6 months because I was sure it would be an entire day's hassle.
I had a 1TB Samsung Evo 860 to replace it and had no idea about their Magician software. It only works when the target drive is Samsung SSD, but wow. It cloned my boot drive to the new SSD, extended the partition to fit the whole SSD, and then set it as the boot drive.
This took around 10 minutes for the 128gb old boot drive. It took around 25 minutes for a 256gb drive my mother in law had, but it was exceptionally slower than my old drive.
I rebooted and it was perfect. No issues at all. Went on my way a few weeks to make sure everything I needed was working and then wiped the old drive.
It was litteral magic to me. I've recommended Samsung SSDs to all my family since, because this means less headaches for me and them when I do the swap overs.
Inspired by this comment, I just moved my C:\ drive from a 960 to 990 I picked up in a NewEgg deal. Took about 30 minutes to move about 500 GB. I removed the old drive and my machine booted just fine. Thanks for the recommendation!
Nice! It's great when it just works. The software has saved me many hours of tedium. And it's easy to do on an in-laws computer and be done and gone in an hour.
I just replaced a HDD with a Samsung SSD using Magician and the only issue I ran into was that the computer couldn’t find the operating system. I had to find the boot file in the UEFI Boot Option Maintenance, but I didn’t know enough about computers to be able access to figure this out immediately. The clone works great now though!
Ah yes. That is an issue of the Motherboard. Newer motherboards force the UEFI stuff for data encryption. I assume your old motherboard didn't have UEFI, or just a very legacy Windows installation. You had to turn all that off and set it to legacy?
I had that issue too with my partners. Took a while to figure out.
One of the drives I replaced recently was a Samsung, I got a bad 850 4tb. It kept crashig and destroying my Steam library on it, but I'll consider that on the future.
Dang! Sucks to hear that. Only had good experience with them myself.
Did you buy it on Amazon?
Yeah, I think it's old stock but I didn't figure it out soon enough for a refund.
I use AOMEI Backupper Pro and Partition Assistant Pro. They're not free, and might be a bit overkill for your needs, since both are full software suites with a bunch of related features. But I've used their disk/partition cloning and data/OS migration features a bunch of times, and never run into any issues with them.