HDD Larger than New SSD

copper04

Dell XPS8500 with Windows 8.1
Can anyone tell me if its possible to clone the operating system, Windows 8.1 on its own to an SSD without cloning the rest of the files.
In my Computer OS capacity says 682GB and the SSD is 480GB.
Is there cloning software that will allow selection of OS only for transfer to SSD. ?
Any advice gratefully received.
Thanks

ED E

You can't clone without getting everything as a proper clone is bit for bit.

Take a spare drive, copy out all the files you can out onto that, then shrink the volume on the HDD so it fits the SSD.

copper04

Thank you for the reply and suggestions.
Yes I have done a bit of research and I still am not fully sure if shrinking HDD means reducing the file size or is it just changing the size of the partition.
My HDD is 2GB but apparently has no partitions, its just drive C.
Are there any recommended free software for shrinking HDD size. ?
I have a lot of photos so will remove those and see what reduction in HDD size that gives. I have already cloned the HDD to a spare portable drive in case of accidents.
Thanks

ED E

1. Free up space
2. Shrink - This changes the partition size (you have a single one right now)

You can shrink in Disk Management built into windows. Just make sure you dont lose power when doing it, close everything and if its a laptop plug in.

You'll go from
|Start|

---

C:

---

|END|
|Start|--C:---|

---

EMPTY SPACE--|END|

Then cloning will be possible.

bonzodog2

I found it necessary to temporarily disable virtual memory (page file) and system protection before I could shrink my C partition (as much as I wanted) on a Win7 system.

copper04

Thanks for the heads up. I'll have a go tomorrow and post later
Thanks

unkel

What most people said. Except you don't need to shrink the volume as long as the used up space on your old HDD will fit onto the new HDD.

MarkR

unkel wrote: »

What most people said. Except you don't need to shrink the volume as long as the used up space on your old HDD will fit onto the new HDD.

I've tried this before and had to shrink before I cloned it, but that was using clonezilla. Maybe something a bit more advanced might do it without?

unkel

MarkR wrote: »

I've tried this before and had to shrink before I cloned it, but that was using clonezilla. Maybe something a bit more advanced might do it without?

Aye, could well be it. I've tried clonezilla a few times but didn't like it at all. Acronis works far smoother and no need to shrink

unkel

unkel wrote: »

Aye, could well be it. I've tried clonezilla a few times but didn't like it at all. Acronis works far smoother and no need to shrink

I don't think Acronis does a sector-by-sector clone by default, hence there being no need to shrink. However for SSDs this is the better way in my opinion. If you did a full sector-by-sector clone to an SSD, even the unallocated space is written to, which would impact on future write performance because the cell would have to be erased before being written to again. TRIM should help but it might take some time for the drive to be told what sectors can be trimmed.