Upgrade SSD C drive

...Ghost...

I built my own rig 4 years ago. I have 250GB SSD for the C drive. I would like to upgrade this and not be in a similar situation anytime soon. The current 250GB one is branded "crucial" from what I can see on the sticker. I reckon I will stick with that brand and get a 1TB product.

Question I have is how do I best clone my C Drive? What do I need, other than an empty SSD? I spotted THIS article when searching for info. It names a product called acronis. Is that OK, or would you recommend something else, or a different method.

The last time I moved from a 120 SSD to the current 250 SSD, it was a bit of a pain. At that stage, I only had windows on it and a handful of programs. I want it to be painless this time. What do I need? Sata to USB??? Also open to other brands of SSD.

JoyPad

Acronis is the tool that Crucial recommends for cloning your SSD. I would go with that.

As for what you need, it depends a lot on what type of drives they are and how they are connected to your PC. See instructions in section 7 of the manual here.

...Ghost...

JoyPad wrote: »

Acronis is the tool that Crucial recommends for cloning your SSD. I would go with that.

As for what you need, it depends a lot on what type of drives they are and how they are connected to your PC. See instructions in section 7 of the manual here.

I have 2 crucial SSD drives. 120 and 250. The 120 seems to just have a backup of the OS, so I could remove that temporarily. Or even easier, I could use the spare SATA connection in situ, as I donated a hard drive for my sons PC build yesterday.

Shlippery

Depends on the SSD, migrating is pretty easy. If you get a Samsung drive it has its own migration software. I've cloned a few without issue,
https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-SDSSDA-1T00-G26-Internal-Speed-Write/dp/B07D998212/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=ssd+1tb&qid=1565352286&s=gateway&sr=8-5

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-MX500-CT1000MX500SSD1-NAND-Internal/dp/B077SF8KMG/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=ssd+1tb&qid=1565352286&s=gateway&sr=8-6

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07KSHCG3R?aaxitk=lpr11q45-ZiX0vVCbMtLSQ&pd_rd_i=B07KSHCG3R&pf_rd_p=0192e6ab-5959-4731-9929-242726c28327&hsa_cr_id=3318529450602&sb-ci-n=productDescription&sb-ci-v=Samsung%20SSD%20860%20QVO%201TB&sb-ci-a=B07KSHCG3R
(not aware of the QVO variant if anyone can shed some light)


I've used this cable in the past for cloning ;

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sabrent-2-5-Inch-Adapter-Optimized-EC-SSHD-USB-3-0-SSD-SATA-2-5/dp/B011M8YACM/ref=sr_1_5?crid=11KIPKNI1ZEIF&keywords=usb+sata+cable&qid=1565352367&s=computers&sprefix=usb+sata+%2Ccomputers%2C125&sr=1-5

Process for doing:

Clone the drives (using whatever software is preferred by the SSD, Samsung Magician, Acronis etc, sometimes the ssd comes with a code for software), shut down pc, take out old drive, insert new drive, test it and see if it runs fine.

Once confirmed running fine, you can reformat the smaller drive and use it as additional storage.

Robert ninja

For Windows I'd personally reccommend you actually welcome a fresh install. They tend to become bloated. If you're really not a fan of installing lots of things again then I'd suggest https://ninite.com/ or even https://chocolatey.org/ if you're okay with CLI. Whenever I have to touch a windows system those are my go-to for getting the software I need onto them quickly.

Shlippery

I also like the fresh install idea as well, but sometimes I clone it first and make a proper plan of what I want to keep / remove and then reformat after i'm all comfortable!

Sometimes cloning is good for the quick and dirty approach and then a reformat when the time is right! Ninite is excellent, have yet to use chocolatey.

...Ghost...

Exactly what I needed schlippery. Cheers for that.

smacl

Shlippery wrote: »

I also like the fresh install idea as well, but sometimes I clone it first and make a proper plan of what I want to keep / remove and then reformat after i'm all comfortable!

Sometimes cloning is good for the quick and dirty approach and then a reformat when the time is right! Ninite is excellent, have yet to use chocolatey.

I clone if I've got everything just the way I like it and fresh install if not. If I'm doing a fresh install I usually leave the old drive in-situ as an alternative boot option. I found Acronis works well for cloning, but also using it for my backup solution so nothing new to buy.

...Ghost...

I finally got around to upgrading the C drive.

Purchased 1TB Crucial SSD from amazon.

I put the new SSD into the case, gave it no assigned letter and cloned the C drive to the new drive with Acronis, which was free to use. I then removed the C drive and replaced it with the new SSD which became the C drive.

I ran into some problems, including the new drive not being detected, or no operating system being found, but Google and Youtube were a great help and now I have plenty of space on the C drive. My other drives also disappeared from My Computer, but the windows memory diagnostic recovered them for me.

Thanks again for the help given.