Clonezilla is handy to copy everything from your old hard drive to a smaller SSD (Solid State Hard Drive)

Overview:

  • Resize old larger HDD
  • Run a scan/repair on the old HDD
  • Use Clonezilla in expert mode to copy the partitions
  • Put the new SSD in your PC to boot

1. I used Hirent Boot CD to boot into PartedMagic.  I then resized the drive to be smaller than the new drive.

2. It is annoying but both times I have done this Clonezilla would error out saying the partion is in a error state so could not continue.  I booted from a USB key with windows 10.  Went to the advanced menu for a cmd prompt and ran chkdsk c: /r.  This will take a while depending on your HDD size but is worth it.

3. Boot Clonezilla and select Expert mode.  I selected the disk to disk copy and made sure to have the following options selected int he advanded menu:

    • -r, -icds

4. After this expert menu you will get to a menu about the partition table.  Select -k1 at that point and continue on

Once the data is copied shutdown the machine and boot your new SSD.  It may need checked for errors but it worked ok the first time for me.  You may want to go into disk managment on Windows to expand any extra space that may have not been accounted for.

References:

https://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live/doc/02_Restore_disk_image/advanced/09-advanced-param.php