Clone W11 / W10 to smaller HDD if sufficient empty space

Hi folks
Cloning a Disk to a smaller one doesn't always work easily using Macrium -- I've got a few older 128 GB SSD's and I want to use Windows 11 from a 512 NVME device on to another system

This method though works a treat -
1) Create a bootable version og GPARTED and boot it
2) Create partition table on the target drive - select GPT for UEFI systems or MSDOS for MBR / Classical BIOS systems
3) for each partition on the source drive select copy from the GPARTED menu
4) on the target drive select paste -- you can adjust partition size and then select apply
5) do until all partitions copied.
6) its usually a good idea too to change the UUIDS of the partitions on the target disk -- especially if both disks are fixed in the same system. One word of warning though -- Windows might want re-activating if you change the UUID of the EFI partition -- shouldn't be a problem as you are on the same hardware.
7) boot Free Macrium and use the "Fix Windows boot problems" to easily recreate the boot loader on the target Disk

Enjoy !!

Note any other partition manager that has copy and paste functionality should also work. The GUI of all these partition managers is pretty much the same

Recommended though to use a stand alone bootable partition manager for this purpose though.


Cheers
jimbo

Macrium & Acronis

Acronis takes care of this size problem automatically.

In such case, I use an option "Shrink Volume" in Disk Management to reduce the volume size to equal or less than new drive. It may be not very easy, sometimes need to repeat this with deleting the pagefile or swapfile, because Windows not always is able to move these files to an empty place closer to begin. Anyway I think this is more safe way than counting on Macrium or Acronis.

FredM8 said:

Macrium & Acronis

Acronis takes care of this size problem automatically.

Click to expand...

Hi there

I've had bad experiences with Acronis in the past so that's one I will avoid - but like all these things thank goodness there is a choice.
Some might use AOEMI -- not sure about that one either - but I know zillions on these boards use Macrium so was just a suggestion if people happen to get into that problem. All valid suggestions though are always appreciated - with complex things like Windows there's usually several ways of doing particular tasks.

@Slavic -- shrinking a volume sometimes doesn't give you the same choice - with any decent partition manager you can usually set the size at will (so long as the source will fit into the target). Being able also to change the UUID is sometimes a good thing to do as well.

Here's the GUI of Gparted (I'm running from a Linux laptop but it's identical in the stand alone version)



Here I want to make the '/' (the root partition) a bit bigger while making the /home partition a lot smaller on a new drive.
Easily done -- no formatting etc of target drive either.

Works brilliantly too for Windows type partitions. simply copy source partition and select target drive and select paste - set size or leave the same as default. repeat for each partition. !! For "Cloning Windows" to a second drive changing the partitions UUID probably a good idea too so the correct drive is booted.

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

Hi folks
Cloning a Disk to a smaller one doesn't always work easily using Macrium -- I've got a few older 128 GB SSD's and I want to use Windows 11 from a 512 NVME device on to another system

This method though works a treat -
1) Create a bootable version og GPARTED and boot it
2) Create partition table on the target drive - select GPT for UEFI systems or MSDOS for MBR / Classical BIOS systems
3) for each partition on the source drive select copy from the GPARTED menu
4) on the target drive select paste -- you can adjust partition size and then select apply
5) do until all partitions copied.
6) its usually a good idea too to change the UUIDS of the partitions on the target disk -- especially if both disks are fixed in the same system. One word of warning though -- Windows might want re-activating if you change the UUID of the EFI partition -- shouldn't be a problem as you are on the same hardware.
7) boot Free Macrium and use the "Fix Windows boot problems" to easily recreate the boot loader on the target Disk

Enjoy !!

Note any other partition manager that has copy and paste functionality should also work. The GUI of all these partition managers is pretty much the same

Recommended though to use a stand alone bootable partition manager for this purpose though.


Cheers
jimbo

Click to expand...

You have obviously not used V8. No need for all these shenanigans.

I use Partition Magic to shrink the source such that it will fit on the destination. You can either shrink in advance or on the fly.

It's easy to shrink partitions in Macrium Reflect when cloning.

Right here is the simple solution:

In Reflect, select your source disk and click "Clone this disk". In the first step of the wizard where you specify the source and destination, select your smaller SSD as the destination. Then start dragging your partitions down from the source to destination one at a time, working left to right, but when you get to a partition you want to shrink, drag it down to the destination, click it down there, and select "Cloned partition properties". Change its size on the destination as desired, then proceed with any remaining partitions.

cereberus said:

You have obviously not used V8. No need for all these shenanigans.

Click to expand...

Hi there
I haven't got round to V8 yet -- sounds much easier !!!
@NavyLCDR -- I've found Macrium V7 doesn't work decently when moviing to a much smaller partition -- I wanted to move a Windows system from a 256GB SSD to a 128GB system SSD -- the "C" partition on the source drive was allocated at 232 GB of which only 56GB was used. The Macrium copy had the partition properties greyed out for specifying a size for target partition and just running the Macrium copy it said insufficient space. The GPARTED method complicated though it might seem just worked perfectly. (Even when I deleted everything on the target drive before trying again.

Note for these sorts of operations is best not to run from WITHIN WINDOWS if that's the OS you want to copy / clone / move.

Thanks

Cheers
jimbo

Here using Macrium as well, with no problems shrinking partitions.

Have now got Macrium V8 -- works OK !!

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

Have now got Macrium V8 -- works OK !!

Cheers
jimbo

Click to expand...

Managing different size drives is a doddle with V8. That is one of its new great features.