SSD too small for migration

[C̶r̶a̶z̶y̶ Mita]

Hello i want to migrate my OS on my laptop to an SSD.
Ive got a 1 TB hard drive and a 244 GB SSD which i have some games installed on it, which takes 138 out of 244 GB of the storage.
I tried using Ease Partition Master to migrate my OS but it says that he destination disk is too small.

I have got Windows 10 home 64 bit and i have no idea how much storage it takes. I cleaned my temp files, prefetch files, used CCleaner and cleaned the SSD.


Why does my OS take so much storage?

EDIT: I got M.2 SSD

[Supafly]

OS doesn't take that much. Mines at 45GB but I did recently reinstall Windows.

Just to clarify you have Windows on the 1TB HDD and you want to migrate it to the SSD (that already has games on it?

What amount of space does it say you need vs what you have available?

[Magma Dragoon]

How much of the space you are "using" doesn't matter, 1tb worth of space is allocated on the source drive and only 244gb is available on the destination. I've done this it is a huge pain because there are the EFI, boot loader and paging partition whose space you need to account for when shrinking the data partition to fit the SSD, and you'll need to repair the boot partition afterwards because it is pointing to the other drive. You're better off installing the OS on the SSD and just copying your game profiles and saves over.

[C̶r̶a̶z̶y̶ Mita]

引用自 Magma Dragoon：

How much of the space you are "using" doesn't matter, 1tb worth of space is allocated on the source drive and only 244gb is available on the destination. I've done this it is a huge pain because there are the EFI, boot loader and paging partition whose space you need to account for when shrinking the data partition to fit the SSD, and you'll need to repair the boot partition afterwards because it is pointing to the other drive. You're better off installing the OS on the SSD and just copying your game profiles and saves over.

so i cant transfer the OS to the ssd without losing data? i can just reinstall the game no problem i dont mind that

[Omega]

Use Clonezilla and clone the disk proportionally. It will resize the partitions to fit on the disk.


But it's probably best and easiest to just do a clean install of Windows.

[Magma Dragoon]

引用自 team, stop bating：

引用自 Magma Dragoon：

How much of the space you are "using" doesn't matter, 1tb worth of space is allocated on the source drive and only 244gb is available on the destination. I've done this it is a huge pain because there are the EFI, boot loader and paging partition whose space you need to account for when shrinking the data partition to fit the SSD, and you'll need to repair the boot partition afterwards because it is pointing to the other drive. You're better off installing the OS on the SSD and just copying your game profiles and saves over.

so i cant transfer the OS to the ssd without losing data? i can just reinstall the game no problem i dont mind that

You can do it but it isn't worth the effort

[Supafly]

Possible but would be much faster and easier to just do a fresh install of Windows. It really won't take that long as you'd be installing it on a SSD and not a HDD anyway.

[shoopy]

I used Macrium Reflect to clone a 1tb to 500gb with no problems.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

引用自 ardiel：

I used Macrium Reflect to clone a 1tb to 500gb with no problems.

No matter how you do it, the source drive has to have less used space then the target drive has total space.

Removing all the games off the os drive and ridding the drive of junk is the easiest way to ensure that.

To clean up the os drive of junk, do the following...

Disable Fast Startup

Disable Hibernation by actually removing the file from the OS drive. Launch CMD via the run as admin option and type; POWERCFG -H OFF then press ENTER and then restart Windows.

Go to System Restore, wipe all the restore data/points. More will get created over time as you do various installs, uninstalls, or Windows Updates.

Run Disk Cleanup via Run As Admin option and tick every box available except for "Downloads" then click OK to wipe all that Temp junk. Restart Windows when done.

Then run the clone software from the maker of the new drive. If don't have that software get it from the drive makers support website.

Now you should be able to clone without issues.

Once done, restart Windows but enter the BIOS next post. Then set the New drive as the only boot device option. Once inside your OS on the new drive (you can verify this by the drive letters shown for all drives in Disk Management. While in here, wipe all the partitions/volumes off the old OS drive. Then create new Volume as MBR, NTFS, Quick Format... and now your old drive will be fresh and blank. Then launch Steam via Run As Admin option, go to settings, downloads, steam library folder, select the D drive (or drive letter or the old HDD you just wiped amd reformatted) and then Make New Folder, then select that folder to be a steam library folder location. Now this location will be an available option whenever installing Steam apps/games.

[pasa]

The cloning transfer the whole partition over. So first you have to shrink it to be smaller than the ssd space. You sun the defragmenter, shrink the partition as much as you can, create a new partition in the unused space, move over files (like your game library), then repeat that until the OS partition is small enough.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

No you must clone the entire drive, not partition. Otherwise your OS won't boot off the new drive as it will be missing the boot area. The shrink happens automatically

[C̶r̶a̶z̶y̶ Mita]

引用自 Bad 💀 Motha：

No you must clone the entire drive, not partition. Otherwise your OS won't boot off the new drive as it will be missing the boot area. The shrink happens automatically

uh i thought you didnt need to clone the whole drive

[Omega]

引用自 team, stop bating：

引用自 Bad 💀 Motha：

No you must clone the entire drive, not partition. Otherwise your OS won't boot off the new drive as it will be missing the boot area. The shrink happens automatically

uh i thought you didnt need to clone the whole drive

If you want a bootable OS you will have to clone the entire drive 1 to 1. It needs to be an identical copy.

[darkkterror]

There is definitely cloning software out there that can proportionally resize partitions automatically during a clone so that a larger drive can be cloned to a smaller drive as long as the actual USED space on the larger drive doesn't exceed the total usable capacity of the smaller drive.

Not all cloning softwares necessarily support automatic proportional partition resizing. Such softwares may then require the target drive to be the same size or larger than the source.

I know for a fact that Acronis True Image (and any others that are based on this, such as Samsung Data Migration) can automatically resize partitions in order to clone larger drives to smaller drives.

I don't really have any experience with cloning software other than True Image, so I don't have any recommendations for cheaper/free cloning software that can get this done.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

The size of the drives do not matter.

This is what matters.

Source Drive = whatever this says for Used Space = less then the Total Space of Target Drive.

Yes doing a whole/entire Disk Clone is required. Otherwise you will render the OS on the new drive useless, as it won't contain what's needed to be able to boot.

So for example...

Source Drive
1TB mechanical HDD
OS drive: yes
OS installed: Win10 64bit
Partitions: 3
Partition 1: 100MB
Partition 2: 500MB
Partition 3: the rest of the drive space.


Target Drive
250GB SSD
Available space will be below 250 once formatted, which you don't do for a disk clone as that will do it for you, including partition sizes and transfer.

Once you uninstall your games and cleanup the OS drive like I explained above, you should be left with plenty of space and the used space should now be well below even 100gb area. The clone the entire disk, old to new, after rebooting from doing your disk cleanup and such. Then in the software, choose to clone the entire disk, not a paritition.

Your games can be redownloaded/reinstalled to the HDD after the clone and reformatting the old HDD.

[pasa]

引用自 Bad 💀 Motha：

No you must clone the entire drive, not partition. Otherwise your OS won't boot off the new drive as it will be missing the boot area. The shrink happens automatically

Sure not true, did it several times, worked fine. Even if you use suboptimal software for transfer that fails to migrate everything needed, it is not hard to recreate the efi boot partition.

引用自 Omega：

引用自 team, stop bating：

uh i thought you didnt need to clone the whole drive

If you want a bootable OS you will have to clone the entire drive 1 to 1. It needs to be an identical copy.

Can you guys stop spreading misinformation, please? If you can't do it, fine, just don't claim something not possible for that sole reason.