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I currently own two 1 TB HDDs. I would like to replace my primary HDD with a 500GB SSD due to the decrease in pricing. However, I would like to clone my primary HDD after removing some data so that all my main programs and current copy of Windows continue to function.

My current HDD is C and I would like the new SSD to be C as well so paths continue to work. Is this fairly easy to do or would it be easier to install a fresh copy of Windows and redownload all my programs? I'd prefer not to reinstall from scratch but I can if it is absolutely necessary.

I am currently using Win 7.

Kamil Maciorowski
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NightZero88
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  • To do it you will have to shrink your boot partition on your main 1TB disk to less than the size of your 500G disk. Then, you will have to boot off of a USB (or CD/DVD) and use a tool to clone that disk to your SSD. Then replace & reboot. For the USB you can just use Ubuntu. To clone the disks, you can just use the command: `dd if=/dev/olddisk of=/dev/newdisk`. – Diagon Jun 20 '16 at 18:46
  • Make sure to create a backup of your current C-drive before shrinking it, as suggested by @Diagon. – Bonilla Jun 20 '16 at 18:53
  • Agreed. ... But for that, you'll need another disk. If you're going to clone it, the disk will have to also be 1T. – Diagon Jun 20 '16 at 18:55
  • Warning about cloning with `dd`: do not run Windows with two disks connected, that are clones to each other. Modern systems identify disks/partitions with their UIDs which will be duplicated in this setup. That may backfire. Having them duplicated is a good thing because it will allow the new disk to boot your system without problems (Windows won't notice the difference). You should change UIDs on the old disk to use it with cloned system, after you make sure the cloned one boots fine. – Kamil Maciorowski Jun 20 '16 at 19:00
  • It's hard to give a good general step-by-step answer, OP, because there are ifs and pitfalls to avoid: MBR or GPT, 4k physical sector size and partition alignment, extended partition, partitions not in order etc. You can make your question better by: (1) providing screenshot of (Windows) Disk Manager to show the partitions as your system sees them; (2) pasting full output of (Linux) commands `sudo parted /dev/olddisk unit s print` and `sudo parted /dev/newdisk unit s print` (alternatives: `fdisk -l` / `gdisk -l`, but I find output from `parted` better). Use live CD/USB to boot Linux. – Kamil Maciorowski Jun 20 '16 at 20:39
  • You can also consider the answers here: https://superuser.com/q/1147171/910769 – Cadoiz Apr 25 '21 at 17:31

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If you would like a graphical interface, you can pick one among these:

  • Gparted
  • partedmagic

They will both allow you to resize and copy your partition from the old hard drive to the new ssd.

Cadoiz
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cybernard
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