Win 10, Clone HDD to SSD?

[megaphone]

I have a Win 10 laptop, has a standard HDD, I want to install an SSD and more ram. What is the best, easiest route to clone the drive? I'd do a fresh install of the OS and start from scratch, however there are programs on the existing drive I want to keep.

Something free would be nice.

[Harpoon]

Have you purchased the SSD?

Crucial, and IIRC, Samsung give you free sofrware to clone a HD to SSD. Crucial as an example:

https://uk.crucial.com/support/ssd/ssd-install/ssd...

If you have the SSD, something like Easus will do the job

https://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/clone-resource/cl...

Obviously you'll need way to connect the new SSD via USB to clone but they are pretty cheap these days.

[megaphone]

No I need to buy an SSD, I have a USB -SATA adaptor. I've done plenty of Macs using Superdupper! Wanted a good win equivalent.

[mmm-five]

What laptop is it?

It may have an m.2 NVME SSD slot that you can use alongside the SATA HDD...and whilst a SATA SSD will be much faster than a HDD, the m.2 NVME will me orders of magnitude faster (for about the same price as a SATA one).

[Funk]

Make sure you do a sector-by-sector clone if the source drive has BitLocker enabled otherwise it probably won't work.

[Mr Pointy]

megaphone said:

I have a Win 10 laptop, has a standard HDD, I want to install an SSD and more ram. What is the best, easiest route to clone the drive? I'd do a fresh install of the OS and start from scratch, however there are programs on the existing drive I want to keep.

Something free would be nice.

I've always used Macrium Reflect, although the free version is now limited to 30 days trial:
https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree?mo

[Keypad]

Hi,
I did exactly this - replace HDD with SSD & add RAM - on my laptop last year.

I used Macrium (free edition) to clone the HDD to the SSD.
Swapped the HDD out & replaced it with the SSD.
Ideally, I'd have uninstalled all the dross accumulated over the years & maybe thought about a fresh Windows install.
But I took the easy way. Amazingly, it just worked!
The SSD is faster by a margin. And of course it's now not vulnerable to mechanical shocks.

NB: I had to also buy an external HDD caddy to hold the SSD during the clone process. It's now got the HDD in as an external drive.

[V8RAW]

If anyone is doing more than a couple of Mechanical HDD to SS clones I bought a FIDECO Hard Drive Docking Station on Amazon for under £30

It allows you to clone drive to drive with a press of a button and hasn't let me down yet.

[xeny]

megaphone said:

No I need to buy an SSD, I have a USB -SATA adaptor. I've done plenty of Macs using Superdupper! Wanted a good win equivalent.

Several of the drive manufacturers offer a copy of Acronis' imaging software locked to only work if one of their brand drives is visible. It's a pretty well regarded product.