Disk cloning help

Hello all. I have a lenovo T400 with a 60GB SSD boot drive and a 320GB HDD storage drive. I am wanting/needing to update the SSD. I am looking at the 256 Crucial M4 or Samsung 830. I am also thinking I will boost the storage drive.

2 questions... IF I go the 2-drive route, both of these drives come with a package including a cloning software solution. I do not have partitions on either drive (boot is C: drive and storage is D: drive). IF I clone the contents of the 60GB (currently using 53GB of space) to a 256GB SSD, will is leave me with c. 200GB (give or take based on 1,024 vs. 1,000 MB math) free? I guess I am asking the clone won't 'waste' the extra space, right?

Similar question for the HDD if I go to 500 or 750 or such for space.

2nd question... what if I want to get back to single drive and put my optical back in the lenovo. Say I get a 750 GB WD Black. Can I clone my Boot Drive to it and then copy over the relevent files from my storage drive? Currently using about 220GB of space.

And, I know that the T400 is not SATA III but the drives are backwards compatible and if I get a new laptop, I can go drive-less and bring my new drive(s) into the new laptop, if it happens. (I have come close to buying new, but I LOVE this lenovo form factor and such. 14.1", 1440x900 resolution, solid build, etc). it is over 4 yrs now).

 

1: The free space on the new drives will be total capacity minus used space on the previous drive, as simple as that. If it's not, the unused space will just be unassigned and you can extend the partition to the full capacity of the drive using the windows disk management utility. 256GB will give you approximately 219GB.

2: Yup for data, programs that weren't on the boot drive will have to be reinstalled.

 

Cool. Any thought on alone softwsre. One cones w Norton ghost but has bad reviews for the software. Plus the WD Black 750 doesn't come w a cloning solution

 

use the one month trial version of Acronis True Image Home for cloning. It will expand/shorten partitions as you wish too.

 

You can get a free version of Acronis from the WD website, it requires a WD drive in the laptop, but that won't be a problem form what i understand. I haven't used Ghost, but EzGig that comes with certain versions of the M4 worked like a charm for me.

Last time, cloning was disabled on the trial, we can all guess why, see: http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...0712-m6600-owners-thread-516.html#post8856544.

 

OK. So, the Samsung comes with Ghost...which is not good by all accounts. The M4 comes with Ex-Gig. The HDDs don't have a package.

What if I got a stand alone product Ez-Gig and my mechanical drive?

 

If you got a WD drive, use Acronis WD edition: WD Support.

 

hm didn't know that for the last version. One could probably still find older versions and use those without upgrade. Last one I used was 2011.

 

Yeah, probably, but seagate and WD have a free version of Acronis that requires a Seagate or WD drive in the laptop which just happens to be the majority of available HDDs, so it should be possible to use that to clone for most people.

 

I think he said his drive is a samsung. But I didn't think they made drives anymore.

IDK, it depends on your laptop brand, Sonys and Toshibas seem to use Toshiba drives, even SSDs.

 

Yeah, Samsung doesn't make HDDs anymore, seagate bought the HDD division if i recall correctly. I don't know if the seagate cloning tool will work with a Samsung drive as a result or not. I don't think it'll work with a Samsung SSD though.

 

I will have to double check the drives in my laptop. The SSDs I am considering are the Samsung 830 and the Crucial M4. The Samsung packages with Ghost and the Crucial with EZ-Gig.

Or, I may go for the Seagate Momentus Hybrid at 750 and drop back to 1 drive.

The Samsung/etc at 128GB is more budget friendly than the 256GB of course. Hmmm...

 

Acronis have disabled some functions in the trial version, so I used this and worked fine.
Aomei Partition Assistant Home Edition - CNET Download.com

 

I used Macrium Reflect - Free Edition and it work first time. I tried Norton Ghost but it messed up the MBR and was a pain to use.

 

Macrium Reflect did nothing for me, literally.

 

I DID IT. The last upgrade included a new op sys (Win 7) so it was a fresh install. This was my first cloning. I got he 256GB Crucial M4 with the cloning (the usb-SATA wire and EZ-Gig 4). Really was easy. First try, though, I had a PILE Of write errors. I was very glad that write errors were to the target (new) drive and no effect on the existing. The software suggested Chkdsk. Couldn't do it on the target, so I did it on the source drive (the 60BG OZC Agility). Then redid the clone. It was late, so I left it cloning overnight. Now, the original 'clone' was like an hour but the writing of bad sectors took a few hours. I wasn't sure of the time, so I went to bed. Got up this morning and saw 'congrats, your clone is perfect'. And, so far as I can tell it is!!
So, here is what I did (You may want to run chkdsk on the source drive...and cannot have the destination plugged into the computer).
1. put EZ-Gig software in CD drive
2. choose run ez-gig
3. pick source and destination drives, advance options if you choose, and click 'clone'
wait for massive upgrade goodness.

Tonight, I clone the Data drive to my 750GB 7.2K WD Black HDD>

 

Conrats! I'll be doing the same eventually