Swapping drive content

TI will do it (ie, create images), which I know work.

A possibility might be to create an image to a USB stick, but I never tried that, but Google AI said that should work.

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Yes, Acronis True Image can be used to copy a system image or data to a USB stick, allowing you to create a bootable recovery drive or simply transfer backup files to the USB drive for storage; essentially, you can use it to "clone" your system onto a USB stick.


Note also though that both Windows 7 & 10 have built-in image backup capability & you might want to do a test to see if that can be made to work for you. If you decide to go that route, then you'll need to create a boot restore disk. I'd do that first then verify that the restore disk works before proceeding. (Note: Windows 11 image backup allows creating the bootable restore function directly to [or in a] USB stick version.)


Good luck

tinpanalley said:

If this is doable, any leads on software? I usually use Macrium to do full backups.

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How are you using Macrium now?

I don't use it often, but I'm fairly certain Macrium Reflect free will dump a disk drive to an image file. Obviously you'll need an external HDD of adequate capacity. Then you can write the images back to the target SSDs (essentially swapping).

The only tricky part is you're "shrinking" a 500GB drive down to 250GB, but I feel most competent imaging software can handle this with ease. In the past, many people did exactly this when they cloned an existing spinning HDD to a (lower-capacity) SSD. (When cloning, the Macrium UI allows you to edit the target partitions a bit.)

Worst case scenario, you could manually shrink a partition (GParted for example) before imaging, but I'm confident that shouldn't even be necessary.

You can shrink the Windows 7 partition using the built-in Disk Manager.

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Yes, Windows 7 Disk Management allows you to shrink a partition; you can right-click on the partition you want to shrink within Disk Management and select "Shrink Volume" to reduce its size.

Key points about shrinking a partition in Windows 7 Disk Management:

• Access: Open the "Disk Management" tool through the Control Panel.
• Right-click action: Right-click on the desired partition and choose "Shrink Volume".

The reason why I mentioned the USB stick is because you can then purchase a 64Gb stick from Office Supply store inexpensively to use as a third drive for getting the job done (ie, shrink the 500 to 60, then image it over to the stick, then image the 250 to the 500, then restore the stick image to the 250). When you're done, use Windows' Disk Manager to taylor the drive partitions as desired.

Dont have any experience with Macrium, but TI has an option to image to a smaller drive.

Good luck


PS: Advice is to ensure the integrity before hand of any partitions you intend to resize and/or image; ie, ensure that you have clean "chkdsk". Some imaging utilities are very fussy about integrity of the partitions plus you dont want to potentially compound any existing errors/issues which might happen as a result of resizing or imaging (ie, could result in greater number of file losses).

tinpanalley said:

Oh, ok, I assumed it would only make a backup the size of the used portion of the ssd, not of the full capacity. Could I not do a byte for byte backup rather than an image?

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Imaging software knows how to deal with common filesystems. Lets say your Win7 install has about 50GB of total data. When Macrium creates an image, it will thus be about 50GB in size. (if they compress the data, it could be even smaller.)

The image won't be 500GB because it doesn't have to copy "byte for byte" of unused disk space. The exception is if the filesystem type is obscure (then it just has to copy all sectors).

My point is that you have an image file that matches a 500GB disk drive. Now you write it to a smaller 250GB SSD. I'm pretty sure Macrium's UI will help you do, without much effort.
Usually, where this gets tricky is with multiple partitions, because Reflect can't just guess how you want the partitions shrinked (it could guess, but it's not AI). You have to help it a bit.

If the original disk drive has a single NTFS partition, then this is the easiest possible case. Anyway, the original scenario you described is pretty simple that any competent imaging software can handle it IMO. If you really wanted to be careful, you could use a spare (third) disk drive to test things out before fully committing. (In which case you'd need a 4th storage device to hold the two images.)

TI = Acronis True Image. A competitor of Macrium Reflect. If you use and like Macrium, then just use that.

I assumed if you're already using Macrium Reflect for full "backups," that you're writing out an image file. But that's why I asked how you're using it, because we don't know. Broadly speaking, full disk images and file-level backups are completely different things.