Disk Cloning - a few questions

[douglasb]

I have recently upgraded my PC and reused my drives from the old PC (boots to Windows 10 on a SSD), The new PC has a slot for an M.2 drive (and I have a 512GB M.2), I would like to clone the boot drive to the M.2 and I have a few questions.

1 - What is the best free cloning software these days?

2 - Once I have cloned the SSD to the M.2 and I change the boot order in the BIOS, will the M.2 automatically become drive C and the old drive be allocated a new letter or do I have to do anything else?

3 = Any "gotchas" that I should be aware of?

Thanks

[Mr Pointy]

I use Macrium Reflect but it seems they have changed from a Free version to 30 day trial versions, but that should be enough to clone one disk:

https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

[dan98]

Personally I really wouldn't do this.
It will probably work...kind of.
But by presenting the existing Windows installation with a completely new machine, it will have quite a few driver wobbles in reconfiguring itself, and in my experience never be as fast or stable as a fresh installation.

[eeLee]

you may find the OEM for the source or destination drive has cloning software.
Macrum Reflect free stops being a thing on 31st December.
Clonezilla may help.

Personally I always install Windows clean then use winget to get the software I want in a script. WingetUI or Chocolatey make that a simple task and most packages place nice. Data is easy to move, all in OneDrive plus duplicated to other locations.

[douglasb]

Thanks All. I had heard of Macrium but wasn't sure if it was still the best option.

I've had the "old" SSD up and running for several days in the new machine and it seems stable and has updated drivers as necessary. It sounds like cloning the SSD to the M.2 is a low risk thing that I can try first and if there are any problems can then try a fresh install on the new drive.

Thanks again.

[xeny]

The more premium drive brands have a restricted version of Acronis True Image that will only work if one of their drives is present in the system. Depending on your drive manufacturers, that may also be an easy option.

[douglasb]

Thank you. The two SSDs and the old "spinny disk" are Western Digital as is the M.2 so I'll see if they have clone software available.

[eeLee]

https://support.wdc.com/images/ati/ATI2021WD_userg...

seems like someone was correct

[Kart16]

I just used Macrium Reflex to do the same.

Pay attention to choose the option “extend partition” so that the new cloned drive will have the full available capacity.