Upgrading Windows HDD to SSD

I use a really old Windows computer, both for work and personal use. Until today, that computer was booting (Windows 10) from an 80 GB hard drive. That hard drive has been with me through at least three desktop computers. Yes, there is (in my opinion) a good reason to do that.

I don’t have the option to upgrade to Windows 11, and from what I’ve heard, I’m not sure I’d want to if I could. I have many programs installed on my hard drives (secondary 2TB drive also), and I no longer have the media for many of those programs. They are all legal, as is my Windows. I upgraded Windows 8 for free back when 10 was new.

If I were to (for any reason) re-install Windows, I’d also have to re-install everything else in order to get the new Windows install to recognize their existence. Even if I had the media, that would be a huge inconvenience. So I have carried the pre-installed and configured boot drive from desktop to desktop over the years.

Now, on to the upgrade. A very good friend had a couple of 256 GB SSD drives she wasn’t using, and which she offered to me. I had been complaining about boot time with that old hard drive. I installed those SSD drives into my desktop yesterday, and began the process of looking for a “clone drive” tool to copy the old hard drive to one of the SSD drives.

This process is most definitely not for the faint of heart, or computing novices for that matter. I’m a programmer, not a hardware person. I found it daunting, mainly because I needed a free solution. Norton Ghost is highly recommended by folks who do this regularly. For folks who do it regularly, and already have a copy, it’s apparently a great solution. Unfortunately, it was discontinued back in 2013, so it’s no longer available.

That left me looking for other options. I downloaded a couple of items, only to find they didn’t let you clone drives in their demo version. Then I tried a third solution which is free, and does “clone” drives. Unfortunately, it doesn’t copy the Master Boot Record (MBR), which makes the cloned drive useless for my purpose.

I knew of one more possible solution, but it’s definitely not novice friendly. That option is called clonezilla, and definitely does everything I need. But it’s scary. It’s Linux based, runs in character mode, and has to be booted to use it. I determined I would try it anyway. I downloaded it to a USB stick, unpacked the zip file, and made that stick bootable, using a utility provided by the package.

I booted from that USB stick, and started the process. I won’t go into the details here, because it’s complicated, and has a great many options. My choices might not be appropriate for you. I did discover that it has a novice mode, which defaults most of the options for you. If you decide to try this, and aren’t a professional, I suggest using that mode. You do have to spend at least an hour waiting while it analyzes your system to determine the correct defaults. And you have to (obviously) choose your source and target drives. Choose carefully.

I started the process about 4:30 pm on Saturday. This morning, at 4 am Sunday, it was still going when my bladder woke me up. Then I woke again at 6 am, and it had completed. I confirmed that the newly cloned drive was bootable by booting from it. Once I confirmed that, I shut down the computer again, and removed the old HDD.

After booting again direct from the cloned SSD, I started looking at what clonezilla had done. The old drive had an empty “Recovery” partition at the end of its total capacity. clonezilla copied that too, and as a result, the new drive (apparently) had the same capacity as the now removed HDD. I removed that partition using the Windows diskpart command, and then using the “Windows Disk Management” utility, extended the Windows partition to the full capacity of that new drive.

If you’ve actually read this far, here’s the final outcome. I have 163 GB free on my new boot drive, compared to the 10-12 GB on that old HDD. But more importantly, to me anyway, the computer startup time is greatly improved. What once took 25-30 minutes to boot and pre-load the programs I use daily, now took less than 2 minutes. That’s a minimum 90% improvement in startup time. WOW!

I had gotten in the habit of always hibernating, rather than shutting down, the computer at the end of the day. It was slightly faster (18-20 minutes) getting ready after waking up from hibernation. I haven’t tested that option in the new configuration, but even if it is slightly faster, I’m not certain it’s worth the dedicated disk space to store the memory contents for restoration. On the other hand, hibernation does restore everything to it’s latest state, and it’s not like I’m hurting for disk storage anymore.

I had been intending to use some of next year’s Social Security COLA to buy a similar SSD, and tackle this project. Thanks to Joanne, though, I didn’t have to deal with the cost of the SSD drives. Oh, and I ran a backup of the new boot drive to the other SSD (same size) this morning using a tool called “DriveImage XML“, which was the free solution I tried that didn’t clone the MBR. It’s cloning is simple and straightforward, and works as long as you aren’t trying to clone your boot drive. I don’t plan on testing the restore, honestly. If it messed up, I’d be starting that 12+ hour clone process again from that old HDD. No thank you.

Tags: Hardware Upgrade, HDD, SDD, Tech, Windows