HDD cloning software, free and safe please

[Traldera]

Hey folks,

I need to move the contents of a HDD to an SSD. There is less used on the HDD than the SSD capacity so shouldnt be a problem.

However, it is the OS drive so something that would take that into account and modify and windows files as needed would be great.

Please only recommend free and safe software though, its not for me but my dad as a present. I also want to steal his HDD cos he doesnt need all the space

[Bonebreaker777]

I have pretty good experience with DriveImage XML (currently in version v2.44).

[sam3]

Seagates diskwizard works great (its a free basic version of acronis true image).

[utadaiori1]

You can also have a try with todo backup tool free version which has Clone option inlcuded, and it can also ensure SSD alignment in the clone as I know.

[Traldera]

Thanks guys

[ChinesePate]

clonezilla

[Kumagoro]

Aomei seems to get some good reviews and it's free for personal and commercial use.

[badsyntax]

Aomei seems to get some good reviews and it's free for personal and commercial use.

Yeah, I'd second a recommendation for Aomei Partition Assistant. I've had it work where others haven't in the past.

[Traldera]

The seagate thing only works with their ssds and aomei didn't want to work. I gave up after that. I think it'll be a fresh install at some point when I can be bothered

[Bonebreaker777]

Ahh.too bad you haven't gave a chance to DriveImage.
Oh well

[Spreadie]

Miray HD Clone is a pretty good retail app, but I believe the offer a free version too. Not tried it though.

[scaryjim]

Your big problem with free tools is going to be that virtually none support cloning to a source disk that's smaller than the destination disk. The only way I've managed to do it consistently without issue is by using the disk that came with my Kingston HyperX 3K SSD, which is a bootable environment that handles the cloning automatically (again, I believe it's based on Acronis software). Have you already bought the SSD? If not, the accompanying software is a *great* reason to buy Kingston (I got the other half a Sammy a while back to upgrade her laptop and ended up using the Kingston software to clone her old drive as the Sammy software was kind of nightmarish to work out...).

[Kumagoro]

I gave aomei a go for the first time the other day cloning a 300GB SAS drive to a 60GB SSD no problem. The SAS drive was split into two partitions One of 250GB and the other 50GB.
the space required was 54GB and I ended up with the second empty being 1GB .

this was using the win pe version of the boot disk. So it worked good for me.