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Thread: How to 'ghost' Windows 8 system drive onto new drive?

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    How to 'ghost' Windows 8 system drive onto new drive?

    Ive got Windows 8.1 installed on a 60gb SSD and wish to transfer the whole drive onto my new 128gb SSD.
    Having never attempted this before can anyone give me any advice as to what program I need to use / how to do it please?


    thanks.
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    Re: How to 'ghost' Windows 8 system drive onto new drive?

    http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

    Free, very easy to use, very advanced if you need the features, supports GPT if you're using it, and handles SSD transfers flawlessly. It even does alignment without having to set anything up previously.

    No point in a tutorial - install and read the menus. It's very easy.
    Last edited by Agent; 05-12-2013 at 04:26 PM. Reason: typos
    Quote Originally Posted by Saracen View Post
    And by trying to force me to like small pants, they've alienated me.

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    Re: How to 'ghost' Windows 8 system drive onto new drive?

    Thanks Agent thats a great help From your experience, how long does it take to do a drive of this size? A couple of hours or is it more of a 'set it off and go to bed' job?
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    Re: How to 'ghost' Windows 8 system drive onto new drive?

    An SSD to SSD?
    Assuming they are both on a modern SATA channel directly attached to the motherboard, a few minutes in most cases.

    The read / write speed of a modern SSD is phenomenal. And when you factor in that 64/128GB aren't really that big....it's get a coffee level amounts of time
    Quote Originally Posted by Saracen View Post
    And by trying to force me to like small pants, they've alienated me.

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    Re: How to 'ghost' Windows 8 system drive onto new drive?

    Do try to connect both of them to the mainboard with the SATA cables rather than using USB transfer docks and the like, if you're able to. It will make a significant difference.

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    Re: How to 'ghost' Windows 8 system drive onto new drive?

    Yeah SSD to SSD, both on SATA III. Great news then, I was worried it might be a massively drawn out task

    Thanks again! :-)
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    Re: How to 'ghost' Windows 8 system drive onto new drive?

    Does ReflectFree handle cloning to a smaller destination drive, or is it an "at least as big" solution? My penchant for sticking much bigger drives than I need in things tends to be my downfall when cloning

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    Re: How to 'ghost' Windows 8 system drive onto new drive?

    As long as the data fits on the destination drive, then yes, it'll work. It's smart enough to not do a partition copy when that happens, but a data one.
    Quote Originally Posted by Saracen View Post
    And by trying to force me to like small pants, they've alienated me.

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    Re: How to 'ghost' Windows 8 system drive onto new drive?

    Managed to ghos the drive last night but have a slight problem I hoped you guys might be able to help me with?
    Ive cloned my 60gig drive onto my new 120gig drive but it seems to have created 3 x partitions, 1 @ 100meg, 1 @ 54gig (these are both the same as the 60gig drive) and then another with the remaining space. It isn't a problem as such but I would prefer to have just the one partition, any idea if it may be possible to achieve this? And if so, how?

    thanks for your help.
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    Re: How to 'ghost' Windows 8 system drive onto new drive?

    I think Windows' built in partitioning tools should let you delete the "spare" partition then resize the system partition to fill the rest of the space.

    The 100MB partition is a Windows system reserved partition - I'm not sure what it does but AFAIK it's present on every Windows install and it should be left alone!

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    Re: How to 'ghost' Windows 8 system drive onto new drive?

    Quote Originally Posted by scaryjim View Post
    The 100MB partition is a Windows system reserved partition - I'm not sure what it does but AFAIK it's present on every Windows install and it should be left alone!
    It's for the Windows recovery tools. If you press F8 and get the nice, fancy recovery since Vista, it's being run from there.

    If the main partition becomes corrupt, then you still have access to your recovery tools without the installation media.
    Quote Originally Posted by Saracen View Post
    And by trying to force me to like small pants, they've alienated me.

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