Imaging HDD->SDD and Imaging Software

[chazus]

First, I'm looking for some decent, free imaging software. I used to use Ghost, but most of my software is long outdated and I'd rather make sure it's compatible with everything. I'm doing two things.

Imaging 2.5" 80gb SATA to 2.5" 250gb SATA, nothing special there.

The tricky one is imaging a 1tb HDD to 250gb SSD. I know I'll need to have the total data under the ~230gb range, obviously. I believe the OS was installed as AHCI... Is that something that can still be done, or do I -have- to reinstall going to an SSD? The system has a lot of stuff installed, but it's clean.

[vesseblah]

I used DriveImage XML to copy from smaller SSD to bigger SSD boot drive when I updated the disc. Can't find reviews of any other totally free tool being better than that for windows.

Copying from big disc to small one is possible at least with Ghost, not sure about DriveImage XML. You can always try. It will help to defragment it few times to make sure all files are in the first 250GB and then resize the partition so that it will be smaller than the destination drive for sure.

[Deleted]

new drive already in possesion? (i heard some desktop ssd kits come with acronis limited use clone key)
also what kind of data do you want to transfer? (because if it includes programs it's gonna be messy as hell in the registry)

[vesseblah]

also what kind of data do you want to transfer? (because if it includes programs it's gonna be messy as hell in the registry)

Cloning disc has got nothing to do with registry whatsoever. All installed programs will work exactly like before.

[chazus]

It's not a 'new' drive per se. It's used, just the bare drive.

I tried DriveImage XML... and it seemed to not want do clone drives, just partitions. I was a bit confused (which made me sad) so maybe I'll take another look, but it didn't seem to want to do just a straight clone. it looks like I want to do this:

(Partition 1 Sys Reserve 350mb) (Partition 2 Boot/NTFS 75gb) (80gb drive)
V V V V V V V V
(Partition 1 Sys Reserve 350mb) (Partition 2 Boot/NTFS 238gb) (250gb drive)

[vesseblah]

Yeah, it can do whole disc if you select all partitions... Bad thing is that the version I used also scaled up "system reserve" so it's not very intelligent but it did work. I ended up doing clean format anyway few weeks later for various reasons.

[Faithh]

It's not a 'new' drive per se. It's used, just the bare drive.

I tried DriveImage XML... and it seemed to not want do clone drives, just partitions. I was a bit confused (which made me sad) so maybe I'll take another look, but it didn't seem to want to do just a straight clone. it looks like I want to do this:

(Partition 1 Sys Reserve 350mb) (Partition 2 Boot/NTFS 75gb) (80gb drive)
V V V V V V V V
(Partition 1 Sys Reserve 350mb) (Partition 2 Boot/NTFS 238gb) (250gb drive)

Hmm I've been hearing that if you didn't enable AHCI in bios and you went into installing a HDD/SSD you obviously don't have ahci drivers etc. If you do, why don't you just let windows make an image backup and get a W7 (repair)disc/usb orsomething and use the repair function to move the image file to your new disk?

[chazus]

I think I may have caused a bit of confusion.

I'm doing two entirely separate images.

1) 80gb HDD to 250gb HDD

2) 1TB HDD to 250gb SSD

I picked up Macrium Reflect (before people had posted) and that seems to be working well enough. I haven't done the HDD->SSD yet, and likely won't for another week or so. I don't even have the SSD yet. I'm just wondering if, assuming AHCI is already set, can I just image the drive over, space allowing

EDIT: The 80->250gb imaging completed perfectly with Macrium Reflect. So that's a non-issue now. I just need to determine what should be done with the HDD->SSD situation

[llDemonll]

I've used Macrium Reflect and it's really the only reliable one I've used, and the only one I've had be able to successfully restore a computer. I have Symantec Backup Exec System Restore as well and it's never worked for me on Windows 7 but works fine with XP (useless now)