Windows 10: What happens to the remaining space when you clone to a larger drive?

I cloned my 256gb SSD to my 500gb HDD with Macrium Reflect. But I can't find the remaining unallocated space.

:)

 

Clone a 1 Tb drive to a 512 Mb SSC

Hi Vaughn,

You can
clone larger HDD to small SSD with a professional disk cloning software as long as the used space is smaller than the SSD. You will not worry it will clone the unused space unless you use sector by sector clone mode.

I suggest you to clone your HDD to SSD with AOMEI Backupper, if the used space is larger than the SSD, you can clone only the OS to SSD and keep the HDD as data storage. This software is very easy to operate.

 

Trouble cloning a ssd to a larger one

It is easy to clone from a small SSD with V8 of Reflect to a large drive, using drag and drop.
You do not need to use images, or other third party tools.
Everything can be done from Reflect GUI using drag and drop.

1) Lets say you have 4 partitions
EFI
MSR
OS (C)
Recovery partition

Here are the steps plus some images to help explain.

1) From gui is select all 4 partitions and select target drive to clone to (as you have already done).

2) on target drive, remove any existing partitions using delete partition option so all space is unallocated.
You can skip this step if no partitions on target drive.









3) Drag EFI from source to target

4) Drag MSR from source to target

5) Drag Recovery partition from source to target (looks like this after 3 partitions dragged)



6) Select Recovery partition and click on float right option. The recovery option moves to far right.

(If you have other partitions to right of C drive, drag them before Recovery partion and float right)




7) Drag OS partition to unallocated space between MSR and Recovery partition (Drive F as using a VHD but it will be C for host OS)





8) Select Recovery Partition and click fill space option




9) Click next and continue cloning


It may seem a bit complicated but literally takes one minute.

 

Moving to SSD. Clone or not to clone?

Part of how I keep my SSD fast is to clone it to a platter drive, then clone back. You just want to make sure that you are only cloning teh used space, and not the empty space.


So, again, I isntall Windows to the ssd. Clone to platter drive, then clone back.

I am not sure why, but if I do not do the clone step, the drive's speed, and windows booting, decreases substantially within a week or so.

I am using a Corsair F60 SSD and a Western Digital 500AAKS as drives, and using the free version of Acronis that WD provides, if any of that matters. I am not sure, at this point.