DRIVE CLONING
It’s worth taking a quick detour to specifically cover drive migration, cloning, or drive-todrive imaging. With SSD prices currently falling through the floor, if you’ve got an older system still running spinning rust or stuck on an outdated, smaller SSD, this is the ideal time to migrate it to a larger, faster new SSD. Copying system files can be off-putting, but with Clonezilla, it’s a cakewalk.
Of course, there are some points we need to cover first. The new drive has to be as large as the original drive, at least in terms of space. You can use the Windows Disk Management console to attempt to shrink partitions, but you may need to delete files to make room, too. Search for “Disk Management,” and select the “Create and format” option. Right-click your C: drive, and choose “Shrink” to see if it’ll reduce enough in size. If you’re moving from an old HDD to a new SSD, this could very likely be the case; you might be better mass-moving a host of user files to a backup drive, and taking it from there.
You need to power down your system and attach the new drive to which you want to migrate. To avoid catastrophic data loss, you might want to remove any unnecessary drives, to avoid wiping them by mistake.
You need to use Clonezilla’s device-todevice mode, rather than the individual partition option—this is the “disk_to_ local_disk” option, rather than “part_to_ local_part.” It might seen cunning just to duplicate the Windows partition, but that omits the bootloader—either MBR or GTP—leaving the clone unbootable.
The next step lists all the detected storage devices. It’s vital that you choose the correct “Source,” and then the correct “Target,” otherwise you’ll nuke your boot drive. Once you confirm, Clonezilla starts duplicating the entire device. If the new device is larger, check “Disk Management” to see whether it will expand the partition to fill any free space.