Image your system with free Macrium

1. For moving your OS to another SSD, you might want to look at this:

SSD - Install and Transfer the Operating System

2. There is a more comprehensive Macrium tutorial here:

Imaging with free Macrium

RaviR said:

Thanks for the response, so in essence if i create an image of my drives, i can just reimage another new drive and everything will go back to working normal? No modification of files etc just reimage and go back to having fun =)

For the SSD you have to make an alignment first unless you use the darg and drop method in Macrium. That preserves the alignment.

RaviR said:

Thanks for the response, so in essence if i create an image of my drives, i can just reimage another new drive and everything will go back to working normal? No modification of files etc just reimage and go back to having fun =)

I have found that I had to not only restore the image to the new, ex: SSD, but also the HDD at the same time otherwise Windows was "broke"

RaviR said:

Thanks for the response, so in essence if i create an image of my drives, i can just reimage another new drive and everything will go back to working normal? No modification of files etc just reimage and go back to having fun =)

Just be sure it boots from the correct partition (startup repair can fix it anyway). Just be sure the new drive with temp, my documents etc has the same drive letter as before. No further actions needed!

But how can you be sure drive letter is still the same?!! Boot and login as built-in administrator (which has normal temp, my documents etc folders... not redirected). Check drive letters and eventually correct them. Now boot as your own username

Britton30 said:

RaviR said:

Thanks for the response, so in essence if i create an image of my drives, i can just reimage another new drive and everything will go back to working normal? No modification of files etc just reimage and go back to having fun =)

I have found that I had to not only restore the image to the new, ex: SSD, but also the HDD at the same time otherwise Windows was "broke"

I'm a bit puzzled by this statement - can you explain.
I restored my macrium image to the SSD with the original HDD disconnected. Then set BIOS to boot from the SSD first. Reconnect the old HDD and set it inactive. The SSD and old HDD may have the same disk signature so the HDD could appear as offline in "Disk Management". You just go into Disk management and set the HDD to online and it will give it a new disk signature (then no signature clash).

@OP
I'd suggest you keep the image of your old HDD in case you ever want to temporarily go back to a HDD.
Normally your HDD OS partition size needs to be no larger than the SSD. WHS can comment if this is no longer an issue with Macrium.

If you have a spare $20 then Paragon Migrate will do it all for you.

Michael, my HDD never was Active, only the SSD. I restored a OS image to the SSD only with the HDD connected and while it would boot it came with a black screen, no doc, pictures, videos, apps didn't work (no appdata folder) etc. I then restored the Users (data) HDD image to the HDD with the SSD still attached, then all worked fine other than having to update security and some Windows updates.
My BIOS remained unchanged, it was always set to boot the SSD first.

Britton30 said:

Michael, my HDD never was Active, only the SSD. I restored a OS image to the SSD only with the HDD connected and while it would boot it came with a black screen, no doc, pictures, videos, apps didn't work (no appdata folder) etc. I then restored the Users (data) HDD image to the HDD with the SSD still attached, then all worked fine other than having to update security and some Windows updates.
My BIOS remained unchanged, it was always set to boot the SSD first.

Gary, that is very strange. You must have made a wrong turn somewhere.

Normally your HDD OS partition size needs to be no larger than the SSD. WHS can comment if this is no longer an issue with Macrium

Michael, that is correct. Macrium can now work even with smaller target partitions as long as the data fits.

I thought that was the case Wolfgang. It is hard to dismiss the product (Macrium Reflect).