250G-HDD-Win7 Starter transfer to 120G-SSD?

Hi All,

I have an Acer netbook and would like to put an Intel SSD in it. The current HDD is 250G but my budget only runs to a 120G SSD at $150.
I have the HDD set up as two drives C: and D:
Both C: and D: have about 22G of used space each, plus the PQService and MSR partitions, so 120G should be more than enough for a long time to come.
I checked out Macrium and it appears I can only restore same-size to same-size.

How can I move my Win7 to the smaller SSD without spending bucks?

Thanks

CarvedDuck said:

Hi All,

I have an Acer netbook and would like to put an Intel SSD in it. The current HDD is 250G but my budget only runs to a 120G SSD at $150.
I have the HDD set up as two drives C: and D:
Both C: and D: have about 22G of used space each, plus the PQService and MSR partitions, so 120G should be more than enough for a long time to come.
I checked out Macrium and it appears I can only restore same-size to same-size.

How can I move my Win7 to the smaller SSD without spending bucks?

I don't think you are correct about Macrium. I think it's more like same size to same size or larger.

But more importantly, I assume C is Windows; what is on D?

You should be able to make an image of C alone, D alone, or C an D combined, but we need to know what's on D?

You are going to ignore the PQService and MSR partitions? Probably just as well.

Post a screen shot of Windows Disk Management if possible.

If nothing else, you should be able to shrink C and/or D before making an image of either one of them.

Thanks for the reply, but I do want to include the MSR and PQService. From what I have read here the MSR is essential for the completion of the boot process by win7 and the PQService is to reinstall the OS back to factory specs so I would like to have that also on the SSD.

The drive D: is a partition of the main hard drive and it has all of my data on it. It is a carry over from a line of previous computers back to when 10G was considered huge and I had two of them. :) All of my apps are configured to work from drive D: so it has to come across too.

You are correct, Macrium is same-same or larger, but not larger to smaller.

I will try shrinking the C: and D: partitions to 50G each and them maybe I can use Macrium.

I wanted to find out if it is 100% possible before buying the SSD.

Thanks

Post that screenshot.

MSR--I'm guessing this is Acer's version of a System Reserved partition. If so, yes it is need to boot. You could move the stuff in MSR to C, but it's probably simpler to just move MSR to the SSD as is.

Best idea would probably be to shrink C as much as possible, then make an image file of C and MSR together.

You could omit PQ Service if you instead make recovery CDs, which have the same purpose.

Normally, I wouldn't move my data over by using an image--I'd just do an ordinary copy with the mouse. Is that doable? I know little about netbooks and assume they contain only 1 hard drive. Do you have an external backup drive of any kind??

You are certainly going to need another drive of some type to store the Macrium image file before you restore it.

Hard to help more before we see a screenshot.

Another option is to clone, rather than image. Image is more commonly used.

Space can be at a premium on SSDs, so you may want to move only the necessary onto it.

Thanks again, not sure why you are so keen on the screen shot but it has...
______________ - Simple - basic - - Healthy recovery partition 13GB
System reserved - Simple - basic - NTFS - Healthy (System, Active, Primary partition) 100MB
Win7_C C: ____ - Simple - basic - NTFS - Healthy (Boot, Page file, Crash dump, Primary partition) 119.12GB
Win7_D D: ____ - Simple - basic - NTFS - Healthy (Logical drive) 100.67GB

Anyway, win7 will not let me reduce the size of the C: partition below 118G even though it only has 21G of used space.

I was able to reduce the D: down to 25G, but still too big for the SSD when combined with the system stuff.

Good point on the D: copy rather than image. I guess I can do that after I Restore the C: image, MSR and PQService and then partition the SSD for the D: drive .

I have USB hard drives and USB DVD burner so storing the image is not a problem.

Everything is necessary! :) I take this with me everywhere and plug it into networks at work and at home.

The screen shot is much preferable because it reduces the possibility of making an error.

If that matters to you.

You can probably shrink C more by using the bootable disc version of Partition Wizard.

I wouldn't move PQ Service to the SSD, but it's your choice.