Win11: How easy is a system disk upgrade?

[pljones]

So clone the disk to a new, larger disk, then use the partition wizard to extend the partition. That's more like what I'd expected. Thanks.

[dellboy]

So clone the disk to a new, larger disk, then use the partition wizard to extend the partition. That's more like what I'd expected. Thanks.

You are overthinking this. There is free windows software that will clone and "autofit" your old partition to a new larger SSD.

[Guenon]

That's hardly worth saying and certainly not on topic.

It's very much worth saying. Having a separate system partition allows you to routinely make a backup image of the operating system and restore it just as routinely in a matter of minutes, onto a different physical drive if need be. Storing all projects, data files, etc, on one large C partition is the "consumer way" of using Windows computers, and generally makes maintenance procedures like that more cumbersome. Given the topic, it's a valuable point to mention.

[AcrossTheSky]

Acronis true image can clone the disk to your new drive. Some new drives come with freebie cloning software as well - check when purchasing.
Either way cloning is pretty common however watch out if your drive is setup with some stupid intel raid setup or something as they generally don't clone well. If the drive is in ahci mode then you should be good.
Also cloning from legacy bios to uefi is problematic however legacy bios in win 11 is not supported so that's kind of a moot point.

Acronis True Image is The King - don't teach anyone the knowledge the wizards only know

[pljones]

...

Just go away. The system disk is full -- you're deciding with NO EVIDENCE it's because of misuse. Just go away

[pljones]

You are overthinking this. There is free windows software that will clone and "autofit" your old partition to a new larger SSD.

No, I'm asking for advice before doing something I know to cause problems, having done it before. I've had plenty of conflicting advice in this thread, starting with "You cannot ever do that" through "You should never need to do that" to "It's trivial". I should know not to look for system advice here by now...

[dellboy]

You are overthinking this. There is free windows software that will clone and "autofit" your old partition to a new larger SSD.

No, I'm asking for advice before doing something I know to cause problems, having done it before. I've had plenty of conflicting advice in this thread, starting with "You cannot ever do that" through "You should never need to do that" to "It's trivial". I should know not to look for system advice here by now...

If you clone your existing small hard drive to a larger SSD, nothing will happen to your old hard drive. You can put it into a drawer with its current data intact. No harm is done to the new SSD either. If you do not like the results you can format it and try something else,as you still have your original disk. Here is a link to an article that explains "autofit"..........................

https://www.ubackup.com/windows-10/clon ... -8523.html

[Guenon]

Just go away. The system disk is full -- you're deciding with NO EVIDENCE it's because of misuse. Just go away

Huh. I find this take weird and problematic. I don't know why your system disk is full. I also didn't "decide" it's full because of misuse. Instead, my comment was about best practices in maintaining a Windows system efficiently, and about things like that being relevant to the topic.

[pljones]

I didn't ask for guidance on "best practice for maintaining a Windows system efficiently", I asked for guidance on moving a system disk to larger drive. Again, you're choosing to change things to your way, rather than the way the world really is.

[pljones]

If you clone your existing small hard drive to a larger SSD, nothing will happen to your old hard drive. You can put it into a drawer with its current data intact. No harm is done to the new SSD either. If you do not like the results you can format it and try something else,as you still have your original disk. Here is a link to an article that explains "autofit"..........................

https://www.ubackup.com/windows-10/clon ... -8523.html

Now that looks like a nice tool. I plan to pull the system disk from the computer it's in and plug both that and the new larger drive into my dev box and do the work there. (My last experience was, to be fair, swapping system drive, motherboard, CPU and RAM... so Windows probably didn't really believe it was in the same machine... Hey, the case is the same!)

[Guenon]

I didn't ask for guidance on "best practice for maintaining a Windows system efficiently", I asked for guidance on moving a system disk to larger drive.

1) How to move a system disk to a larger drive easily touches upon "hmm, what might the best practices for maintaining a system and its partitions be" - this is a given.

2) This is what happened, in the words of jackoo:

This is a public forum.
Recommending multiple partitions is relevant to cloning system drives, so very much on topic.
If it is not useful for you, it may be useful for others.

At some point, be it next month or in a couple of years, someone will be thinking about Windows partitioning topics, and ends up reading this thread.

You could have reacted with something like a "yes, that's good to know, albeit in this case I'm just looking for ways to move and resize my system, thanks." Instead, you practically denounced the mention as worthless. Having maintained Windows workstations and imaged/deployed their partitions (at certain educational institutions and also in my own audio/music business) I figured I'd pop in a bit and comment on that, as Windows partitioning info in general is indeed beneficial in a thread like this. You reacted by telling me to go away hahh.

Next time discussing something technical on a forum, don't take everything so dang personally that a parallel discussion then goes into a meta commentary on who said what and how. Discussing the actual concepts, what is good to know, what related insights might there be... benefits everyone in the long run. Bye now.

[pljones]

If you want to start posting on a topic about maintaining windows systems, then be my guest - I've no objection. But to try and say it's answering my question is just obtuse to the point of rudeness.

Indeed, if you want to post on any topic - just go ahead - and start a new topic.