Win11: How easy is a system disk upgrade?

[pljones]

My main live PC only has a small SSD for its system drive. It's a single main partition for C: plus the usual system bits. I'd like to copy the whole lot to a new drive with more space and then swap the drives.

Of course, I want everything to "just work" after the swap, with the new bigger drive being C:.

Any recommended tools? Is this a "just don't do it" idea?

[lfm]

I would try using backup software like Macrium Reflect for this. I used to move 3 disks to 2 SSD config on a new computer. I did not do OS then, since W7 vs W11, but had some contact with Macrium folks how to do it best.

To do restore you could make a drag-n-drop of partitions and similar over to another disk.

I would recommend their support advise how to do it.

What I suspect is that UEFI bios on newer machines might complicate things a bit with some security crap.

But there might be disk ghosting software that does this in a flash.

[Shinizzle]

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.

[pljones]

Thanks.

It's a new-ish UEFI machine with AHCI SSD in - so long as Windows doesn't winge about the drive being swapped out, I'd hope it would be okay -- that's mostly what I was concerned over. (Format the new SSD as a system drive, image across the old system partition, resize the partition before it's in use...)

The other bit is Windows has a habit of "knowing" a drive by its drive ID and using that to assign the drive letter, so switching "C" from one drive to another hasn't been that easy in my limited experience. Any hints or reassurances there would be appreciated, too .

[mgw38]

The other bit is Windows has a habit of "knowing" a drive by its drive ID and using that to assign the drive letter, so switching "C" from one drive to another hasn't been that easy in my limited experience. Any hints or reassurances there would be appreciated, too .

I did a system drive swap via cloning not that long ago and Windows did indeed start to throw errors into the system log that the Drive ID does not match. It did not impact performance though. It was just a bit annoying whenever I looked up the log files.

[jackoo]

You need to clone the partition, not just copy the contents.
Do not extend the partition, use the remaining space for a different partition.

Some copy protection mechanisms use the "HDD serial" which is assigned when you format a drive, and you can break that, if you don't clone.

Changing drive letters is very easy, just use Disk Management tool, built-in windows.

[pljones]

Do not extend the partition, use the remaining space for a different partition.

The point of the bigger drive is the existing disk is full of the single full partition. If I can't change the size of the partition, it may as well stay put.

[jackoo]

Do not extend the partition, use the remaining space for a different partition.

The point of the bigger drive is the existing disk is full of the single full partition. If I can't change the size of the partition, it may as well stay put.

That's precisely why it is recommended to always have at least two partitions. One for the system, another for data. Data is expandable, movable, copy-able.

Hard links or "junctions" may help you with 'a full C drive'.

[pljones]

That's precisely why it is recommended to always have at least two partitions. One for the system, another for data. Data is expandable, movable, copy-able.

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

[dellboy]

That's precisely why it is recommended to always have at least two partitions. One for the system, another for data. Data is expandable, movable, copy-able.

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

I agree that its best to have at least two partitions. And now is the best time to partition your new disk if you do decide to partition it. I recently purchased a 4TB NVME SSD and partitioned it into four. The old system disk was cloned into the first partition,and the others were for data. I used the free "AOMEI Backer-upper" to accomplish the whole procedure. If I remember correctly,the clone software worked out the new size of the partition. You can then Image the system disk, and if it ever gets corrupted it takes a few minutes to reinstall.

[jackoo]

That's precisely why it is recommended to always have at least two partitions. One for the system, another for data. Data is expandable, movable, copy-able.

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

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.

[pljones]

If I can't make the partition bigger, it's going to stay full. There's nothing left on it to delete - I have lots of storage elsewhere. The only point here is about making the system partition bigger.

If that's not possible on Windows - I wouldn't put is past Microsoft but it leaves me staggered - then so be it.

[BertKoor]

Is it a disk with just one partition?
If not: Run Disk Management. Open Run Command (Windows button +R) a dialog box will open and type "diskmgmt.msc".
In the Disk Management screen, just right-click on the partition that you want to resize, and select “Extend Volume” from the menu.

Otherwise there's always stuff that can be relocated (if you really want to)

[jackoo]

Yes, the question is whether "extending" the partition preserves the "Volume Serial Number" and the "Volume GUID".
I know for a fact some plugins check the volume serial number via the GetVolumeInformation windows API call to determine if the uniqueness of system (or drive). You can get that Volume Serial if you just type 'dir' into your command prompt.

I would recommend to look into C:\ProgramData, find big directories, copy them to the new partition and then make a "junction" in the C:\ drive to the new partition. At least this is what I did in the past to make more space on a full C drive.

[donkey tugger]

If I can't make the partition bigger, it's going to stay full. There's nothing left on it to delete - I have lots of storage elsewhere. The only point here is about making the system partition bigger.

If that's not possible on Windows - I wouldn't put is past Microsoft but it leaves me staggered - then so be it.

You can do it dead easy using Minitool Partition Wizard (free);

https://www.minitool.com/partition-mana ... -home.html

Done it loads of times on various machines and never had any problem.