KB: How to clone and extend an SSD system drive
These instructions will guide you on cloning an SSD system drive to a larger SSD.
NOTE: You will need a USB drive.
This guide is based on having the new larger SSD installed as the main drive in a system, with the previous system drive connected via a USB adapter.
- Download Clonezilla from https://clonezilla.org/
- With a USB stick, delete any existing partitions and create a new one of 512MiB (on the USB stick).
- Format the partition as FAT or FAT32. Any other file format will NOT work!
- Extract Clonezilla to the newly created USB partition.
- Eject the USB drive and plug it into the computer that will be performing the cloning.
- Turn on the computer and boot from the USB stick just inserted.
- Select a desired option from the boot menu.
- Follow the on-screen prompts, selecting the corrects drives and source and destination.
- When prompted, select the option to copy the whole source drive as-is, i.e. all the partitions will be exactly the same size on the destination as the source.
- Let the clone complete.
- Shutdown the computer, remove the old (source) drive, and remove the Clonezilla USB stick.
- Boot up the computer, which should hopefully boot up using the newly cloned drive.
- Download and install MiniTool Partition Wizard from https://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html
- Run MiniTool Partition Wizard.
- With the newly cloned system drive selected, right click the last valid partition and select 'Move'.
- In the popup, move that partition to the end of the new drive.
- Apply the changes.
- When complete, you can close MiniTool Parition Wizard.
- Launch Computer Management.
- Go to the 'Disk Management' section.
- With the new drive, right click the middle partition that is now left of the available space.
- Select 'Extend Volume'.
- The popup should be pre-populated with all the available space, so click 'Next'.
- Complete the wizard and the drive should now be extended correctly.