Cloning M.2 to HDD question.

Win7 Pro.
Over 1MM hits for advice on cloning HDD to M.2.
Zero for cloning M.2 to HDD.
Will Use Macrium Reflect. Internal to internal drives.
Any pitfalls, thoughts, or suggestions?

Also, SSD to USB clone?

Paul in Houston TX wrote:
Win7 Pro.
Over 1MM hits for advice on cloning HDD to M.2.
Zero for cloning M.2 to HDD.
Will Use Macrium Reflect. Internal to internal drives.
Any pitfalls, thoughts, or suggestions?

Also, SSD to USB clone?

Since cloning generally leaves the source device
in one piece, what's the worst that could happen ?
A little aggravation ? A little more aggravation ?
Think positive :-)

I can think of ways of cloning that are *always*
going to cause grief, such as "dd". For everything
else, the doses of aggravation should be smaller.

Macrium has a "boot repair" in the emergency CD menu,
so if the clone didn't go so good, chances are all
the files are there, but some identifier used for
booting isn't quite right. And the boot repair can
fix it. Macrium does the equivalent of some
bcdedit commands, modifies some identifiers so
the two hardware devices aren't using exactly
the same identifiers. That's part of that it does.
I don't know if it "re-arms" any drivers by editing
the registry on the target system or not. My guess would
be, after a clone, the two OSes would not be using
*exactly* the same registry file content. They would
have diverged by then.

There are two kinds of clones:

1) Forensic clone, for court cases. Must not
change anything. Probably won't boot.

2) Clone where enough stuff is adjusted to
cause least hair loss on a boot. That's
what Macrium does. And I wouldn't say it's perfect,
as you do need to use the boot repair occasionally.
But more importantly, you can also use that boot
repair (on the emergency CD) as a tonic for
"other" brands of cloning :-)

Paul

On 03/04/2018 04:44 PM, Paul in Houston TX wrote:
Win7 Pro.
Over 1MM hits for advice on cloning HDD to M.2.
Zero for cloning M.2 to HDD.
Will Use Macrium Reflect.Â* Internal to internal drives.
Any pitfalls, thoughts, or suggestions?

Also, SSD to USB clone?

Hi Paul in TX,

M.2 SATA or M.2 NVMe?

I use CloneZilla. I have done SATA over USB3 -- SATA
many, many times. SATA -- NVMe several times.

I have yet to do NVMe -- SATA, but as the other Paul
said, the original is not harmed, so give it a whirl!

USB 2 is slower than hell doing a clone.

-T

Paul wrote:
Paul in Houston TX wrote:
Win7 Pro.
Over 1MM hits for advice on cloning HDD to M.2.
Zero for cloning M.2 to HDD.
Will Use Macrium Reflect. Internal to internal drives.
Any pitfalls, thoughts, or suggestions?

Also, SSD to USB clone?

Since cloning generally leaves the source device
in one piece, what's the worst that could happen ?
A little aggravation ? A little more aggravation ?
Think positive :-)

I can think of ways of cloning that are *always*
going to cause grief, such as "dd". For everything
else, the doses of aggravation should be smaller.

Macrium has a "boot repair" in the emergency CD menu,
so if the clone didn't go so good, chances are all
the files are there, but some identifier used for
booting isn't quite right. And the boot repair can
fix it. Macrium does the equivalent of some
bcdedit commands, modifies some identifiers so
the two hardware devices aren't using exactly
the same identifiers. That's part of that it does.
I don't know if it "re-arms" any drivers by editing
the registry on the target system or not. My guess would
be, after a clone, the two OSes would not be using
*exactly* the same registry file content. They would
have diverged by then.

There are two kinds of clones:

1) Forensic clone, for court cases. Must not
change anything. Probably won't boot.

2) Clone where enough stuff is adjusted to
cause least hair loss on a boot. That's
what Macrium does. And I wouldn't say it's perfect,
as you do need to use the boot repair occasionally.
But more importantly, you can also use that boot
repair (on the emergency CD) as a tonic for
"other" brands of cloning :-)

Paul

Thanks Paul.

On 03/04/2018 09:10 PM, Paul in Houston TX wrote:
T wrote:
On 03/04/2018 04:44 PM, Paul in Houston TX wrote:
Win7 Pro.
Over 1MM hits for advice on cloning HDD to M.2.
Zero for cloning M.2 to HDD.
Will Use Macrium Reflect.Â* Internal to internal drives.
Any pitfalls, thoughts, or suggestions?

Also, SSD to USB clone?

Hi Paul in TX,

M.2 SATA or M.2 NVMe?

I use CloneZilla.Â* I have done SATA over USB3 -- SATA
many, many times.Â* SATA -- NVMe several times.

I have yet to do NVMe -- SATA, but as the other Paul
said, the original is not harmed, so give it a whirl!

USB 2 is slower than hell doing a clone.

-T

Thanks T.
NVMe to sata hdd and then back if necessary.
The sata hdd to usb2 hdd clone on the laptop takes 2.5 hours, 320g, 4
partitions.
The sata hdd to sata hdd on this machine takes 20 min, 500g, 2 partitions.
This machine is the one that will be getting the 500g Samsung 960 Pro
nvme m.2 soon.
The laptop will get a generic 500g ssd sata.


Go for it! NVMe drive are about four times faster that SATA SSD's.
You will love it !!!!

If Marcium does not resize he partitions, use gparted from one
of the various Live USB's

My Favorite:
https://spins.fedoraproject.org/xfce/download/
use DD or Rufus to cut the ISO to a flash drive