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Disk Cloning or Disk Backup/Restore ?

I want to migrate all Data from my Windows 10 System SSD (256GB) to a new SSD (500GB).
The Sysem disk contains 3 consecutive partitions (EFI,C:System(local), Recovery), EFI is the fist, Recovery the lastpartition, C: in the middle.
Currently I just make Disk Backup and Disk Restore operation from bootable USB stick (contains Aomei Backkupper SW).
Backup/Restore is very fast and has already proven to work in case of OS corruption.
When I make now an upgrade to 500 GB and just Restore the current mage, I would expect large unused area at the end. Is it possible to change partition structure before restore ?. I would like  to use the additional space for C: only, shifting the Recovery Partition to the end before restoring. Is Cloning a better alternative ?
Is a different brand of the disk of any importance when migrating.

Thanks.

Comments

  • Brand of disk does not matter. You can clone or use your backup to restore to the new drive. Either should work. Just make sure the new drive is formatted GPT and not MBR. If it is a new drive, this won't matter. You really want the unused part of the partition to be adjacent to the C partition so it can be expanded. You should be able adjust the size of partitions in either process as it should be offered as an option. Expand the C partition to fit the drive space. If for some reason the unused partition is at the end after the Recovery partition, you can readjust them using the free version of Partition Assistant very easily. I've used the restore function to migrate my drive to a new one multiple times without any problems.
  • Thanks a lot for your answer. !

    So if I understand correctly, it should be possible in Backupper free to restore a System disk backup e.g from
    Disk A/port 1 to another Disk B/port 2. Booting later from disk B/port2 should be possible.
    Free Partition manager  can then be used to adjust  the new disk partitions on Disk B/port 2 when booting from DiskA/port 1.(the old disk with partition maneger on it). The only requirement is a free port for disc connection.

    My prefered solution for Disaster Recovery: ( Tools on bootable USB)
    If I can adjust size/position of partitions before restoring using the free Standard Backup/Restore on USB would be a perfect solution for me since Disk backups/Restores are much faster when no OS is running
    Partition Assistance on USB would be a perfect  feature.
    Do I need the Pro Version.? Currently C: partition is not the Last partition so it cannot just be expanded to the end of disk. Last partition on disk is/should be also on new disk Recovery partition (ca 500MB). So this partition should be repositioned to the end of disk, then C: expanded to the start of Recovery position without gap.



    Thanks


  • Read this: https://www.backup-utility.com/help/disk-restore.html
    You only need to put the new drive in port 1, boot from the USB boot drive and restore your image, which should be located somewhere else in your PC or on an external drive. You can adjust the partition size as an option when doing the restore. You do not need the Pro version to do this.
  • Thanks. That is exactly what I want to be sure.
    So I only need Standard Backupper on USB, which already gives me capability to adjust partitions for the new drive before restoring. So i don't need a separate Partition manager.

  • edited July 2019
    You shouldn't need Partition Assistant, but it is there for you if after the restore you need to adjust the partitions for some reason. It is my experience that Aomei Partition Assistant is more reliable than Backupper.  Let me clarify that statement. Once you've create a backup image, Backupper works great at restoring it. Backupper is having other problems that have been discussed at length in this forum. I've played around with PA and haven't had one problem with any of it's functions.
  • What I found in documentation you referenced are restricted options in Standard Backupper.
    Only "Copy without resizing partitions" and "Add unused space to all partitions" are supported.
    To manually adjust partition size the Pro version would be needed.
    So in case of my system disk I would expect that all partitions size (EFI, C:, Recovery) would be resized by a factor of two, when the new drive is twice the size of the old one. EFI would then have about 200MB and Recovery 1GB, which should be no problem I assume to use just the Standard version.
    How do I get Partition assistance  on bootable USB. ? Is there also an option to create, like contained in Backupper ?
    I actually found a product WinPE which contained both tools and was able to generate a bootable USB. Unfortunately when starting Backupper and want to Backup the system disk, i found a problem, When I input chacter "y" character "z" is displayed ??. So I deleted WINPE. Seems to be not very well tested.




  • edited July 2019
    Yes, PA has the option to create a bootable USB drive. Works great for resizing partitions.
    Sorry I have Pro so I wasn't aware of free restrictions. I would copy without resizing then just resize the partitions you want with PA. No need to resize, EFI partition or any other than C. I also have PA Pro so you might want to read about "differences" to be sure you will get what you need in the free version. https://www.disk-partition.com/download-home.html
  • Thanks.
    Another option would be to use the windows command "diskpart" and partition the new disk with the Windows 10 partition layout (Script is available from Microsoft to generate proper Layout) from the command Line available also  in Backupper.!
    Then instead of doing a disk restore, just restoring the partitions
    of the Backup (EFI,MSR,C:,Recovery) to the new disk.
    So no extra tool would be needed.

    What do you think ?


  • If you make a SYSTEM image, Aomei will only restore those partitions necessary to make the disk boot. In this case it would be the EFI, MSR and C partitions. You do not need the Recovery partition and a lot of people try to delete it. Can't do that in disk management but this method will get rid of it for you. There is nothing there that won't be available to you if you boot up a Windows install USB and click on 'repair' instead of install. Use the following method to get your destination disk ready for restoring to. Use the GPT method. You can do this from the command prompt in the Aomei rescue disk. https://www.overclock.net/forum/20-hard-drives-storage/1227647-how-initialize-format-new-disk-use-windows.html
    Again, don't use expand to fit or it expand the EFI and MSR partitions as well. After restoring, just open disk management and expand C to fill the rest of the drive.
  • I try to avoid expand but would like to have the proper layout including Recovery partition, so USB  is not necessary for certain recovery operations.
    I would not make a System backup  but a Disk backup of the OS disk .
    I already have a working GPT OS disk with the proper layout with the 4 partitions as described above (EFI,MSR,C,Recovery). No other partition is on this disk! I already tested it with Backupper on USB by backing up the whole disk to a HD (internally connected).Restoring from it to the same OS disk, worked without any problem.
    In case of a total crash of the OS disk, I would replace OS disk with a new larger SSD  by using diskpart preparing all partitions (actually just increasing C Partition, this is possible using the shrink option when creating C: and then recovery partition), leaving the others the same size, position) from within Backupper on USB and then just restore the partitions  EFI,MSR,C;RECOVERY.
    As I understand it should be possible to restore these partitions from a disk backup. ?


  • Not sure I can help. You seem to know what you want to do and how to do it. You should be ok.
  • I just invoked backupper from my USB stick and startet diskpart from command shell . It gives me version 6.1.7601.
    I have generated the USB with backupper  for several years ago and used it already in Windows 7 from where I rently upgraded to Win 10.
    I have seen that this version does not support the shrink option in create primary partition command, which is useful for reserving a defined space for generating the last partition on disk (Eg. Recovery partition). Actually this should not not be a real problem as you can allways define the size you want manually. The functions to restore (select only one possible) partition from a disk image file to a destination disk partition is already supported in my old Backupper USB  version.(Don`t know version number)
    The version of Diskpart shown in my Win10 is 10.0.18362.1, so do you know which version of diskpart is included in the actual Backupper Standard, when generating USB with it ?

    Thank's
  • It is version 6.1.7601.
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