Macrium Reflect

Funny the poster came to the same conclusion I did and used Acronis. But then reading further on I am not quite sure what the guy means by dragging the partition to the smaller drive. I have to think on that I mean from what environment would help.
I think it's cheaper and easier to keep Acronis around and I should get over my annoyance with them from prior years its been long enough. One thing about Acronis when it worked right it was the easiest and most complete program to use and tyoday proved i because all I had to do was select "clone drive" and voila!

 

Well! What ever works is what you need to do. Dragging and dropping is a pretty simple thing to do.
I have never had the need to restore to a smaller drive, but I'm betting big bucks that Macrium is right on top of this.
How else could they stay around?? If acronis can do the job, so can Macrium!

 

It may be a simple thing but the answers I have seen are hardly simple. Drag and drop makes no sense unless we know what to drag and drop it in. I own Acronis so for me this was by far the simplest thing to do.

 

I wouldn't be saying it is simple to drag and drop if you have never done it,Gary. Oh wait you googled it .
That link you gave is BS involved. Why go to all that trouble.

 

OK Dougie! What ever you think! I have never had the need to restore a Macrium image to a smaller drive. I know you have all the answers to every thing, so give us your detailed step by step solution. I would use my docking cable and try to drag the C partition to the new SSD, but I don't have a SSD to see if it would work. Rich got the job done and that's all that's needed. I know how to drag and drop. My 8 year old great grandson knows how to drag and drop. Here you go Dougie! Drag and drop.
To drag an item, select it, then hold down the mouse or trackpad button while you drag it to a new location. Release the button to drop the item into place.

 

This is as close as I can get. I have a cheap Toshiba lap top! You drag from the source to the destination. Like I said my 8 year old great grandson knows drag and drop.
You got the job done Rich and that's a good thing!

 

I was ageeing with Rich you have to know what to drag and to exactly where.
No I have never dragged data from one drive to another or dragged an image into a different folder.
I still have a piece of string connected to the start button I must confess.

Perhaps you could give me a tutorial on how to copy and paste while your at it.

Yes I clone a lot as I have multiple computers and drives. Spinners, SSD's and M.2 PCIe drives.

Yes I have a simple fix but not posting for your scrutiny. Sorry.

 

Sure thing Dougie. I copied and pasted this from Google. I sure wouldn't want you to post any thing for my scrutiny. Good night Dougie. Have a nice week end my friend!

1. Open the location that contains the file you want to copy.
   
   
2. Right-click the file, and then click Copy.
   
   
3. Open the location where you want to store the copy.
   
   
4. Right-click an empty space within the location, and then click Paste. The copy of the original file is now stored in the new location.

For information about copying multiple files, see Select multiple files or folders.

Tips

• Another way to copy and paste files is to use the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+C (Copy) and Ctrl+V (Paste).
  
  
• You can also press and hold the right-mouse button and then drag the file to the new location. When you release the mouse button, click Copy here.
  
  
• You can copy and paste a folder the same way you would a file. When you do this, all the files in the folder are copied as well.

 

I think there is a lot of confusion on this thread. Rich you said you used acronis to clone your drive, but Macrium wouldn't clone it.
I don't have a answer for you. I confess I have never cloned a drive with Macrium. All I have ever done is create images and restore the image to the same HHD. It's good to hear that acronis got the job done for you and the OP. I was making a little joke about dragging and dropping and someone thought I needed to be corrected. That's OK. I think we have every thing in order now and we can go on to better things. You will probably get another PM from someone. LMAO

 

I was pulling your chain,Gary

 

I think there is a lot of "tongue and cheek" here much of which is unrecognized and am tempted to dump the entire thread, but I don't want to succumb to that...let's just try to roll forward here guys. Oh and "drag and drop" is not really "copy and paste" though it accomplishes the same thing....Dougie is correct I wasn't trying to be difficult and the task actually occurs quite often in fact almost all the time when you go to switch from a hard drive to an ssd drive simply because we never fill our large hard drives of today and large Ssd drives are still oppressively expensive to buy.

Acronis automatically adjusts for that move. I too have never used Macrium for a clone because the Acronis disk is so easy to use for that I never bothered to try to figure out how to get Macrium to do the same thing. All I saw was "redeploy the contents of the hard drive" which I thought was clone in Macrium and I clicked it and it said it did it but nothing happened. I went back and looked again and did not see where you input what you want to "deploy" however there were only two drives connected when I did that so I assumed it was more intelligent than it is. I guess there is more homework to do here but the main thing I was consumed with was finishing my project to speed up the laptop which had become "pig like" slow. When I removed the hard drive I realized it was a Toshiba hard drive which is among the worst so even though I seldom used the laptop I guess that makes no difference when the hardware involved is a crappy 5400 Rpm hard drive. In the old days I always used to replace the mfgr 5400 rpm hard drive with a 7200 rpm drive when I bought them but I didn't bother because it was so fast and I figured my next step would be an Ssd drive anyway sooner or later. Remembering I would be visiting a hospital within the next month for a hip replacement I decided to go ahead and speed that up since it would be all I could use there, and that has happened very nicely now as I used the Samsung 859 evo 512 Gb hard drive I just got on specials for $169 at "the Egg". I will revisit this situation with Macrium later today and come back with the answer because I know it does this but just like making incremental and differential images which was extremely complicated in Macrium, I would bet this is as well.

 

It's a good thread Rich.There's just a difference from restoring a image to a smaller drive and cloning a larger drive to a smaller drive.
Dougie knows how to do that with Macrium and actually sent me a PM explaining how he does it. Why he didn't post here. I don't have a clue! I have never fell the need for speed and I just stay with my old spin up HHD. I think it would be great it someone posted how to do this with Macrium. I can't believe Macrium won't do it the same way acronis does. Don't dump this thread. It's a good thread Rich!

 

OMG it is so simple...the function is on the installed program, not on the rescue disk. I just opened Macrium here and all you have to do is choose "clone disk" then choose your current hard drive and then "select drive" to clone it to. I did it exactly backwards because of my experience with Acronis. I put the new SSD drive into the laptop then booted to the rescue cd with the old drive plugged into a Usb port and saw no clone option. Now I imagine the size difference still would have been an issue but to clone a disk do it in Windows and then shut down and insert the new drive into laptop. Now to solve the issue of clone bigger to smaller. Drag and drop is inside the Macrium program!

 

Thanks Rich! Always wanting to learn. Are you saying you can drag and drop a larger HHD to a smaller HHD inside the Macrium program. So if I use my docking cable, I should be able to clone my 500GB HHD to a smaller SSD by simply dragging and dropping.
Wow that sounds to simple.
Please let us know if you solve this issue. I'm always wanting to learn these things. I admit it wasn't that clear in the link I attached and I tried to find a better link, but couldn't. A drag and drop would be amazing.

 

I found Acronis 2016 for 3 pcs and Cloud Backup for $49.99 download and decided to go with it. Cloning is important to me and it is worth it to buy it just for that as it is so much easier to use than Macrium for that. I will run it on my Windows 10 pc so I get some use out of it. Its time I stop reacting to my experiences in 2013 3+ years later as they still are # 1. I must admit part of it was I didn't like how they treated Stephen Lawton also who is a friend and was their Marketing Manager for about 10 years.

 

No I am not sure about that Gary. I am going to try that later today though which is easy enough to do. I was reacting to the mention of drag'n'drop with no mention of where...now we know. I was just commenting on how to do a clone so far.

 

Hi In my post #26, I tried to show what a drag and drop might look like. I don't have a SSD to try.
I've been a Macrium Reflect fan almost my entire PC life. Really anxious to hear what you find!!
2004-2016

 

Hi Up date! I have been all over the web. I sure haven't found any thing that makes cloning a larger drive to a smaller drive with Macrium Reflect a easy task. I'm waiting for Rich's reply. This is good stuff and I'm learning some thing new.
Surely Macrium isn't going to let Arconis out do them.

 

Well I tried cloning the drive in Windows on my laptop and again if the drive I am cloning to is larger than the current one not a problem. However I spent about an hour looking for ways to clone a large drive to a smaller one and I can't see it. Now I found a way to use Windows to do it but this would be scary for the average user. I can't even test it because I don't want to make my laptop partition any smaller to try this as I have no reason to do so other than this test. Basically you shrink the existing partitions down to the size of the new hard drive and not only is that a lot of work, it has with it some risks should you make a wrong move by doing so so at this point I will be back to Acronis for cloning as that is effortless and quick with no risk to Windows. Here is the method recommended.
https://sites.google.com/site/macriumresize/

 

Thanks Rich! That's the best I could come up with also. If Arconis is easier, that's the way to go.