clone from an external drive to the internal drive

[shai05276]

I currently have a SATA drive SSD drive on my laptop
I want to buy a new laptop with a SATA or NVME SSD
I want to do a CLONE of the whole drive but I do not want to remove the drive from the new computer and connect to the old computer for cloning (afraid and also do not really know how to mess with an NVME drive if I purchase such),
but I want to do the opposite,
connect my current drive to the new computer
The internal drive of the new computer will get a perfect copy of the old drive
Is it possible?

I previously did a reverse operation (from internal to external drive) using the MiniTool Partition Wizard

Is it also possible to clone from an external drive to the internal drive on the computer where the software is installed?

[PeterOz]

Attach old drive inside new computer and clone
If you have used mini tool before then use that
if not use Macrium Reflect Free

[Bruce]

Psst Peter - it’s a laptop

but yes, old drive from old laptop into an external caddy, then clone from that into the new drive on the new laptop.

but there are a few things to consider.
the new laptop will already have a Windows OS installed which you’ll be effectively removing and using your old laptop license.
so you may run into activation issues when the old OS suddenly freaks out when it discovers all the new hardware it finds, plus your old license may be an OEM one and can’t be transferred.

and the cloning will transfer all your software, but also all your performance issues, Registry rot, cached system downloads and updates, history, etc.

far better to use the new laptop an an opportune time to start afresh. reload all your software again. yes painful, but hobble the new laptop right from the start with crap from the old machine.

[PeterOz]

Laptop with nvme can also have SSD depending on make and model

[Bastet]

If you use Macrium & boot from their USB recovery media then you should be able to clone to the new internal hard drive from the connected old hard drive. You may have to manually choose the source & destination drives.
Are both drives the same size/capacity?

[shai05276]

The old drive is 1TB and the new computer is 2TB

[Bastet]

Then you can drag & drop the partitions from the old drive to the new one & Macrium will automatically extend the C partition when running the copy or you can manually extend the C partition when all partitions are dropped to the new drive - you may have to move the last (recovery) partition (if you have this) to the right then extend the C partition.

[shai05276]

Attach old drive inside new computer and clone
If you have used mini tool before then use that
if not use Macrium Reflect Free

For the purpose of testing, I inserted an SSD drive using Sata to usb cable into my current computer and I see that the MiniTool Partition Wizard software does not let me clone the external drive into the internal drive, see picture:

[ATTACH type=“full”]10307[/ATTACH]

[PeterOz]

By the look of the pic you are going from drive 1 to drive 1

[shai05276]

Note that this is the step where I choose the destination path
In the previous step I selected disk 2 as the source I want to copy

By the look of the pic you are going from drive 1 to drive 1

[PeterOz]

I ill see if I can replicate this later today

[PeterOz]

Sorry I have been caught up
I will try and get to this asap

[PeterOz]

Have just tried Mini Tool Partition
It Let me use copy disk wizard to copy external usb drive to internal drive.
I also tested with Macrium Reflect Free
And it also allowed a clone from external to internal

[Bruce]

@shai05276 - any news?

[Bruce]

abandoned