Scenario
“I have a 256GB SSD and it’s almost full. So, I bought a new 1TB SSD and try to clone SSD to larger SSD with a disk cloning software. But it says “Not enough space on the target disk. To make sure the boot ability of the target disk, please delete partitions on there first.” But I can see the disk on the Disk Management. Anyway, I do as it said. However, my 1 TB hard drive only shows 256GB and the backup disk full. I only remember that I tick the sector by sector option.”
According to your description, your 1 TB SSD can only show 256GB and it’s full like the old SSD. There are 2 reasons for your situtaion.
- Sector by sector clone will clone all the sector of your old disk, thus your new disk will be exactly the same as the old one after cloning. Please do not tick this option unless your new disk space is the same as old one.
- There is an unallocated space you cannot see after cloning disk to larger disk, thus, you need to edit partition size on the destination disk before you start to clone. Or you still can resize partition with a third-party tool like AOMEI Partition Assistant.
In sum, you need a proper disk cloning software, which can help you avoid this issue.
Why clone smaller SSD to larger SSD?
If you have ever use solid state drives (SSD), you may know it has many advantages than hard disk drives (HDD), such as, it’s faster, lighter, quieter, cooler and it consumes less power. Thus, many users are willing to install Windows operating system (OS) on an SSD instead of HDD.
After running Windows on SSD for a while, you may notice that the SSD is running out of space for many utilities and applications having permission to write files to your system drive (C: drive). In the past, SSDs has a small capcity and higher price. But, nowdays, SSDs gain more capacity and get cheaper. Thus, you can afford it.
Free disk cloning software for Windows
Speaking of cloning disk, many users may wonder how to clone SSD to larger SSD free. Most of them do not want to spend money in such software that can only be used once or twice. In this case, you can use free hard drive cloning software AOMEI Backupper that supports SSD perfectly.
- You are allowed to clone a small SSD to a large one without much effort.
- You are able to clone boot SSD to larger SSD, and the cloned SSD will remain bootable like the original one.
- It supports cloning large HDD to smaller SSD successfully while ensuring data integrity. Further, cloning non-system disk from MBR partition style to GPT is also supported, and vice versa. (Cloning system disk from MBR to GPT/GPT to MBR/GPT to GPT is a paid feature.)
- It can help to align partitions to optimize SSD performance as well as fit all partitions to the destination disk so that you don’t have unallocated space after cloning.
What’s more, the cloning process will run in the background, so users won’t need to stop using the computer. There is no reason not to give it a shot.
How to clone OS SSD to larger SSD?
With the intuitive interface, all operations with free hard drive cloning software AOMEI Backupper become quite easy.
To move OS from SSD to a larger SSD, you can use Disk Clone and then follow the steps below. It will clone the entire SSD to another SSD. If you just want clone system to SSD, you can use System Clone feature after upgrading to higher editions.
1. Install this program on your computer, and open it. Then, select “Disk Clone” under Clone tab.
Note: To get best performance from SSD, it’s suggested to prepare a NVMe SSD and clone boot drive to NVMe.
3. Click on the smaller SSD to select it as the source disk, and click on “Next”. Then click on the larger SSD to set it as the destination disk, and click “Next”.
4. Check the option “SSD Alignment”, which is important for keeping the SSD at its best performance. Then click “Start Clone”.
Note: To avoid the unallocated space after cloning, you can use “Edit Partitions” with “Add unused space to all partitions” or “Manually adjust partition size”. However, both of them are only available on the paid version, such as, AOMEI Backupper Professional or AOMEI Backupper Server.
As a SSD cloning freeware, it can be used to all the SSD disks and all Windows computer. Thus, you still can use it to clone SSD to larger SSD Samsung, clone SSD to larger SSD laptop, clone M.2 SSD to larger M.2 SSD, etc.
Beside the feature to clone SSD to larger SSD, AOMEI Backupper has excellent backup and restore features, so users can use it to backup operating system, and restore to the new SSD when your computer has only one SSD slot.
