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I'm finally running out of space on a 128GB ssd on a notebook (asus N501VW) and am thinking of replacing it with a larger, 500GB, drive.

The setup:

  • 1 notebook (N501VW) running Win 10 (x64)
  • 3 drives (128GB ssd (M2) (C:), 1TB hdd (D:), 500GB ssd (M2))

128GB:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>fsutil fsInfo ntfsInfo C:\
NTFS Volume Serial Number :        0x246467166466ea4e
NTFS Version   :                   3.1
LFS Version    :                   2.0
Number Sectors :                   0x000000000ec25e12
Total Clusters :                   0x0000000001d84bc2
Free Clusters  :                   0x000000000012ce83
Total Reserved :                   0x00000000000450b8
Bytes Per Sector  :                512
Bytes Per Physical Sector :        512
Bytes Per Cluster :                4096
Bytes Per FileRecord Segment    :  1024
Clusters Per FileRecord Segment :  0
Mft Valid Data Length :            0x0000000036840000
Mft Start Lcn  :                   0x00000000000c0000
Mft2 Start Lcn :                   0x0000000000000002
Mft Zone Start :                   0x00000000005404a0
Mft Zone End   :                   0x0000000000540760
Max Device Trim Extent Count :     512
Max Device Trim Byte Count :       0xffffffff
Max Volume Trim Extent Count :     62
Max Volume Trim Byte Count :       0x40000000
Resource Manager Identifier :      8A0D0FB6-C261-11E6-8455-9CEBE8321CA9

1TB:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>fsutil fsInfo ntfsInfo D:\
NTFS Volume Serial Number :        0x38f0efcbf0ef8e06
NTFS Version   :                   3.1
LFS Version    :                   2.0
Number Sectors :                   0x0000000074705fff
Total Clusters :                   0x000000000e8e0bff
Free Clusters  :                   0x000000000497daa5
Total Reserved :                   0x00000000000013ff
Bytes Per Sector  :                512
Bytes Per Physical Sector :        4096
Bytes Per Cluster :                4096
Bytes Per FileRecord Segment    :  1024
Clusters Per FileRecord Segment :  0
Mft Valid Data Length :            0x0000000099940000
Mft Start Lcn  :                   0x00000000000c0000
Mft2 Start Lcn :                   0x0000000000000002
Mft Zone Start :                   0x0000000009a85600
Mft Zone End   :                   0x0000000009a8fd40
Max Device Trim Extent Count :     0
Max Device Trim Byte Count :       0x0
Max Volume Trim Extent Count :     62
Max Volume Trim Byte Count :       0x40000000
Resource Manager Identifier :      14ED2385-C262-11E6-A546-9CEBE8321CA9

500GB:

not purchased as of yet

The plan:

  1. Boot from a Linux (e.g. ubuntu) usb image
  2. Copy C:\ into D:\ (D:\ still has space)
  3. Shutdown, replace C:\ with larger ssd
  4. Boot (again) from usb
  5. Copy C:\ from D:\ into larger ssd
  6. Shutdown; boot from larger ssd
  7. If all's well, clear former C:\ from D:\

The bad:

  1. Will a dd format the new ssd entirely upon copy (from D:\ to 500GB)?
  2. If not how much of 500GB will be usable?
  3. Since 128GB is small, there are many simlinks to D:\ . Will they be affected upon copy?
  4. Is this even the right way of doing this?
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  • There are other tools that probably are better for such task. For example Clonezilla.
    – pa4080
    Mar 30, 2019 at 10:33
  • 2
    The free Macrium Reflect allows copying a running Windows System. This avoids the unbarably slow large copies under Ubuntu. Different size disks are handled properly.
    – ubfan1
    Mar 30, 2019 at 22:45

1 Answer 1

3
  1. No. It will not format your new ssd properly. You will need to resize the partition on the new drive. The partition table will also probably be a little messed up but a utility like gparted should be able to easily fix it.
  2. Only 128GB will be available until you resize the partition.
  3. I dont see why this would be a problem.
  4. It seems reasonable to me. I did the exact same thing to replace a hard drive with an ssd.
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  • dd does "format" drives, in the sense that it clones the entire disk and all it's properties. I can't say how it performs for windows partitions as I've never tried to dd one.
    – j-money
    Mar 30, 2019 at 0:31
  • I'll give it a try and see how it goes
    – Sebi
    Mar 30, 2019 at 10:42
  • dd does not "format" per see . It allows reading from one source and writing to another. If you read from /dev/zero it will behave as format writing zeroes to a destination
    – tomodachi
    Mar 30, 2019 at 12:51

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