Question: I’ve done some research and the most common answer seems to be to just reinstall Windows, but I really want to avoid that.
I’m attempting to move my Win7 install, including applications, documents, etc., from my 300GB laptop to a new 240GB SSD. I’ve got multiple versions of Visual Studio, IIS, photoshop, 3ds max, etc etc etc., and reinstalling will be non-trivial.
I’ve read about shrinking the partition to fit on the SSD and cloning it to the new drive., so I cleaned up temp files and downloads and some other unnecessary stuff and managed to get down to 180GB. However, I can’t shrink the partition below 290GB. I’ve defragged, etc., but it looks like the OS is keeping some files at the end of the partition which prevents me from shrinking it to a sufficiently small size.
Any suggestions? I’ve seen references to different methods for moving those files, but no clear instructions or explanations.
Answer: Use Clonezilla (or similar) to clone your drive, you will need to resize the partition first.You can use Parted Magic to do both the resize using Gparted, this should move the Windows files, and then use Clonezilla (built in to Parted Magic)to copy to the new drive