Data Recovery and Disk Utilities Forum @R-TT

Of course, I forgot to mention that. I would like to add one more thing. I did come across a drive that could not be completely defragged to be able to shrink it to where I needed it, some files could not move. I booted up a Windows 8.1 To Go drive and put Disk 0 online and gave the OSDisk partition a drive letter. I ran Defraggler and it was able to move the files that were not able to be moved while running Defraggler under the Disk 0 OS. From within Disk Management on Windows 8.1 ToGo I could shrink the OSDisk partition to what was required. So now I will be defragmenting the partitions I need while they are offline as it's faster and more efficient. I went from a 750GB HDD to a 128GB SSD in that case. The partition had 29.8GBs used and Windows let me shrink the partition to just over 30GBs. It's working great.

Thank for the advice. I only recommend to backup your data before taking all these steps.

Hi,

My organization recently bought many 128GB SSDs as we start to migrate off of HDDs. They are getting pretty cheap now. A user will feel much more speed using an SSD than upgrading the processor in most cases as storage is usually the bottleneck. Well I came across the same issue on every drive I tried to migrate to. Most users are using 500GB/320GB HDDs. I did some research and as was able so solve the issue. The solution is to defrag the drive so all files are placed at the beginning of the drive, which defrag will try to do, and the goal is to shrink the drive after doing so with Disk Management. Disk Management will let you know how far the drive can be shortened, this will also be R-Drive's limit. The first thing you want to do is delete everything you don't need, and run a disk cleanup making sure to clean the system files as well when doing so. After that do the following:

1 - Run CMD as Admin and run the command "powercfg /h off". This will get rid of the "hiberfil.sys" file under the root of C:.
2 - Turn System Protection Off, this will delete all System Restore Points.
3 - Disable the Paging File, this will remove the "pagefile.sys" and "swapfile.sys" files under the root of C:.

^The reason to do those three steps is to remove the protected files that take up a lot of space that can't be defragged.

At this point I do a restart and for the heck of it run a check disk, as our next step is to defrag and we want to make sure our file system is in-tact.

When the PC comes up I use Defraggler to defrag as I can get a visual of what is going on. After it finishes, I do a restart and defrag one more time. Then in Disk Management I shrink the disk to a size below the target drive. Disk Management is the safe way to do this. Once it's shrunk I create a data image and restore to the SSD. Then after that's done I enable the things that were turned off. It's has worked every time thus far.

hmm ok thanks for the replies.

I guess I will have to try it.

saleaway wrote:I ended up using a partition tool from easeus to shrink the size of the partition before making an image with r-drive. After loading the image onto the SSD, Windows wouldn't boot until I took the Windows 7 dvd and ran startup repair. Everything's working great now.

Not all cases end so great, unfortunately.

I ended up using a partition tool from easeus to shrink the size of the partition before making an image with r-drive. After loading the image onto the SSD, Windows wouldn't boot until I took the Windows 7 dvd and ran startup repair. Everything's working great now.

saleaway wrote:This isn't working for me. I have a 500gb drive that I want to copy onto a 128gb ssd. Only 45gb is in use. The first time I tried to load the image onto the ssd, it said the destination disk was too small and the minimum required size was 400GB. I did a disk defrag like suggested and now it says 243GB is required.

That can happen when there's a file on the disk that cannot be moved. Something like a system swap, hibernation, and alike data. The system needs to know where they exactly are, or it cannot work.

This isn't working for me. I have a 500gb drive that I want to copy onto a 128gb ssd. Only 45gb is in use. The first time I tried to load the image onto the ssd, it said the destination disk was too small and the minimum required size was 400GB. I did a disk defrag like suggested and now it says 243GB is required.

Sorry, I can't give you a decisive answer because that depends on many factors. Most likely yes, but not for absolutely sure. De-fragmenting the larger drive before copying is a good idea.

I've been trying to find an answer to this, I have saved a hard drive image from a 160GB hard drive, it was only using about 10gb.

Is it ok to restore this image to a smaller drive or will it give me errors. I'd like to know before I purchase the drive. It is just for a menu computer so no need for a larger drive and I am going to get an SSD.