So I was trying to follow the ssd cloning instructions for the acronis software to clone my 500GB NVMe ssd on my lenovo P15 Gen 1 to a Samsung 2TB 980 PRO NVMe ssd:
1. I created a bootable Acronis USB drive
2. I removed the original SSD into the Sabrent enclosure
3. I installed the new 2TB SSD into the laptop (in the same NVMe slot the original came out of)
4. I booted using the bootable Acronis USB drive
5. Chose Utils->clone->simple
6. Chose the 500 GB in the Sabrent enclosure as the source drive. At this point it gave me some kind of warning saying the source drive has one or more partitions with an "unsupported" or "missing" something-or-other and that the only option was to copy the partition(s) sector-by-sector. (sorry, I should have written down the exact message). I accepted and continued.
7. Chose the new unformatted 2TB SSD as the destination. But the layout of the new drive showed that the boot (?) parition was going to be given the same 260 MB, the windows partition the same 475.5 GB and that all the extra drive space was uselessly being aforded to the hidden windows recovery partition (like 1.4 TB whereas on the original drive this partitoin consumed a scant 1.142 GB).
I canceled out and tried a manual cloning procedure, and while I was able to reduce the siace of the recovery partition, and even force the freed up space to be placed before that recover partition, I was never able to figure out how to increase the size of the main windows partition. Finally I gave up without ever actually starting a cloning process.
What am I doing wrong?
Sadly, I did this same kind of thing successfully a year ago using this same Sabrent enclosure, but I don't think I used Acronis software to do it -- and for the life of me I can't remember what software I used to do it.
@tom_tinker Aside from Acronis, Macrium Reflect Free was a popular choice but I don't think they offer a free version anymore. Clonezilla is a free an open source alternative that might work. There are many paid alternatives, too.
Most likely the original drive was partitioned in a very specific way and this is done on some OEM systems for a recovery partition that can essentially "reset" the computer back to its factory state. This can be placed after the main partition such that it conflicts with some cloning/imaging operations. A sector-by-sector clone is a special 1:1 clone but that will not help here. If this is a limitation of the Acronis software, I would suggest trying one of the two listed above. You can find older versions of Macrium Reflect Free that may work.
I don't know that it's a limitation of the Acronis software. I mention it only as a possibility of the root cause of my frustration. As noted in my original post, I was able to reduce the size of this partition by creating unused (unpartitioned) disk space either before or after the cloned recovery partition. But I could never figure a way to add this freed up space to the main windows partition.
Overall, I'm under the impression the Acronis software is just not very good: in addition to having a quirky UI, the thing locked up a few times on me as I was adjusting partition sizes.
When I have time for another attempt, I'll try out the Macrium under it's 30-day free trial.
Thanks for your interest in my troubles.
@tom_tinker The older version of Macrium Reflect Free should also work, it's just no longer updated or supported. I would also suggest MiniTool Partition Wizard, which is pretty powerful. I'm not sure why the Windows partition would be locked in size but the OEM recovery method assumes a specific partition layout. Acronis may not be completely reliable with that. Even so, it's a popular tool used by many storage manufacturers. We do test it ourselves but it has limitations.
So I decided to ignore the acronis manual's recommendation of moving the original SSD into the sabrent external drive bay, and placing the new (uninitialized drive) into the internal drive slot where it is intended to run, and then booting from this bootable Acronis USB drive to perform the clone.
Instead I left the original ssd in place and ran acronis (from that same drive) under Windows, and placed the new (uninitialized) ssd in the sabrent external drive bay. The software worked beautifully. There were no complaints about unsupported partitions. I chose manual operation, but all the defaults were exactly what you'd want: with all the additional space being allocated to the windows C: drive -- I didn't have to touch a thing. The SSD cloned fine, and after installing to the computer, is running great.
I'm left to conclude that the software that runs from the bootable media is not as good as that which directly under windows.
Thanks again for you suggestions, and moral support.
@tom_tinker Ah, I get it. That makes more if not perfect sense. I'm sure the information will help future users.
