Clone HDD to SSD Using Macrium Reflect

Run the Three Checks Before You Start

A clone is a copy, and a copy is only as good as what it starts from. First, the old drive must be healthy — this guide is for a planned upgrade on a working drive. Second, the SSD must hold your used space, not the old disk's full size: a 1 TB HDD with 300 GB used clones happily onto a 500 GB SSD, while 700 GB used does not fit until you free or move some data. Third, back up anything irreplaceable separately — a clone normally touches only the destination disk, but cables get pulled and wrong disks get clicked.

Connect the New SSD

On a desktop, the cleanest setup is to fit the SSD in its final home now — a spare SATA data cable plus a SATA power connector — and clone with the HDD still in place. On a laptop with only one drive slot, connect the SSD through a USB to SATA adapter or a USB enclosure for the clone, and swap it inside afterwards.

Either way, Windows should see the new disk in Disk Management before you start. If it does not, fix that first — Macrium Reflect cannot clone to a disk the PC itself cannot see.

Get Macrium Reflect — the Edition Facts

Download Macrium Reflect from Macrium's official website only — software that touches your entire disk is the last thing to fetch from a stranger's site. Then install it and open it.

Start the Clone and Pick the Destination

In Macrium Reflect, find your old HDD in the disk list. Under that disk, click Clone this disk. In the wizard, click Select a disk to clone to and choose the new SSD — check the model name and the size twice before you go any further.

Copy Every Partition, Including the Small System Ones

Tick Copy selected partitions with all partitions selected, or drag each partition down onto the SSD: the small EFI System partition at the front, the MSR Reserved partition, your Windows (C:) partition, and the Recovery partition.

The two places people go wrong are skipping the small system partitions and testing the first boot with both drives still connected. Those tiny partitions at the front are what actually start Windows — leave one behind and the cloned SSD will not boot, even though all your files copied across perfectly.

Finish and Run the Clone

Click through the wizard's summary, confirm the destination one last time, and click Finish to start. Reflect now copies the source disk partition by partition onto the SSD. Let it run to completion — do not shut the PC down, pull a cable, or close the program mid-clone. When it reports the clone is complete, you are ready for the moment of truth: the first boot.

First Boot from the SSD

Shut the PC down. For this first test, disconnect the old HDD (or remove it from the laptop) so the machine has exactly one disk to boot from — with both drives connected, two identical Windows installs can confuse the boot process and you learn nothing about whether the clone really works. If the PC does not start from the SSD on its own, enter the BIOS/UEFI setup and put the SSD first in the boot order.

When Windows loads, you should land on your own desktop — same programs, same files, same settings, just much faster. That clean boot from the SSD alone is the proof the clone succeeded.

Check TRIM and Reuse the Old Drive

TRIM keeps an SSD fast over time, so confirm Windows has it switched on. Open Command Prompt or Terminal as administrator and run:

fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify

The result to look for is DisableDeleteNotify = 0 — that means TRIM is enabled. (A result of 1 would mean it is off.)

Finally, the old drive. Keep it untouched for a few days as your safety net while you use the SSD normally. Once you are confident, reconnect it, format it, and use it as a plain storage drive for files, backups and downloads — the classic second life for a cloned-out HDD.