Steps of manual HDD to SSD migration

Question

Ok, I want to do a "paranoid" migration from a a HDD to a SSD. There will be no shrinking involved.

For the moment this is what I know/have:

1. Connect SSD and create an 1MB aligned partition, at least the size of the C: from the HDD

2. Clone C: to SSD using Easeus DiskCopy in DOS mode

3. Use a small linux distro and byte-compare source and clone: cmp /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 just to make sure that everything is perfectly copied. (I've personally encountered a situation where Macrium Reflect Free did not clone byte perfect, after comparing manually the files.)

Now here comes the part which I don't know:

4. Make the new cloned partition bootable, since the alignment was changed. How? I've seen these, but not sure:

   bootrec /fixboot
   bootrec /fixmbr
   bcdboot c:\windows
   

5. Change the disk ID, so there will be no collisions in case you connect both the HDD and the SSD at the same time

6. Are there other things to consider?

I'm aiming to make this as safe and as reliable as possible, so any advice is welcome.

Answer 1

Look at this post for various suggestions on hard drive cloning tools: Free way to clone HDD to SSD

If you are looking at something that is as "safe and reliable as possible" I would go out and buy some commercial partitioning software (E.g. Acronos).

Regarding your steps, you don't have to do all of that. All you want to do is a full "disk copy" (don't mess with creating partitions, copying partitions, and trying to make them bootable, changing the disk ID etc.)

You can use Easeus DiskCopy to create a boot disk, and do a full disk copy. Don't worry about anything else. It will just work. You will then use your BIOS to determine which disk to boot from and use.