I have on my PC an Intel 120 GB SSD (the Windows drive) and a 1 TB HDD. I want to replace the Intel 120 GB SSD with a Crucial 256 GB SSD (and after that use the Intel drive as a third drive).
How can I clone the Intel SSD to the Crucial one (after I install all of them in the PC)? I have looked for cloning software but found only software that require you to boot the system using their bootable images.
Can you clone a bootable drive while Windows is running, than simply restart the PC and use the new disk as the boot drive? If not, why? If yes, do you know any good software for doing it?
Best Answer
According to my experience with Acronis products, confirmed by this post in Acronis official forums, you could do a backup and then restore to the new ssd.
Whatever the reason for cloning while using it is, any changes made after starting the backup of the source disk, will be lost for the new drive.
Also it might not work if your source disk is almost full, as acronis needs to make a snapshot.