MX Linux Forum

I keep a Windows 8 laptop (Dell XPS 13) primarily for business use when necessary. I would now like to dual boot with MX, so have bought a new SSD with twice the capacity. I have web-searched the topic, and tried various supposedly easy proprietary apps to create a bootable Windows image, but without success.

I am wondering now if I could use perhaps use dd to transfer everything to a big USB drive, swap out the SSDs, and copy it back in. Would that work? Alternatives?

Thanks for any help.

clonezilla
EDIT: Go through the pcitures here ,
https://www.thomas-krenn.com/de/wiki/Kl ... Clonezilla
you don't need to read the text in German, (I'm sure you can ;=)

Jerry3904 wrote: ↑Sun Sep 16, 2018 6:53 am I keep a Windows 8 laptop (Dell XPS 13) primarily for business use when necessary. I would now like to dual boot with MX, so have bought a new SSD with twice the capacity. I have web-searched the topic, and tried various supposedly easy proprietary apps to create a bootable Windows image, but without success.

I am wondering now if I could use perhaps use dd to transfer everything to a big USB drive, swap out the SSDs, and copy it back in. Would that work? Alternatives?

Thanks for any help.

Hi Jerry,

first I have to say I'm a little bit envious to your XPS 13!
Second, yes this should work.
My experience was from a small to a bigger device is possible. So you can copy your small disk with dd direct to your big disk with an usb adapter.
Or you can make a backup from you small disk to an usb drive. Swap to the big disk and recover the backup.
But you have to boot a live linux like the best MXlinux and check your disks with sudo fdisk -l before!

Command for make a backup small disk --> usb drive: With the compression you will need only the disk space of the disk data, not the drive space.

Now you can swap your small disk with your big disk.

Command for make a recover usb drive --> big disk: Command for direct disk copy small disk --> usb adapter --> big disk: You can try all options. You only need to be sure NOT writing on your small disk!

I have had good luck with MiniTool Partition Wizard (free version).
Check this tutorial and also read the comments below it.
https://www.partitionwizard.com/help/mi ... sd-hd.html
Good luck!

when moving these windows, you'll have the best luck if you can clone the entire drive. I had trouble recently moving just partitions.

even then, you may have issues when booting windows if the machine has changed too much...

Use clonezilla, and like D_O mentioned use the full drive copy, don't copy only the partition. I think if you sign in to Windows with a MS account it should save the license ti your account (depending on the license type I think) so that might help you reactivate if you need.

This Disk-to-Disk-Clone HowTo on Clonzilla web-site should work too:
Disk_to_disk_clone
Leave the target size as the source size, and expand later with Gparted.

I researched this recently, and it seemed common wisdom advised this as the best method:

https://www.easeus.com/partition-manager/epm-free.html

I didn't clone the install in the end so can't speak of its efficacy.

Chris

Also, if you want to try, I think I have around an Acronis True Image license that I got when I bought an SSD... let me know if you want it (it might be for an older version though).

chrispop99 wrote: ↑Sun Sep 16, 2018 3:56 pm I researched this recently, and it seemed common wisdom advised this as the best method:
https://www.easeus.com/partition-manager/epm-free.html
I didn't clone the install in the end so can't speak of its efficacy.

IIRC, you have to install it first and you have to enter you email adress to download.
Which brought me back to a Linux based version ;=)