hard drive - Cloning Single OS partition to ssd

Is there a free way to clone a full Windows 7 installation from HDD to SSD? (The free part is important, I know I can pay for Acronis True Image.)

SSDs are usually much smaller than HDDs which complicates matters. For instance, I have about 50GB data, my new SSD is 80GB but I still can't use Windows clone/restore system if my HDD is something like 300GB.

Therefore, I'm looking for a third party tool that will be able to:

1. Create a clone of my C: partition
2. Store it onto an external USB drive
3. Boot from some rescue / restore CD
4. Load the image onto the new SSD

Acronis True Image seems like a tool that should support this but it's a paid-for software and the trial version cannot create clones. Acronis Migrate Easy is a fully functional tria for 15 days but need both the HDD and SSD connected at the same time which is a bit of a problem for me as a laptop user.

P.S. I almost got there combining Windows image backup combined with Acronis True Image restore CD (which can load .vhd's) but was not able to boot as some boot information were probably lost and could not be repaired using the Win7 installation DVD.

PartedMagic

PartedMagic is a free (FOSS actually) Linux-based tool that can perform almost any operations with disk drives, including copying, resizing and moving partitions. It can be booted from CD, USB flash drive or network and is very small (around 70 MB).

Clonezilla

clonezilla is a free Linux based tool made for hard disk backups.

Windows 7 actually behaves differently when it is installed on an SSD:

When a solid state drive is present, Windows 7 will disable disk defragmentation, Superfetch, ReadyBoost, as well as boot and application launch prefetching.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-solid-state-drives-ssd,7717.html

I'm not sure if all this will be done automatically if you clone to an SSD instead of a fresh Windows install...

Something you might want to think about

Paragon Backup & Recovery

Paragon Backup & Recovery 2011 (Advanced) Free has "Restore with Shrink" to restore a backup image into a smaller disk, taking into account only the amount of actual data of the image. That means that the amount of used space on the HDD be smaller than the full size of the SSD, with a few gigabytes still left free as a security measure.

Another solution to the size problem is to rather use a copying tool such as HoboCopy to copy from the HDD to the SSD. It uses shadow-copy and so can also copy files that are in use.

Acronis True Image

For straight disk-cloning, Acronis True Image Home ($49.99) is another good possibility. The target disk can also be of any size with the same considerations as above.

Other free cloning tools are:

DriveImage XML

DriveImage XML runs from within Windows and can backup logical drives and partitions to image files, but doesn't have a boot CD (you need to create a BartPE Boot CD).
Many people rave about it.

EASEUS Disk Copy

EASEUS Disk Copy is a great alternative if you don't want to go for a 'hot' backup that runs from within Windows. Good review at lifehacker and on a par with DriveImage XML. A boot CD is supplied.

Don't forget to check with your SSD vendor. Both Intel and Western Digital (and probably most name brand SSDs) offer free, limited versions of Acronis software (or similar). Search for "Intel data migration software" and you'll find the Intel page with the free download.

The catch is that this software will only work with an Intel SSD connected to the PC, and it is not a full version of Acronis. But for your needs, it may work.

Ghost for Linux

Ghost for Linux will clone to a smaller disk, but it will not do the required partition table fixup. You can do that later, but it is a bit risky since you may be truncating data on the filesystem.

GPartEd

If you need to preserve the original disk, you could clone to another disk (HDD on a USB, for example), use GPartEd on SysRescueCD (for example) to resize the partition down to SDD size, and then clone again to the SDD.

I've done similar exercises and had them work... and had them not work.

You can use Farstone's Drive Clone that can copy and clone HDD->SSD, and they support just about everything from windows (including servers, domains, raids, etc).

You can download the trial for free, and it has the cloning features

Macrium Reflect Free Edition

A really fast Disc Imaging Backup Software to make a complete *.mrimg or *.iso copy of your hard drive; it has a built-in scheduler, you can set it up to create backups of the windows harddrive automatically in the background, during you work with Windows XP or Vista. Images can be saved off to network drives, DVDs, or removable drives (USB and FireWire). Images can be password-protected for the security of your data. Using Microsofts Volume Shadow copy Service (VSS). Its very well supported by the company. The backup images can also be mounted as a virtual drive, which can be very useful for retrieving separate files: you can also restore single files or folders, but backup only the full drive C.

More info:

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

HD Clone

HDClone (available in different editions) creates physical or logical copies (clones) and file images of hard disks and other mass storage media. HDClone is a perfect tool for backups and copies of entire software or operating system installations. A special SafeRescue mode makes HDClone an invaluable tool for rescuing defective hard disks and other media. HDClone works independent of partitioning scheme, file system, and operating system. It also works with proprietary formats which otherwise would be unaccessible.

More info:

http://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html

I just used this free tool: http://www.minitool-drivecopy.com/ to clone a 160GB boot HDD to a 240GB SSD and it went without a hitch. Didn't even have to run Windows Repair disk after like I had to when I used Norton Ghost previously.