Suppose you have a large hard disk with an installed system and data and you prepare a smaller SSD for disk upgrade. Then, you have a doubt: can I clone a larger drive to a smaller drive? Of course, you can, and here is a guide from MiniTool on how to clone 500GB HDD to 256GB SSD.

In some old devices, a hard disk/HDD is usually as the system disk to install Windows and store data. With the advance of technology and the falling price of SSDs, an increasing number of people attempt to upgrade their HDDs to advanced SSDs because of several benefits such as faster boot time and load time. It has been proved that replacing the system disk with an SSD can boost the overall performance.

However, it appears to be challenging to migrate the entire system and data from a larger HDD to a smaller SSD. Now let’s focus on “clone 500GB HDD to 256GB SSD”.

Can You Clone Larger HDD to Smaller SSD

Here is a real case:

My PC has been running super slow right now, I'm thinking to upgrade it to an SSD. I only have a budget to buy a 256 GB SSD, but I currently using a 500 GB HDD. Can I only migrate the system C file? Or you can only move both system C and D. I have no knowledge about migrating, an answer would be very appreciated.  www.reddit.com

Perhaps you have such a need to clone 500GB HDD to 256GB SSD. Can you do that? Certainly, the answer is yes. The only thing you should notice is making sure the SSD capacity is larger than the used space of your HDD. Namely, if the 500GB HDD only uses 256GB or smaller than 256GB, the cloning process will succeed.

Before migration, you can choose to delete some unused files to reduce the storage space and cloning time. To clone 500GB to 256 GB on Windows 11/10, follow the step-by-step guide now.

Also read: How to Clone HDD to Smaller SSD in Two Ways

How to Clone 500GB HDD to 256GB SSD

A piece of hard drive cloning software should be used for cloning 500GB HDD to 256GB SSD and MiniTool ShadowMaker will be a recommendation.

Beyond creating file backup, disk backup, partition backup, and system backup, MiniTool ShadowMaker allows cloning a hard drive to another hard disk for system migration and data transfer. Although your target drive is smaller than the source drive, it provides support.

When trying to clone 500GB HDD to 256GB SSD, choose to clone the used sectors. Of course, you can perform sector by sector cloning provided that that SSD has enough space to hold all the disk data on the source drive.

Get ready? Why not download and install MiniTool ShadowMaker for cloning HDD to SSD?

Take these steps to successfully clone 500GB to 256GB using MiniTool ShadowMaker:

Step 1: Connect your 256GB SSD to the machine with a USB cable or adapter. In case your computer has another hard drive bay, directly install the SSD in the PC and then proceed with disk cloning.

Step 2: Launch MiniTool ShadowMaker and hit Keep Trial after loading the program.

Step 3: In Tools, click Clone Disk to continue.

Step 4: Choose the 500 HDD as the source drive and 256GB SSD as the target drive. Then, begin cloning.

Also read: Upgrade 128GB SSD to 256GB SSD Without Reinstalling Windows

Bottom Line

It is not hard to clone 500GB HDD to 256GB SSD with the help of MiniTool ShadowMaker. If you need, get this cloning software and implement the cloning task with ease by following the given instructions.