What size SSD needed to clone a hybrid 20 GB SSD/ 500 GB HDD on laptop?

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JeffDB

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My Acer Aspire M5-581T has a hybrid 20 GB SSD/500 GB HDD that has a bad block that Windows 8.1 can't seem to repair.

I have no recovery disk & apparently cannot seem to make one. The partition where it is supposed to be is greyed out & the button to make a repair/recovery disk is also greyed out. Yeah, I was dumb for not making one as soon as I bought the laptop.

I have tried upgrading to Windows 10 but the repeated Bad Block Events on DR1 seem to let it run perpetually without ever finishing the upgrade. I've tried 3 times & it ran 18 hrs, 15+ hrs & probably another 12+ hrs before I shut down the process to use the computer.

The computer still boots up. I'm posting with it here.

A local computer place said they would charge me $90 to put in a drive. They would clone it, boot it & then I could try & upgrade to Win 10 & then download & do a clean reinstall if I wanted.

He wasn't familiar with hybrid drives, though & said I would have to put in a drive at least as big as what is in there... or bigger for the clone to work. He didn't know if I would need a 500 GB or bigger or a 520 GB drive or bigger to get it going. He wasn't sure if the SSD was just cloning a bit of the HDD & didn't actually add anything to the mix.

It looks like it would be a pretty big deal for me as a 500 GB drive recommended here is $172.92 & FREE Shipping, but the next size seems to be 1 TB @$362.79 & FREE Shipping

Any information/help/recommendations would be most appreciated.
 
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WyomingKnott
Nah. Even if you could see the SSD separately, the available space is the 500 GB. The SSD takes a copy of what it guesses is the most-used 20 GB of disk data.

Plenty of people have done clones onto physically smaller drives that have enough space for what was actually used. It depends, I suppose, on the software tool. Win7's built-in backup will refuse to do a backup to a 250 GB drive if you have 60 GB of data on a 500 GB drive. Go figure.

If you really want to go for an SSD and also keep your cost down, you can get an external HDD and MOVE your video files to it. Make sure that the copies are good (get a thumb drive and make a second copy of anything you really care about) and erase them from the hard drive. Now there is...
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JeffDB

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Thanks WyomingKnott. That's what I was hoping for, but the guy at the computer shop seemed pretty adamant that it had to be the same or more than the physical space on the drive or he couldn't clone it. I see from another thread that someone was having trouble cloning a 1 TB drive to a 250 GB drive even though he only had 80 GB of data on the drive. It looks like he finally found a program to do it, though.

I don't know if I can talk the guy at the computer store to do that, though. They're probably used to using their own software & procedures & wouldn't want to spend time experimenting with some free downloaded software to see if they can finagle it.

But now that you reminded me, I looked on File Explorer & it's only showing a 444 GB C: drive, along with the DVD etc. It doesn't show a separate SSD drive. If it's really only a 500 GB drive & 20 GB is partitioned for the SSD portion of it, I should be able to get by with the 500 GB SSD. Yay.

I think I may go ahead and order it.

I could have sworn, however, that I had seen the SSD portion listed separately on some report or something and a 500 GB hard drive. I guess I'd better dig around a bit just to make double sure. It would be a real bummer if I got the 500 GB drive & the guy wouldn't install it because he couldn't clone the 520 GB hybrid onto the 500 GB SSD.

btw, I'm using 279 GB on the drive, but I want to get rid of much of that. I audio recorded some college football & basketball games which I wanted to edit out commercials & export into .mp3 format which would save a ton of room... or just delete a lot of them, especially where we lost. It was a terrible basketball season. ;) If I get through much of that I could probably fit everything on a 250 GB drive & have plenty to spare for Win 10.

Thanks again for the reply.
 
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WyomingKnott

WyomingKnott

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Aug 29, 2006
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Nah. Even if you could see the SSD separately, the available space is the 500 GB. The SSD takes a copy of what it guesses is the most-used 20 GB of disk data.

Plenty of people have done clones onto physically smaller drives that have enough space for what was actually used. It depends, I suppose, on the software tool. Win7's built-in backup will refuse to do a backup to a 250 GB drive if you have 60 GB of data on a 500 GB drive. Go figure.

If you really want to go for an SSD and also keep your cost down, you can get an external HDD and MOVE your video files to it. Make sure that the copies are good (get a thumb drive and make a second copy of anything you really care about) and erase them from the hard drive. Now there is less used space on the hard drive, you can use a smaller ssd, and you can still play all your videos.
 
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