Cloning SSD with Samsung Magician

[RealBlackStuff]

My T440p has a Silicon Power A55 main SSD with the OS (W7) and a few programs.
I want to replace that SP-A55 with a Samsung 860 EVO.
In the T440p Ultrabay there is another SSD in a caddy/adapter.

To clone the SP-A55 to the EVO-860, should I:
1) put the EVO in an external USB-enclosure, or
2) (temporarily) put the EVO in that Ultrabay caddy/adapter

and then use Diskmgmt.msc to first initialize/format the EVO.
After that I plan to use Samsung Magician 6.2.1 for cloning.

Method 1) or 2)?
Better solutions?

[axur-delmeria]

My experience with Samsung Magician was bad, as it failed to even start the cloning process. It's been 2-3 years since I last tried it, so bear with me if my memory fails, but IIRC it first tries to defragment the HDD before attempting the cloning operation. In my case, I had already done cleanup (via CCleaner and Windows' own Disk Cleanup tools), then defragged it with the built-in Windows Defrag, but for some reason Samsung Magician's attempt to defragment failed and wouldn't let the cloning process proceed.

I've had better success with Clonezilla. As I use a Linux live USB, I put the original HDD/SSD to a USB 3.0 enclosure, and the new SSD in the laptop.

I've also succeeded with Macrium Reflect Free. Since it requires a running Windows installation, I put the new SSD in a USB 3.0 enclosure.

In your case though, the Ultrabay HDD caddy might make more sense as it's probably faster (no USB to SATA translation overhead).

[Vopu]

Hi , I had to decide on the same thing when i replaced my original HDD to SSD on my T440P. I opted using an external USB 3.0 enclosure to clone my HDD direct to SSD using macrium reflect. I remember macrium being very easy and since the OS was a fresh install on HDD it didn't take that long.I remember something around 15-20mins may be Than, just swapped the HDD with the new cloned SSD and put the HDD to ultrabay caddy. Also i have heard people having problems with samsung's own magician , hence used macrium free. Macrium also has a rescue disk (CD) option i used before cloning in case things go belly up for some reason. I used a CD-RW and burned/worked fine.
All USB caddy's are generic mostly , but i had this for £4 from ali .
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/3305200 ... 4c4dvQ1sdL