Intel Data Migration Software not letting me clone to SSD

I recently got an Intel 320-series 160 GB SSD and I'm trying to use the Intel Data Migration Software to clone my desktop's regular HDD to the new SSD, but it won't let me. When I start the process and select the source disk and the destination disk, it will say "the size of one or more of the partitions is too small; please specify the size manually." And no matter what adjustments I make, if I try to go on with the process, it will just say "Operation failed" and it won't do anything. I've successfully cloned HDDs to SSDs many times before using this software. What is the problem?

 

Let's start with how big is your desktop's regular drive, and how full is it? As a general rule, cloning software will not want to clone a partition where the destination partition is smaller than the source one, regardless of how full the source partition is. One sure-fire way around this is Norton Ghost, because it shrinks the source partition down to where it the source and destination partitions are of equal size. Then it aligns and clones everything for you. The downside is the source partition will sometimes become unbootable after Norton Ghost because the shrinking process messes with the boot code. Therefore, after you finish cloning your drive, you may not be able to boot off your original drive.

PS: Is your desktop's regular drive a hard drive or SSD? If it's a hard drive, you might as well just clean install windows. You will take more time after cloning to change the settings within windows to make the OS recognize the new drive as an SSD. Windows will only check the drive type during installation and enable TRIM and other features there and then. It won't do it afterwards.

 

Thanks for continuing to try and help me

The original drive is a 320 GB regular hard disk.

Here's a screenshot of what should occur:

But when I click "Proceed", it will attempt to carry it out, then stop and say "Operation Failed".

 

Run windows disk management console (from start menu, use the run command, and type diskmgmt.msc). You want to click on the gateway partition and then try to shrink it down from 275.4 to however small you can make it.

 

I could make it as small as 155; I couldn't make it smaller than that. This time, that message about one of the partitions being "too small" didn't show up, but it still says "operation failed" and won't go through with it.

 

What's on the other two partitions? The PQSE... and S...? If those partitions are some proprietary recovery partitions and/or the data on them is corrupt or locked by some specialty partition access code (i.e. the data on them is not readable except by the recovery program) then the cloning software may be banging its head against the wall when it tries to clone those partitions. One thing you can try is to clone each partition individually and see which one(s) are causing the hangup, that is if the clone disk wizard allows for that.