Problem backing up 88GB onto BX300 120GB

[RavonRayne]

I’m trying to install a BX300 120 GB onto my laptop which currently has an 88.3GB / 180GB used. When I tried to transfer the data onto a 120GB SSD, it shows I don’t have enough space. Did I miscalculate something and do I need a bigger drive, or am I doing something wrong here? I’m not sure if this is the recovery partition or the dual boot I am running with Linux. Any suggestions would be great. Thanks in advance!

[targetbsp]

Depending on your cloning software you may need to manually shrink your source partition first.  Windows can do this itself via control panel -> admin tools -> computer management -> disk management

But I tend to favour https://www.partitionwizard.com/download.html myself

[RavonRayne]

Thanks for the link to that site. I'll be sure to use it once I'm back up and running. You wouldn't happen to know anything about Linux boot sequences would you? I posted the following because I seem to have messed up something on my system when attempting to resize the partition. The following is a copy of the message I posted on another forum:

I think I might have messed up my boot sequence. I am currently running a dual boot with Ubuntu and Windows 7 on an old i3. I was trying clone my drive to an SSD and clean up my partitions, and deleted a small 5gb partition, but I think it had something to do with my boot sequence. When restarting my computer, I now get the following: Error: unknown filesystem. Entering rescue mode… Grub rescue>

ls shows (hd0) (hd0,msdos5) (hd0,msdos3) (hd0,msdos2) (hd0,msdos1) I followed the steps listed on the following: Persist commands typed to GRUB rescue, but the ‘insmod /boot/grub/linux.mod’ command leads to “error: unknown filesystem”

My main purpose to get rid of the linux portion altogether and just run Windows 7. I also tried F10 at startup to do a system recovery, but it just led to a blank screen.

[targetbsp]

Not really, no. I switched to VM's rather than multi booting years ago now.

[HWTech]

The best way to resolve the dual boot Linux issue is by booting either the Linux install media in Rescue Mode or use  a Live distro.  You can then chroot into the Linux system on your SSD and update GRUB.    Just search online and you will find some information on it as I don't recall the exact commands to run.   You will need to run a few commands before doing a chroot so that your devices & network are still seen when you jump to the SSD to fix GRUB.   If the partition was not being used by Ubuntu, then this should work as GRUB maps the partitions and the order is no longer valid with the original.   Remember when you jump to the chroot you will be running your Ubuntu installation at that point.   Of course if the 5GB parititon was used by Ubuntu this won't method won't help you.

[RavonRayne]

Thanks, but I decided to scrap Linux altogether. I just couldn't get used to the GUI, and I have tried different distros. I finally got this back up and running using the Windows Recovery disc. Now back to the fun part of trying to shrink my partition. :-)