Yes, you can clone it, and it will be rather fast in SSD to SSD operations.

Yes, you can adjust partition sizes after the fact.

I'm not positive on the firmware update details, but generally there will software for managing the SSD and while you don't generally need it for anything else, checking/updating the firmware is sometimes they allow. For most SSDs, they see to be able to do this through the software (a full PC restart may or may not be required for them to actually take effect).

Cloning will be a 1:1 so that wouldn’t really solve your issue. You can do a “cloning” process that is not 1:1 but that depends on the tool you’re using and what methods it supports.

For example Acronis True Image (it’s been renamed and rolled into their other product suite) can do what you’re thinking where you can copy your OS partition from your current drive to the new drive and have it use the whole destination drive space. Then you can just do a file copy of the data from the other partition/filesystem once you’ve booted into the OS on the new disk.

The only challenge that you might run into with that is if you’re using secure boot. You’ll also likely need to remove the original disk from the system once you’ve cloned the OS partition to the new disk so the boot records don’t conflict. But you could still use a M.2 external USB enclosure to connect the original disk to copy data from the second partition after you’ve booted into the OS on the new disk.

You shouldn’t need to worry about updating the SSD firmware before doing anything.

So If I have my original SSD with 2x partitions one with my OS and the other with STEAM and games, etc. and clone partition 1 to my second SSD the OS will still remain in a separate partition?

Or do you mean, if I clone one partition(OS in this case) and then try to clone the second partition(STEAM) to the same SSD(New SSD) the second clone will basically overwrite the OS?

At this point I'm thinking I would be better off downloading Windows 10 to a USB drive, installing it on the new SSD and just redownload everything from STEAM and have everything as a fresh install... Would that be better in this scenario?

Originally posted by PopinFRESH:

Cloning will be a 1:1 so that wouldn’t really solve your issue.

While it's true that cloning by itself won't change anything, the idea is that you can simply use the extra unallocated space of the larger drive size to increase the OS partition size, which would solve it, no?

Windows Disk Managerment can do this. I've even used it to shrink the OS partition size when moving from a larger drive to a smaller drive (640 GB HDD to 256 GB SSD).

At least, that's what I've always done and it's always worked for me.

Originally posted by Larry:

At this point I'm thinking I would be better off downloading Windows 10 to a USB drive...

Sort of off topic, but at this point I would be going with Windows 11 for new installs. Windows 10 is set to enter its lack of support phase in a few months, and while it won't instantly be unusable on the day that happens (nowhere near), and while LTS versions/methods will exist for a while, new installs should be defaulting to Windows 11 now in my mind. The exception is if your hardware is too old to install Windows 11 and you don't want to use workarounds to install it.

Just go into the OS and download the latest software from the maker of the new drive that allows for drive cloning and install it. Run it and clone entire ssd old to new. When all done reboot the PC, enter the bios and make the new ssd the only boot device.

If you have Win10 I'd just stay on that for years mo problem. But if you have an Intel CPU with e cores or AMD AM5 config then you should already be on Win11 24H2 no question since Win10 is never been updated for modern PC specs as far as the cpu scheduling goes so Win11 is the better choice for modern specs. Or a modern 64bit Linux distro

Win10 is not going anywhere soon. At least until after Jan 2028

Originally posted by Illusion of Progress:

Originally posted by PopinFRESH:

Cloning will be a 1:1 so that wouldn’t really solve your issue.

While it's true that cloning by itself won't change anything, the idea is that you can simply use the extra unallocated space of the larger drive size to increase the OS partition size, which would solve it, no?

No, because a clone normally will clone the block device, meaning the destination disk will still have both partitions; thus not solving his issue. He is wanting to "clone" the two separate partitions he has on his current SSD to a single full disk partition on the destination SSD.

If that is possible or not is dependent upon the utility and what functionality it has to "correct" the OS post-clone to fix the things (e.g. reg entries for file paths, etc.) that will be broken otherwise. Acronis can do what they are asking about but unless his SSD came with a utility that supports cloning multiple partitions on one disk to a single partition on a destination disk; I wouldn't suggest going out and spending money on a utility they are rarely going to use.

I would concur with the notion that if the OP decides to simply swap the drives and do a clean installation, I'd also suggest installing Windows 11 if the hardware is current and natively supports it. Then they can install all their drivers and Steam and create a new steam library. Then reinstall the old SSD in the second M.2 slot and copy the steamapps folder contents to the new steamapps directory in the new steam library; and once they have everything copied they can wipe the drive and repartition / format it and use it for additional storage / backups / or added to steam as a second Steam library.

Honestly, if all the OP has on the system that they are trying to retain are Steam games then I'd suggest the clean install or Windows 11 is probably the much simpler solution because no matter what they can still just reinstall Steam and will be able to re-download all their games regardless if they backup anything or not. The only thing that they might be missing is save game data for any games that don't use Steam Cloud Saves.

Some Clone software have options; Partition or Entire Disk; YOU MUST select ENTIRE DISK otherwise the OS required boot sector will be left out.

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

Some Clone software have options; Partition or Entire Disk; YOU MUST select ENTIRE DISK otherwise the OS required boot sector will be left out.

That isn't necessarily true, but that is my point in that it is dependent upon the utility and it's features And if you do an actual clone (e.g. 1:1) as the Entire Disk like you've noted, that doesn't solve the issue the OP is trying to do.

Acronis, depending on the version you have, does have the functionality to rebuild the boot block and "fix" the BCD if you want to clone a single partition from one disk where the OS is installed into a single full-disk partition and then make it bootable. However, for example the Samsung cloning utility that shipped with my previous Samsung SSD did not support anything other than what you're describing with either selecting partitions to do a file copy, or select entire disk to do a bootable clone as a 1:1.