SSD Migration Software

Before starting your migration, you need to choose an SSD that is compatible with your system and large enough to hold your data. Here is what to consider.

SATA vs NVMe vs M.2

If your computer has an M.2 NVMe slot, an NVMe SSD will deliver the fastest possible performance, with sequential read speeds of 3,500 MB/s or more. If your system only supports SATA, a 2.5-inch SATA SSD is still a massive upgrade over an HDD, with speeds around 550 MB/s. Check your motherboard manual or manufacturer's website to determine which interfaces are available. Remember that M.2 is a form factor, and some M.2 slots only support SATA protocol, not NVMe.

Capacity Planning

Your SSD must be large enough to hold all the used data on your source drive, not the total drive capacity. If your 1TB HDD only contains 300GB of actual data, a 500GB SSD will work perfectly. Macrium Reflect shows you exactly how much used space needs to be transferred and automatically resizes partitions to fit. As a general rule, choose an SSD with at least 20% more capacity than your current used space to allow room for future files and Windows updates.

Two of the most critical technical aspects of SSD migration are partition alignment and partition resizing. Both affect whether your SSD delivers its full performance potential after the migration.

Why 4K Sector Alignment Matters

SSDs read and write data in 4-kilobyte pages. When your partitions start at addresses that are multiples of 4K, every read and write operation maps cleanly to a single page on the SSD. If partitions are misaligned, a single logical read can straddle two physical pages, forcing the SSD controller to perform two read operations instead of one. This misalignment can reduce performance by 20 to 40 percent, which means you are not getting the full speed you paid for.

Macrium Reflect automatically corrects partition alignment during migration. Even if your source HDD uses the older 63-sector alignment from the Windows XP era, Macrium Reflect realigns every partition to proper 4K boundaries on the destination SSD. This happens transparently, with no manual intervention required.

Intelligent Partition Resizing

When migrating from a larger HDD to a smaller SSD, the partition layout must be adjusted to fit the available space. Macrium Reflect handles this automatically, proportionally shrinking each partition while ensuring the operating system, recovery, and EFI system partitions remain intact and properly sized. You can also manually adjust partition sizes through the drag-and-drop interface if you prefer more control over the layout.