What software is needed to clone HDD to SSD through an image and an external box?

Question

Hard disks

Given - there is a laptop in it is a slow HDD 2.5 "SATA with Windows. There is a 2.5" SATA SSD of a similar capacity and an old external collapsible box for connecting hard drives, bought back in 2009.
The question is what software under Windows can be used to do the following:
1. remove the HDD from the laptop, plug it into the box, connect it to a stationary PC and make an image
2. disable the box, replace the HDD with an SSD, connect it back to the PC, write the image to the SSD
3 .disable the box, remove the SSD, insert it into the laptop
4. PROFIT??

Answer 1

if there is a stationary PC, I would connect both devices to it for cloning. will be faster than using boxing. Perhaps many times faster if you connect directly to the SATA ports, the
next critical moment is the availability of sufficient free space on the 3rd media (suppose the main disk of a stationary PC). this is an important point. if there is a place, then everything is super. preliminary calculation of the required space is not complicated - in the properties of the working disk that you are going to clone, we look at the used space (I have used space, I won’t give the exact Russian name right off the bat), and we also divide it in half. there is no guarantee of compression by exactly 2 times, but all files such as swap, tempo and a lot of the like will definitely be excluded. Therefore, the backup is usually even a little less than half of the useful information of the original.
In principle, there are many software options, but I would recommend not to philosophize, but to get an Acronis boot disk on the network. it must have ATIH (Acronis True Image Home) and ADDS (Acronis Disc Director Suite). highly desirable based on WinPE. in general, it is not necessary that everything be the latest versions. I do not offer links, by the fact that it is, to put it mildly, not quite legal. But software on boot disks does not require serial numbers and/or registration
1 - the best option is to make a backup using ATIH from the original to a third medium. then to them, to make recovery on a new disk. both the original and the backup should be kept until you are fully convinced of the clone's performance and the integrity of all important data. upd !!! if the disk is completely empty, meaning there isn't even a partition table yet, ATIH may not see the disk. you will have to reboot and "initialize the disk in a normal Windows station", or using ADDS (reboot is not needed here, but it will be required after creating the partition table so that ATIH sees the disk). depending on the version of ATIH, this problem may not occur at all
2 - if there is no space for backup on the 3rd media. you can do direct cloning with ADDS. in this case, be sure to keep the original as long as possible. this operation is not as reliable as restoring from a backup

Answer 2

I don't really follow user disk cloning software. there are more serious solutions at hand for work, but when something like this is required, we usually use hex editors.
Here's a free one for home use: https://rlab.ru/tools/ci_hex_viewer.html
There's a convenience in that you can make the image the way you want - the entire disk, cut something off at the beginning or end, after uploading the image , for example, fill the remaining space with zeros, etc.
Hex editors will give you an uncompressed sector-by-sector copy ("binary image"), which you can then work with in any way. In my opinion, even modern archivers can open them and pull out individual files.
Speaking of special programs, I used to like Norton Ghost. It was rumored that some version of it (being separated from the entire Suite) was even made free, however, I can not confirm this.
For those versions that were included in Hiren's Boot CD, in my opinion there was even a bootable floppy disk, which, of course, can be rolled onto a USB flash drive.
The image created by such programs will already be proprietary, i.e. You can view it only with the manufacturer's utilities, but one of the advantages is the possibility of compression.