Haven't bought anything yet but here is the deal.
I need to update and load up a SSD for a mobile Laptop. its Autocad and things for my portable work.

My home computer has a 250 SSD that I try to use for important programs and the boot drive. Currently its got 33 gb free. C drive has a habit of growing and yes that is prolly my fault and partly accumulative.
Its been in for 2 years. Other drives in my system total 9tb

I am thinking of buying a 480 - 500gb SSD
Thought is to clone the 250, take it out and put into the laptop. Reformat etc

Use the cloned image on the 500 and put it in the PC
Will it break some music software? Will it be a huge hassle? Anyone tried this?

I believe alot of things use machine ID but not sure if that is part of the HD as well?

 

I just cloned an ssd (shity old crucial) to another (nice samsung), and it's not either hard nor complicated (I used Acronis to do the job). But when you change hardrive some protections gets reseted. I had to reauthorize the izotopes stuffs (online activation, i had them legit but since it brought me treactivation troubles I now run the r2r ones), the Cytomic stuffs, Samplitude (the same here, you have to contact them if you reach three authorisations, so I use the Tracer release not to be annoyed with that) and probably others that I forget....The only legit plugs that didn't need to be reauthorized were the FXPansion stuffs, beside that all the companies that don't use online shitty activation system (the great Dmg Audio, and most thing with a simple serial).
That was my one week ago experience about it.

EDIT : oh and don't forget your harware, my MPC studio also had to be reactivated...No way around this one.

 

I have cloned drives before.. just not ones with music software. I have a mix of legit and other.
Sounds like I should just go for it and see what happens.

 

Yeah you should...Just keep the cloned drive untouched for a bit, test the new one to see if some softwares are a problem, and if so you can always go back to the cloned one.

 

I've cloned drives several times, on different windows pcs, all with music software and system C drives)...
With Acronis True Image, no problems at all.

 

I use Active@Bootdisk for all backup and recovery and I can say first hand is that I've cloned smaller SSDs to bigger ones with Drive C being the main SSD and it works fine with no hiccups. **Cheers**

 

the easy way is to use another PC /or partition with a separate OS, install BOTH HD as drive 1 and drive 2 and then choose clonemode.
So the actual OS is not "cloned". I hope u know what i mean.
I dont trust the "on the fly clonecopy" options some programs offer.

 

If you are worried about reactivations you should deactivate first if that is possible with the software. With some cloning softwares (like I had with easeus free version) you will have to rebuild boot sectors (repair startup in windows dvd).

 

Like has been said the biggest problem would be complex legit stuff protections with limited number of activations. Be sure to deactivate them in case you can.