system transfer from one computer to another

[jack stone]

i am looking for a free program that will allow me to image my current hard drive and save the image to an external hard drive.
and then restore the image to another computer's hard drive
(the hard drive being transferred to is smaller than the original and cant use windows built in option)
thank you

[JudahMcB]

https://clonezilla.org/

Install it to a USB stick and boot from the USB stick. If you can connect the 2 computers with an Ethernet cable it's a piece of cake. Or if you can remove the hard drive from one machine and install it temporarily in the other then also easy. You can do a partition to partition restore if disk to disk doesn't work because the destination is smaller.

It's not the simplest program for a beginner but it works.

[shwarmabob]

Acronis True Image.
HD manufacturers offer their version of Acronis for free if one of the HDs is theirs.
You should create a backup and also clone the HD you are replacing.

[Yisroel Tech]

And if you didn't get Acronis True Image included, Macrium Reflect Free is pretty good https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree/.