Clone BitLocker partition on Windows 7 with Macrium Reflect

Received my SSD this afternoon and cloned the HDD partition over. It took few hours to complete the clone but it is well worth it, my old laptop feels like a new one now.

Before purchase the SSD, I've seen quite a number of post regarding the concern and issue on cloning BitLocker partition on Windows 7. It seems like a lot of people hitting error or unable to boot up after the cloning. I'm not getting into details about that, but just to share my experience on replacing my HDD with SSD.

I bought the Samsung SSD 830 256GB (SATA III) from Amazon.co.uk, free shipping and arrived in just a few days time. The package has a SATA to USB adaptor, which is quite useful to me (I don't have a caddy for secondary HDD in my laptop). It also comes with Norton Ghost 15 full version, but I didn't use it. For simplicity reason, I used Macrium Reflect. Below are the steps taken.

*I'm using Windows 7 with BitLocker enabled for OS partition

1. Boot up OS as usual, install Macrium Reflect
2. Plug in the SSD to USB port (with the supplied SATA to USB cable)
3. Run the Macrium Reflect software and clone the partitions from HDD to SSD
   Cloning all 3 partitions at one go:
   > the reserved partition (~180MB)
   > the recovery partition (~2GB)
   > the OS partition (the remaining of my drive size)
   *Just Google for the instructions or video in YouTube
4. Let it run for few hours
5. After the cloning is completed, shut down laptop
6. Took out battery, swap the HDD with the new SSD, put the battery back in
7. Boot up OS as usual
8. Turn on BitLocker again

No issue during the whole process, it all gone well.