Hi all, I've read what I can on hard drive cloning.

Here is the situation:

My C: drive (windows and main programme drive) is getting full. its a 250 gig SSD and I've used 230 gig. I want to clone this and replace it with a 500 or more gig ssd. The question I have. If I clone it will everything 'magically' work? Will I have to reinstall or redirect any software that is stored on that drive or will it be as if that was always my C: drive and there should be no issues?

It needs doing ASAP but I'm in the middle of a few different projects and could do without a week of down time as I reinstall everything from scratch again.

Thanks as ever guys.

I can't speak for other manufacturers,  but the Samsung EVO series that Beagle and myself both use comes with a clone utility that works perfectly.
 
You connect the NEW SSD to a usb port (with the supplied adapter if you buy the upgrade kit) and the clone utility does the rest for you.
When its finished, you rip out your old C: drive and replace it with the new SSD and your computer knows no different.

Most drive kits come with some type of mirroring/cloning utility. I too have used the Samsung drives and clone from magnetic hard drives. Even those worked with no issues. You can connect the new drive with the SATA connection too.
 
Like Karyn said, after it is cloned, put the new drive on the SATA cable as the old one. You may have to remount the drive in Windows but it should work fine. After you have confirmed all is ok, format your old one and use it for your temp files and additional storage.

I've had zero luck with cloning.  I've used the program that comes with Samsung SSD drives, Macrium Reflect (paid pro version) and another cloning program that I forgot its name.  NONE worked for me.  With the Samsung program, I cloned my Win 8.1 drive to a new 500GB Samsung EVO850 SSD and it would not boot.  With Macrium and the same drives, it got to the point of "configuring Windows" but never got any further.  We had a long discussion on the Windows 8 forum about this and the software "guru" there tried it and he had mostly failures - he did get one clone to work out of many.
 
After many clone failures, when I switched from conventional hard drives to SSD's for the OS drive, I used Macrium Reflect and made an "Image" of my hard drive.  I restored that to the new SSD and no problems.
 
Consider with a "clone" you are making an exact copy of the old drive including defective sectors, unused sectors and corrupted data.   With an Image you only use the actual hard drive data. 

It seems like there have been mixed results when cloning drives. There may  be some unknowns not accounted for in cases that didn't work. If your C drive is clean with no errors and is not partitioned I would give it a shot. JMO. The worst thing that can happen is you temporarily need to still use the old drive. The clone utility that comes with the drive should work...I mean...this is why they give it to you. I'm not saying it will but chances are high that it will be ok.
Maybe someone else can comment on this- Does Windows ID your hard drive? In some cases the OS can recognize foreign hardware that wasn't there before and flag it. This is usually a security measure to assure that someone isn't attempting to use a licensed OS on another setup. In the case of hard drives I'm not sure if this is an issue or not. I wouldn't think so. I have read that motherboard changes can be an issue.

The C drive can be recognised as changed, Windows used to use it as part of the check that it hadn't been installed on a different computer so changing the drive meant re-authorising Windows. I think, though I'm not sure, that the key component for more recent Windows versions is the motherboard - as far as Windows is concerned a new motherboard = a new PC.

Even if Windows doesn't reference the initial installation drive other software might, so stuff might need re-authorising or even reinstalling if the C drive is changed.

There's also the question of whether the MBR, boot sectors and the hidden partition Windows creates nowadays are in some way dependant on the C drive being the original - e.g. the Windows boot system relies on sector based partition sizes and locations to work correctly.

Personally I'd put in the new C drive then do a fresh installation to it and only reconnect the old C drive after that, having made sure BIOS sees the new drive as the boot one. Then copy any data wanted off the old C to somewhere else and reformat the old C to use as a data drive.

I used Acronis to swap my C drive and it worked great.  I also use Acronis to make backup images as well.  I didn't even install the program, but just use the disk that you buy, when you get the program.  It will boot your computer off the disk and let you select from their menu what you want to do at that point.  Copy, make image, etc...

I switched from convention hard drives to SSD's on 4 systems, using the "disc image" procedure and they all were successful.  One was Win 10, one was Win 8.1 and two were Win 7.

Since most boards have 6 Sata ports wouldn't it be better to install the new SSD and leave the old HHD in and then copy?
 
I've had the same problems at times with transferring HDDs and they would not boot.
I used this http://www.lazesoft.com/ and it works.
 
 

fireberd
I've had zero luck with cloning. 
 ...
After many clone failures, when I switched from conventional hard drives to SSD's for the OS drive, I used Macrium Reflect and made an "Image" of my hard drive.  I restored that to the new SSD and no problems...

This was my experience as well when I recently moved from HD to SSD - couldn't get cloning to work.  I also resorted to an image backup and restore, and that worked like a charm.