Perform a HDD to SSD migration on a laptop
Hi all,
I have read how to migrate my system to a new disk by attaching it to the computer and cloning following instructions. Nevertheless, in my case I have a laptor with an internal HDD so I cannot directly attach a new SSD and perform direct migration. How can I do this? (I suppose I will have to perform a two-step process with two clones ore something). Can I use a network share to store the image instead of an attached disk somehow?
Thanks in advance,
Jose
Comments
You can attach a new SSD (or HDD) with an USB-Sata cable and then clone.
Something like this: Chinese webshops are very cheap.
I would suggest a disk backup or a system backup to an external medium, and then a disk restore or a system restore. One does both from the bootable media.
You have to make sure the new SSD has the same partitioning scheme as the old HDD, that is MBR or GPT style. (diskpart utility). Sometimes one needs bcdboot to finalize the restore and make it bootable (bcdboot utility). Both utilities included on the bootable media, from the Windows command shell.
A network share will most probably not work because it is not structured like a disk.
First thanks @johnnyboyGo and @Peter13feb.
@kankamuso
We really suggest that you should internally connected the destination disk while you clone. So if there is not extra internal interface to attach your SSD. We suggest you could go with @Peter13feb to make a disk backup or a system backup and then restore to your SSD.
Thanks a lot for all your responses. Nice to have different suggestions.
Have a nice day!
Create a bootable media (USB preferred) in the Utilities submenu. Test if you can boot from it. Shutdown the computer and replace the HDD with the SSD. Put the HDD in a enclosure box like this one http://goo.gl/SfRbsk. Boot the computer from the USB flash drive, connect the USB enclosure and reload the drives. Go on with the cloning process.
Be carefull to choose the propper drives! Not that you clone the empty SSD to the HDD.
The best way is to have a SSD with an equal or greater size. Otherwise it can get a bit tricky. It is necessary to adjust the partition sizes before the cloning process starts.
After the cloning process finishes, shutdown the computer and disconnect the enclosure and the USB flash drive.
Turn on the computer and if needed modify the boot drive in the BIOS.
If it starts, you are almost finished. Boot the computer, wait for windows to detect the drive and restart. After that DISABLE the defragmentation job in the task scheduler and the defrag service. There are some other tweaks for SSD, but this one is the most important one.
In case that the computer wont boot, dont panic. Boot from a windows installation media, go to the repair menu a choose Startup repair, which should fix the boot problem.
If not (in rare cases) there are some other options in the command line console.
More on that is here: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/32523/how-to-manually-repair-windows-7-boot-loader-problems/
An advice - leave the old drive in the enclosure as it is, dont delete it. Be sure that the SSD is working properly and has no problems OR wipe the drive and immediately create a full backup. This way you can use it as your spare backup drive.
Anyway I recommend to buy a NAS (network attached storage) with atleast 2 drives in RAID 1 (mirror) configuration. Look for Synology/QNap.
>>>If not (in rare cases) there are some other options in the command line console.
>>>More on that is here: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/32523/how-to-manually-repair-windows-7-boot-loader-problems/
I agree with @Selfman, and have the following addition: the commands there are rather old , I used in my tests (c: drive letter of OS, may be different when booting from bootable media, but not the bootable media X:)
bcdboot c:\windows /L en-US
and after it boots, within Windows
reagentc /enable
Hope this is useful
Well i want to add my positive solution after cloning my HDD to SSD and the freshly cloned SSD, alone in the destop bay would not load my Windows 10 x64.
1st time i thought that my previous fails were due to the use of your freeware backupper
So i bought it, but the result was the same- no booting after a successful cloning of dsome 330 GB... tried that 3 times..
So from my experience and some long research on web and trying several solutions there 2 major issues preventing to load smoothly the OS and to get access to all other programs.
So:
1. my issue was that on modern PCs , as they go on SATA 3, the Bios should be checked as AHCI (and not IDE).
2. Accordingly, you have to format your new SSD as GPT ( the same was my HDD i did clone)
- that obliged me to re-format the SSD one more time and of course do a 2nd re-cloning of some over 332GB used to my new 480 GB SSS - that took me each time about 110 mins roughly.
3. After a successful cloning the boot failed and after trying a quite a number of solutions using bootrec etc. ...all failed
Eventually, after some long headaches and web research i did find the
problem - i discovered that all the solutions were for MBR mode boot loader, and in my case the problem was to make boot loader work in EFI mode (UEFI).
- So- Finally and after another
loooong research i found the solution, by re-writing it under command
prompt in rescue mode... a little sofisticated for other users- less
experienced..
here is the link that might save some many other unhappy people as long as AOMEI Backupper doesn't yet detect if it is MBR or EFI and how to deal it to make active that freshly cloned hard disk (SSD in my case).
It works for sure in Windows 8 and in Windows 10
http://superuser.com/questions/460762/how-can-i-repair-the-windows-8-efi-bootloader
Great thanks to the guy who did post this nice solution
Sorry for the problem. When do the disk clone, there is something you need to know that the destination disk is the internal disk not connected by USB, which is the best. If it is the external disk, you need to do the backup and restore, after finish the operation, please restart the computer to the BIOS to amend the boot mode. MBR=legacy, GPT=UEFI.