Warning to others migrating your OS to a SSD

Don't assume, like I did, that it will be an easy trouble-free process necessarily.  I have followed the instructions provided by others and all the well intended help of others yet have still wound up with a $1000 boat anchor.

So what I am dealing with is a new Dell XPS 8500 machine in which I installed my own SSD and attempted to migrate the OS to it.  Originally using Dell's own installed recovery program to create the recover medium.  And here is where I think  (don't know) the true problem lies.  From the get go I could not recover from the media created with the Dell recover program.  So lots of help her from others about BIOS changes, partition resizing, free software to do the migration with, etc.  But in a nutshell it was a total fail.

First let me warn about what I did with the AOMEI Partition Assistant program that was recommended by another user.  It supposedly has the ability to migrate the OS from the HD to the SSD.  But it did not work.  I was told to convert the SSD to GPT and then it should work but it still did not work.

I was advised to shrink down the partition the OS was on.  So I used the above mentioned program to shrink the partition it existed on down to a size that was around 30 GB larger than the space currently being used.  The AOMEI software did it's think for awhile showing progress and all that but then it kept trying to reboot the computer and just stayed in a continuous loop.

I figured, no problem I have the recovery disks made and can just use those to restore back to the original HD.  Uh NO!!!!!!

The computer boots off of them just fine, it runs up the Dell recover program just fine, and checks the computer and finds no problems just fine, but it fails at every attempt to actually restore.  The exact exact same failure no matter what I do or which of the 3 sets of recovery discs I try.  It also does not matter whether I chose "Factory Refresh" or "Factory Recover" when I try to restore.  It fails out no matter what.

So did I do something wrong, could be!  Bit I can't tell you what.  Seems like a simple straight forward process.  I followed all the steps everyone else did, etc, etc... I just have no clue what is wrong.

To me it appears like the Dell Recovery program is screwing up the image.  That is what Dell Tech support said to.  They are sending me out the OS and drivers on a disc but I will be down for days waiting for it.

For certain something went wrong using that AOMEI progam.  Whether it was me or the program itself I don't know but rest assured I won't use it again.

I just wanted to get this out there to others as a warning.  Funny thing is I maintain desktops at work and while not an expert (new career change) do install the OS, Applications, set up accounts, security features etc daily.  But have no idea why this was such a problem.

First time in my 20 some years messing with PCs that I failed to be able to follow directions to do what should be a simple upgrade....

My fault but I also truly believe the Dell Recovery Progam is jacking up the image for some reason also.  Doesn't make sense that it would never work right no matter what and that 3 different sets of recovery media would all fail in the same manner.  It's not like the Recovery Program gave me any options to change anything when it created the recovery media....

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Long live the HMS Beagle Critiques always welcome!

If you don't want to wait for Dell to mail you the Windows 7 install DVD, and you have broadband access to the internet,  you can download Windows 7 from the link below (just pick the appropriate version).  After downloading the ISO file, you'll just have to burn it to a DVD and then boot from the DVD.  You'll also need to download the drivers for your Dell system from Dell's support area.  Once you have both of those, you can do a clean install of Windows 7, using the key that is printed on the Dell sticker.

http://www.mydigitallife.info/download-windows-7-iso-official-32-bit-and-64-bit-direct-download-links/

Thanks Bob,

Probably should have mentioned it is Windows 8.  Probably why things are jacked up in the first place.

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Long live the HMS Beagle Critiques always welcome!

Unfortunately, Windows 8 is a different story.  Microsoft has not licensed Digital River to distribute Widows 8 as they did with Windows 7.  You'll probably just have to wait for the Dell disk to come.

Yeah, no big deal. Still have the old XP machine still up and running. I just want the new one going as the Eagles are coming in and it's time to start doing a lot of shooting.  And with the 7D now I'll be delving into video to.

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Long live the HMS Beagle Critiques always welcome!

Do I understand correctly that you're trying to migrate an existing OS installation on a hard drive in one machine to an SSD in an entirely different and new machine?   That's not something I'd ever attempt to do.  New machine = new OS.   Install the new OS in the new machine and migrate your profile and data, not the OS - that's the way to go.

No, same brand new machnie

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Long live the HMS Beagle Critiques always welcome!

...would be to use Acronis TrueImage for the migration. There are also free tools you could use and follow the same basic procedure.

The very first thing I would do is make and verify a backup of your working system to an external hard drive which you then unplug. You should be making regular backups of your system anyway, so getting TrueImage is a logical first step.

Next, unplug the old drive and replace it with the SSD on the same SATA connector. Connect the old drive to your computer using an external USB hard drive controller, or a eSATA port if your computer has one. Alternatively, just plug it into one of the other SATA ports.

Start TrueImage and use the Clone function to clone the old drive to the SSD. When the process completes, shut the system down, unplug the old drive, and start up the system. Windows will likely install a driver for the SSD on the first boot and require a restart, but that should be the end of it.

TrueImage will resize the partitions during the cloning process as needed, and also take care of aligning the partitions on 4KB boundaries.

Responded in the following thread before I saw this thread:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/post/50528029

Maybe try a normal backup and restore if you haven't tried that yet,
Sky

You may also need to change the bios settings to reflect the AHCI that the SSD might use rather than the SATA that the existing hard drive uses.

i suspects that this may also be why all your imaging program's are falling over as they write at block level and of you haven't changed the address mechanism then they can access the drive correctly.

there are other things you need to w about SSDs such as never defrag them and you shouldn't really use them for temp files or cache as the numbeifor eads and writes these tpe of file create will reduce the I've of the SSD

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Iain Morrison LRPS CPAGB

Ah, OK.

I don't know who's giving you advice about GUID partitions, but I'd stop listening to that person.   You only need a GUID partition for a device that's larger than 4TB, and no consumer SSD is anywhere near that size.  And you don't need any motherboard GUID support unless you're actually trying to boot from a GUID-partitioned  drive.

I can tell you from long experience that when you do these things you never, ever do anything to change the disk that holds the original OS - that's your fallback and if you mess it up then you're hosed and you get to try your recovery procedures.   And of course if you haven't tested your recovery procedures then you're really out of luck.

It sounds like this advice might be coming a little late for you, but I had no problem doing an OS migration simply by using "System Image Backup" option built into the Windows 7 backup utility.  I backed up the HDD to an external drive, replaced the HDD with an SSD, booted from the recovery DVD I burned using the backup utility, and restored from the external drive to the SSD.  It booted and ran just fine with no problems at all.

I like to stick with vanilla Windows tools if they do the job because I figure Microsoft has the best chance of doing the right thing with their own OS and file system.   The Microsoft tools don't have as many bells, whistles and capabilities as third-party software does, but if they can do the job I need done then I find they've always worked pretty reliably for me.

Being a long time Acronis user this was the solution I was planning to use if and when I actually can justify buying an SSD. I thought I would make an Acronis backup of my system and just restore it to the SSD. But, given that you suggested this, I am prompted to ask if you have ever tried it? Not restoring to disc - unfortunately I have had to do this multiple times so I know Acronis backups work just fine and can be lifesavers - but restoring a hard drive backup to an SSD.

Will backing up a hard drive and restoring to an SSD with Acronis work? Will it work with Windows 7 (which is what I am running)? I currently have TI 2013 so I assume it would be as up to date as possible.

Hi

I'm fairly sure that the Acronis add-on pack allows to do what you are asking. Have a look here

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Best Regards
Steven
Chigwell, UK

Sorry you had such a bad experience.

Personally, I always prefer a clean install to a migration. Clean installs are Good. Very Good!

Of course, you need a disk for a clean install. But, of course, that's where you've ended up anyway.

Install disks are easy with Win 7 because you can download an ISO from Digital River.

Currently, it's a problem with Win 8. We'll have to see how that pans out.

Here's the take home lesson for others reading this thread:

You need a Windows install disk for each system that you own!

If you don't have one and you're running Win 7, download one today!

If you're running Win 8, order one from the PC manufacturer, even if you have to pay a few bucks. Use the opportunity to tell them that shipping computers without an install disk sucks rocks!

If you have built-in recovery systems, your own system disk images, or other backups, that's great. But you still want that vanilla install disk as compiled by MS or your OEM. Don't take no for an answer.

Yes. There is a big difference between recovery media and cloning a disk image. Recovery programs are designed to recover the state of the source drive back to itself. I am sure that some of them can be used sometimes to migrate disk contents to a different type of disk, but that is not their purpose so you are taking a risk.

Use a program that has a specific disk clone function. I think that Acronis and Macrium both offer that functionality. I have used Windows Backup to restore an entire disk image, but I would not use it to move the HDD image to a SSD. I have used Macrium for that, on both my laptop and desktop computers, both running Windows 7, and it worked without problems in both cases.

Perhaps, but why would you need that? I assumed the Plus Pack was for moving a backup from one machine to another while I would be interested in moving the backup from a machine back to itself with the SSD installed instead of t hard drive.

I don't know but I made the assumption that an SSD would look exactly like a hard drive to the restoration software (assuming, of course, that the drive sizes were the same) and that a restore would just restore. Of course I don't know, but it is what I assumed ...

When I recently upgraded to an SSD, this is exactly how I moved my OS's & data from the original hard drive to the new SSD.  First, I made an Acronis (TI2010) backup (image) of each of the 4 partitions I wanted to move over (XP, Vista x64, Win7 x64, and Apps).  After doing that I booted from my Acronis boot CD and restored the backups to the SSD one by one, adjusting the partition sizes as I went along (some of the original partitions were marginal in size).  Everything went smoothly and the partitions were properly aligned.  So, I can vouch that the procedure does work.

Yes, I have used this method a number of times to upgrade both hard drives and SSDs to larger-capacity drives, and also to update from hard drives to SSDs. I have had excellent success even with non-standard recovery and diagnostic partitions on the source drives.

As you surmised, you do not need the Plus Pack for this. The Plus Pack is for migrating to a different motherboard or processor architecture.

The Clone function eliminates the need to create an intermediate backup, it is source-to-target instead of source-to-backup-to-target. It also doesn't reset the Archive bit on the source drive. I favor making a backup anyway unless you are in the habit of regularly backing up.

FYI, a GUID Partition Table (GPT) is also required if you want to use Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) to boot, regardless of the disk capacity.

Acronis has worked for me ever since I started using it with TrueImage 10. It has saved me a huge number of hours in restoring discs when I had some boot problems and I now use it (instead of Ghost) as my regular backup software. It is one of the few pieces of software that I upgrade from year to year.

I could see no reason restoring a disk image using Acronis would not work with an SSD, but there was no way for me to be sure there was not some issue transferring the OS from a hard drive to an SSD so I appreciate your post.

Always a good idea to be up to date with backups. I don't do incremental and always create full backups. It takes some time but I don't want to have to worry about one of the incremental backups failing.