Cloning HDD in a Dell I620 and the Dell System Recovery Partition
I would like to upgrade the HDD that came with my Dell I620 to an SSD, however I am concerned about the Dell System Recovery Partition that is on the HDD -- I would like to keep it if at all possible. Will it clone over properly to the SSD and be usable if needed?
Thanks!
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Thanks Pat. I had found that link however there is no mention as to whether or not the Dell System Recovery partition can successfully be backed up and restored. Do you by chance know? I would think so but I have also read elsewhere that not all disk backup programs will backup and restore the Dell partition properly and while it may seem like it is good, when you go to try and use it, it does not work.
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Bob,
If you are an intermediate or advance computer user, you can try to do a complete disk backup, but to restore only the partitions you want. YOu might have to use the Windows installation DVD to repair the startup.
If you don't want to take any risk, follow the guid above. Do not attempt to change the location or size of the Dell recovery partition.
Even if you never use it (because you have ATI), restoring it might just be the easiest way to get your system running.
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I am what I would consider to be an advanced computer user (having worked in IT for almost 30 years). When all is said and done, I want to end up with the same partitions on the SSD that are currently on the HDD, and then have confidence that the Dell System Recovery partition will work should I ever decide, or need, to use it. I have total trust in backing up and restoring the OS partition using ATI, I just have never dealt with the Dell partition before, especially when moving them from one disk to another.
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I've used ATIH to create full disk backups on many Dell desktops and laptops. All of them had Dell recovery partitions, and smaller Dell diagnostic partitions. All of them were backed up and restored successfully using Acronis True Image Home.
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Bob,
Good. So yes, use backup (all partitions) and restore to the SSD as explained in the linked posting above. This will ensure that you have an aligned SSD upon restore.
Let us know if you have further questions!
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Pat,
I am migrating from a failing WD 250 GB SATA HDD to a 500 GB one. I have the WD version of Acronis True Image available from their site. I want to preserve my DSR partition. My Dell Studio's optical drive has always been a source of problem and rather risky to work with (system hangs and crashes). The procedure mentioned in the link above uses an Acronis recovery cd, which obviously I cannot use. What are my options here?
I am less than an intermediate level user, so something simpler and less risky will be highly appreciated.
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Dell User,
You can create a bootable flash drive from the Aronis software and use it instead of the CD/DVD drive . Since you are using a laptop, do you have another drive besides the one in your laptop and the replacment drive? For example an external USB connected drive or an external USB drive drive enclosure to put your new drive in. To clone the drive to a new drive, you would have to have both your original drive and your new drive connected at the same time. If you wish to back up your original drive to a backup image (file), and then restore it to your new drive, you would need a place to save the backup image (file), and to restore it later.
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The Dell recovery process can be easily broken. Even something like repartioning the original C drive will stop it working as the recovery utility no longer sees the same HDD stucture. If the partition is changed by even a few bytes it won't work.
If you want to replace your HDD then I would image a full working windows installation and transfer that using Acronis. Depending on your Dell even that may not work directly straight off and you may have to do a "start up repair" using a Windows DVD to reinstate the boot files.
I'm no expert on this but I believe to get the best from a SSD you have to "align" the image so that the best use is made of the sectors and pages on the drive with no overlap which would decrease the speed by 50%.
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Mooly,
You are correct. On many systems, multiple partitions are created by the manufactures, and the structure is of great importance. The alignment issue with SSD's just throws another monkey wrench into the mix. Also of concern is the AFD disk sector size change from 512bytes/sector on older drives to the new AFD 4KB/sector size on newer disk drives. I find it best to always clone, or backup/recover, using the same layout and partition sizes as the orignal, boot and test for proper operation, and finally use partition manipulation software to adjust the partition sizes after a successful result. This has always given me good results.
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Thanks for the reply James F and Moooly!
I am migrating from a failing WD 250 GB HDD to a 500 GB one. Currently, my new hard drive sits in a Transcend enclosure and can be connected via USB cord. As I understand the process, it is:
1. Create a full backup of the old hdd
2. Install the new hdd in the laptop
3. Connect the old hdd (via USB)
4. Connect the bootable Acronis pen drive (I will be using a pen drive)
5. Boot the computer in recovery environment
6. Restore the image partition by partition on the new hdd
Since I have just two drives, I believe I have to store the full system backup image on the old (250 GB) hdd itself. No other partition on my drive has enough space except the primary OS partition. Therefore, I was wondering if I can do that and restore this image in the primary partition to the new (500 GB) hdd. Can you help?
Though cloning would be easier, I am not attempting it because it may render the DSR useless (it is suggested on this forum that image restore works better).
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Dell User
You really only have one option when you have only two drives. You should not even think of trying to backup the current drive to a partition on the original drive. You best course of action is to mount the new drive in the laptop and place the old drive in the external enclosure, boot to the recovery environment, and perform a clone from the old drive to the new drive. Be sure you have a volume label (name) on the original drive to help with idenetification of the correct drive when in the recovery environment, as the drive letters do not always match what Windows assigns. You can be sure of the correct drives by both the volume label and the drive sizes. Be very careful. If you clone the new drive to the old drive, you will have two blank drives.
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