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Clone 120 Gb SSD to 240Gb SSD

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Win 8.1 64-bit is installed on an Intel 120 Gb SSD. I just purchased a Crucial M500 240 Gb SSD.
After the most recent Win 8.1 update the Intel SSD was backed up to an external HDD.
With both SSD installed into my Dell XPS 9100 (mid-2010), the Intel drive is cloned to the new Crucial drive.

After manually shutting down the computer, (help says clone will automatically shut down following the clone operation), unplugging the original boot drive, switching the SATA connector to the new drive and reboot to blue screen with 0xc000000 error. Reboot to Acronis and recovery of MBR with signature will boot to Win 8.1, but the system is not operating correctly. Some software programs request a re-registration. Norton Antivirus will generate an error message that leads to software to totally uninstall the virus scanner. The system will continually lockup and if an attempt to sign out is made, the system will hang before completing the sign off.

When I attempted to reboot to the original SSD, the MBR had to be restored before the boot would complete.

I formatted the Crucial M500 with Disk Director 12, to see if the SSD was functional. Check drive passed.

Question: How can I use the Crucial M500 240 Gb SSD as my boot drive?

Thank you!

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YOu have to do the cloning operation from the Acronis recovery USB/disk, do not start it from Windows. After the clone is finished, put the resulting disk at the same spot as the older disk, and remove the older disk from the computer. Boot the computer on the new disk.

Hi Pat,

The restore was from the Acronis recovery USB. And of course, changing the SATA cable from the original drive to the new SSD, is the same spot.

Can you describe the operation you did? In the first post, you indicate you were cloning, and expected the computer to reboot, which it didn't, and in the second post you mention a restore operation. Maybe it was only the MBR restore?

Anyway I trust you are effectively cloning. Did you do the cloning from the Acronis recovery CD?

A restore is only necessary when you create a disk and partition backup. A clone creates a copy of your disk on another disk.
Both approaches are OK, although a clone is riskier because the original disk is involved in the operation and user error is a click away...

Hi Pat,

The Help system says after a clone the computer will do a complete shutdown, to allow for the original drive to be removed.

If I remember, the computer booted into Windows but the cloned SSD did not have the 350 MB System Reserved partition. I deleted the the Boot Volume on the new SSD, thinking to start the clone process over. Then the computer would not boot from the original SSD. I restored the MBR from the Acronis Recovery USB image.

The clone operation is not to modify the original disk. Transferring from a SSD to SSD is a faster process.

I see.

Did you do the cloning operation from teh recovery CD or did you start it from Windows?

Hi Pat,

Except for deleting the partition with Acronis Disk Director, all of the cloning or restore operations were done from the Acronis recovery USB image.

I have a CD image as well, but used the USB image.

The disk MBR was restored from a disk backup made shortly before the clone operation was to be done.
An attempt to format the Crucial SSD from this backup was also attempted, but did not complete successfully.There were errors when attempting to write to sector zero. I didn't write down the error messages. I checked the backup, and it is valid. The backup is on an external eSATA HDD.

The Dell used to have a hidden partition, but it was deleted before the upgrade to Win 8.0 Pro x64. (Updated to 8.1 this past year).

The help system has information about restoring with a hidden partition, and that procedure avoids updating the MBR until the OS is restored and then applying the MBR restore.

Create a full disk backup of your smaller SSD. Include all partititions. You can do this backups from within Windows. Note that the "entire PC" default backup will work just fine if you have only one disk in your system.
Install the new SSD on the same connector as your OLD SSD. Do not connect the old SSD at all.
Boot the computer on the Acronis recovery USB
Choose, in tools, add new disk. Select your new SSD. You can skip the part where ATI asks you to create a new partition.
Then restore the entire disk on the new SSD

THis operation is a very standard one and should work without problem.

It may be a couple of days before I can try the restore to the new SSD.

For reasons that will take too long to explain, I did a reset install of Win 8.1 64 bit on the Crucial M500 240 GB SSD. After the install and first round of updates, a full disk backup was made using ATI 2015 (from booting to ATI on USB). As groups of programs were installed, differential backups were made. All backups are from booting to external USB.

The Win 8.1 on the Crucial M500 seemed to be working okay. Because a program was saying that I had too many installs, I decided to boot to the original 120 GB SSD and uninstall some of the programs (M500 was not connected). Then I put the M500 back in place, connected the Intel 120 Gb SSD to another SATA location and booted into ATI. I reinitiated the Intel 120 Gb SSD, thinking this would remove the data.

After booting into Win 8.1, Acronis Disk Director showed the SSD as inactive, but showed the partitions.

After disconnecting the M500, I tried to boot to ATI, but the boot process stopped at the ATI loader... screen (paraphrase).
The computer was shutdown, the Intel 120 Gb SSD put at the boot location and then the computer booted to ATI. After a destructive erase of the SSD, the computer was shutdown.

The Crucial M500 was put back in the computer, but the computer would not boot to the drive! I tried to use Win 8.1 install media to repair, but no luck. Then I booted to ATI and restored the backup made earlier. Was able to boot to Win 8.1.

A couple of questions:
Is a drive with a Windows install required to boot to ATI from external media?
Why was the M500 drive not able to boot, after the Intel SSD was erased from ATI media?

Thank you

No, an active Windows install is NOT required to boot from ATI. I don't know why it appeared to be depending on which SSD what in the system; I would guess that it might related to the disk controller to which the SSD's were connected and/or BIOS/UEFI settings issues...

It appeared you booted with both SSD in the systems, each with an active Windows install, and some other operations... This has most likely modified the boot records and would explain why the computer wouldn't boot on the M500 afterwards...

Pat L wrote:

No, an active Windows install is NOT required to boot from ATI. I don't know why it appeared to be depending on which SSD what in the system; I would guess that it might related to the disk controller to which the SSD's were connected and/or BIOS/UEFI settings issues...

It appeared you booted with both SSD in the systems, each with an active Windows install, and some other operations... This has most likely modified the boot records and would explain why the computer wouldn't boot on the M500 afterwards...

If both disks were installed when boot record was modified or change its possible Windows decided incorrectly which drive would be the boot drive.

Windows likes to look for the larger disks for certain operations which might explain what happen.

@ Ramhound,

I agree.