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COPY NETBOOK SATA HDD TO SATA SSD

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Hi,
I have an ASUS netbook and want to remove the HDD and replace it with a SSD as I use the netbook for navigation software whilst off road. I have purchased a compatible SSD.
I have purchased Acronis True Image Home 2011 Netbook edition and have created a true image of the Netbook SATA HDD and this is stored on a Maxtor network drive which I can access from my PC. The size of this image is 32GB.
I have a USB to SATA drive external connection that I can connect to my PC and propose to restore the Netbook drive image from the Maxtor drive to the SSD using my PC, physically install the SSD into my Netbook, press the "ON" button on the Netbook and hope that everything runs as it used to.
How can Acronis help me achieve this?
Thanks,
Andrew

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Yes.

One caveat: your true image needs to contain all the partitions of your disk, including any system reserved, OEM, diagnostics, EISA or other hidden partition. ATI will show you these partitions, Make sure they have been selected.
Ideally, print a screenshot of your disk management console, so that you have a record of the partition layout.

- Create your Acronis recovery CD,
- Put your SSD in the netbook,
- Connect the disk that contains the true image
- Boot the Computer on the Acronis recovery CD,
- Click on restore, browse for backup, navigate to the image,
- Restore the first partition (as in the disk management console printout), the new destination is your SSD, mark it primary active if it is the active one, do not change the drive letter, do not resize it if it is a hidden partition, leave a 1MB offset before the partition,
- Restore the second partition, with not offset, etc. YOu can resize the c:\system partition if you want to take advantage of new size.
- Finally, restore the MBR+track0 and include the disk signature.

That's it.

Boot the computer. Once windows has started:
- disable superfetch service
- disable defragmentation of the SSD

Once the compute has booted correctly, you might want to try to swith the BIOS mode to AHCI, and enable AHCI in Windows, if your computer supports it.

Most netbooks have a low-powered CPU or internal bandwidth. Not sure you will see a big performance boots from your SSD.

Thanks, Pat..I followed your advice and now have my SSD installed in my netbook and it is up and running.

I did have some trouble initially as I tried to restore all partitions at the same time in a logical sequence. I then went back and restored them one at a time and have managed to boot the netbook and everything is ok except for the boot partition that wasn't created.

Every time I start the netbook, the Acronis Loader says it cannot find the boot partition but allows me to press enter to boot the OS and Windows loads normally.

I have MiniTool Partition software and currently Drive C is the primary active drive and everything works ok except for the error message above.

Any ideas?
Andrew

Andrew, if I understand you correctly, everytime the computer starts, it launches automatically the Acronis Recovery Startup Manager? Without you selecting the F11 key? This is weird... Assuming this is the case...

Let's try this first: boot on the Acronis recovery CD, choose tools, and try to deactivate the ASRM. If this fails, we have to repair the MBR.

If you have the Windows installation CD, you can boot on it and select startup repair. That might take a couple of times to get fixed, each with one reboot inbetween.

If this doesn't work, boot on the Window installation CD, choose a command prompt and enter:
- bootrec /scanOS. This will return the OSes it can boot on. Check it lists your OS installation
- bootrec /fixMBR. This will rewrite a standard MBR.
- bootrec /rebuildBCD This will rewrite the boot records to make sure it boots into Windows, not something else.

Pat...I went ahead and recovered the C and D partitions again but this time seperately and marked the C partition as Primary active and it works.
I had a hunch that the revovery partition marked PE (dont know what this stands for), might have had errors and was causing the problem as the Acronis recovery kept giving me unsuccessful reports. Once I was able to connect the netbook to my home network, I restored the partition PE from my Maxtor drive, as I had an earlier back-up stored there, and now everything is good.
I resized each partition and I find that the netbook is much quicker and, importantly, my navigation software works!

So.....thanks, Pat, for your time, excellent advice and prompt come-backs and thank you, Acronis, for the tools.

Talk to you again somewhere on the technical track...............and I hope you can see the photo of the vehicle that the netbook will go into..this is the Simpson Desert in 2009.
Regards,
Andrew

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Yes! Netbook gets shaken a bit: better to have an SSD in there!