Help! CD Drive Not Working, How to clone without one?
Hello,
I have Acronis True Image HD which I obtained after buying a Crucial MX100 512 GB SSD.
I have an HP Pavillion dv-7 3080us notebook with a 500GB HDD running Windows 7 Pro 64 bit.
I've read several articles and user guides and watched the video about how to clone the HDD to the SSD. My problem is the CD/DVD drive in the HP notebook is now failing to read any CD in the drive. I created an Acronis book disk on another computer but it won't work in the HP. I realize I need to replace the CD drive but without that is there any way I can get the SSD setup?
(Are Acronis book CDs specific to the machine they are created on, or are they machine specific? Just curious.)
I have backed up all partitions to an external drive using the image backup. Can I use that to setup the SSD? If the SSD is larger and there is some unallocated space, can I extend the main partition to use it?
Also, this HP notebook has a second drive bay. Is it possible for me to install the SSD in the second drive bay, clone the HDD to the SSD, then remove the HDD and move the SSD to the first drive bay? I ask just in case this can work, but I have read that for notebooks the SSD must go into the drive bay where the HDD originally was.
Please forgive me if these are dumb questions. I have done a lot of reading. I am not a hardware techy and this is really foreign to me.
Thanks for your help.
Maurice

- Log in to post comments

Tuttle,
Thanks, I will try that and will let you know what happens.
Maurice
- Log in to post comments

After the disk option backup, signature link 2-A below.
Switch the source disk to the other disk slot.
Attach the new disk in same connector as old disk was.
Boot to the new USB TI bootable Recovery stick.
Perform the restore as listed in my signature link 3, item 2 Disk option restore.
Be sure also checkmark the "Recover Disk Signature".
After restore, shutdown and remove the spin disk before first boot into the SD.
CAUTION: The above is based on you having a MBR type disk.
If your spin disk is GPT style Partitioning, you may have issues may also need the user created Windows Recovery CD.
Also note, TrueImage does not support the "Clone" tools function when attempting to perform the clone function on GPT style disks..
- Log in to post comments

Grover,
Thanks for the additional detail.
I was able to create a bootable USB stick last night, and I verified that my notebook booted using it. This is a step beyond where I was before.
Tonight I will follow these directions and I will let you know what happens.
Good day,
Maurice
- Log in to post comments

Tuttle and GroverH
Thank you both for your help. After backing up the HDD using GroverH's PDF file Thursday night (3 hours), I was able to restore the partitiions and boot record Friday night (3 plus hours), again following the very detailed and informative instructions GroverH provided. My new SSD is installed and running.
The last question I have is can I use the original HDD in the secondary drive bay in the computer? It has the original boot partition and I read somewhere it was not a good idea to have two bootable drives in the computer. That's a nice to have not a must have.
Thanks again for the fantastic support, especially GroverH for the outstanding documents.
Maurice
- Log in to post comments