plan to address drive error and/or system lock ups and unwanted reboots

You would need to boot to the TI CD to do the restore. The backup image is not bootable.

You should also be able to restore to a partition on the Samsung. However, you should setup the partition ahead of time (Primary, Active) so you can just target it for the restore. It would need to be a separate partition from the one containing the backup image (you may want to make a copy of the image first).

The problems you describe could be caused by any number of things. I would also try do a clean install of Windows and see if it's stable if the image restore on the Samsung isn't stable. Also, check all the cables are good (no sharply bent SATA cables, etc.). Make sure the BIOS isn't overclocking. I've seen some just change settings with no warning.

Thanks much, MC.

I realize now that, as the drive is a Seagate, I can get and use DiscWizard (Acronis, presumably) from them for cloning purposes, which should be easier. Likewise I could use the disc clone function of ATIH.

Moving along, I find that using the Seagate DC option requires a reformat of the target drive, including all partitions, regardless of size. The ATIH guide describes a better manual process whereby sizes can be specified.

System successfully boots with cloned drive and old C: disconnected but locks up soon thereafter while idling, before any user input. No utility partition found when I attempted to run Dell Diagnostics (odd since clone operation said it was going to clone the whole drive).

PSA diagnostics run and locked up twice at Memory - WCMch Test.

Since the process locked up, no error code was returned, as far as I can tell. I assume it was locked up as the previous tests showed a lot of activity. Does this one sometimes take a long time and appear locked?

Old system drive reconnected; new clone disconnected. Utility partition found; diagnostics run.

System tree : 'system locks up tests' run. All tests except long SATA Disk ones (Confidence, Drive self-test (Long), Read, Seek, and Verify - these were all run briefly) complete without error.

Ran Express Test: One error returned:

Error Code 0F00:133C.
Msg: Read error, check the disk

Test continued to end with no further errors.

Extensive test run OK for awhile but ran into a problem when doing the video tests as my 'yes' response would not be accepted to the query about 'is this correct ? (line in reverse, line intensified, line blinking). So reboot forced.

On reboot, I went into PSA (now with the original system drive rather than the clone which was active during the earlier lockups) and the test completed and went into diagnostics. As I've completed the diagnostic tests except when stymied by the inability to respond to the video query, I'm not sure at all what to do now...........

Disk errors are one thing I think I can address, but I haven't been able to find out what the lockup (2of 3 times) while running the PSA Memory - WCMch Test signifies.

Tips appreciated.

You could run Memtest overnight and see what it reports.

I'll likely try that.

On second thought, maybe not. I can't figure how to run memtest86, though I gather it's some sort of a pre-boot test. I initially thought I had at some time on some machine, but perhaps it was only one of the nearly identically named progs.

Thank you.

You need to download the ISO file and burn it to a CD using an ISO capable burning program. Then boot the CD and Memtest will run automatically.

You could also put it on a flash drive and boot that (if the computer supports it).

OK, thanks. My CD writer is flaky so I'll check the flash drive the other option.