Skip to main content

upgrading mSATA SSD to mSATA SSD

Thread needs solution

Hi. I have a 120GB Intel 530 mSATA SSD Drive (containing W7 OS and programmes) and a 750GB HDD with my files in my laptop. I wish to upgrade the SSD drive to a 240GB Intel 530 mSATA drive. I tried putting the new drive in a USB caddy and doing a straight forward clone but the USB caddy doesn't seem to load on restart to do the clone.

I have now sensibly read the instructions which doesn't really cover SSD to larger SSD so I just wish to see what advice I can get. The instructions seem to suggest putting the new drive in the correct slot, in which case can I boot windows from the USB caddy and will this then let me clone from here or will I have the same problem with the USB drive not being recognized prior to windows booting?

Another possibility seems to be to create recovery media and then swap drives and use recovery media to reinstall, will this do a complete clone? If I create recovery media on an external HDD, will this be bootable from (i.e. is it possibly the mSATA caddy that is the pre boot problem?)

Could I swap out my HDD with another I have lying around, clone to this then swap out mSATA drives and clone from HDD to new mSATA drive?

Any other suggestions? Any other questions/info required?

Many thanks to all who take the time to help

Mike

0 Users found this helpful

A disk level operation which involves an OS System partition such as Clone should only be done when the system partition is not booted. The Clone tool of True Image creates a bit for bit copy from a source disk, in your case the 120GB drive to a target drive, in your case a 240GB drive. If you attempt to perform this clone operation from within the installed Windows app, once the parameters for the operation are set the Windows installed app will reboot the machine into the same Linux based environment used for the recovery media to perform the clone procedure. This prevents data loss as the system disk will be inactive during the clone operation while booted to this environment.

The instruction you found indicating that for a laptop the source disk must be removed from the device and replaced with the target device then, the source device is attached by other means should be followed. In your case since you have the ability to attach 2 drives to the machine internally I would do it that way. Remove both current drives, install the target disk in same location as source drive was, install source drive in location that the 750GB drive was and perform the clone.

You should create the Recovery Media you mentioned and perform the clone using that media. Since running the clone operation from within the Windows installed app reboots into the same environment this makes sense. Additionally, by running the clone from the recovery media you will assure yourself that your machine will in fact boot from the recovery media which is necessary for the performance of many of the applications functions including an OS system disk restore. You can create the recovery media using the Media Builder option of the installed app. This recovery media can be created on a USB stick as well.

Additionally, I strongly suggest that you perform an Entire PC backup prior to running the clone procedure to give you some insurance in case things go wrong. Once that backup has completed you need to validate the backup as well for additional assurance that it can be used for recovery if need be. If at all possible you should also have your machine plugged into a power source, preferably a UPS as any disruption in power during the clone procedure will result in failure.

Once you get to the point of running the clone procedure the Automatic Clone Method is sufficient for most users.

I am supposing that your computer is using SSD cache technology to accelerate access to the spinning drive. Disable this feature temporarily as you perform your SSD migration (ie backup and restore, or clone), then turn it back on after the computer boots normally on the new SSD.