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Preparing to install New SSD

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I am about to replace my current 240GB SSD boot drive with a new 480GB SSD and I want to make sure I got all my ducks in a row before starting.

I've previously read several posts here but I can't find them all now. I've tried using search but it doesn't seem to work at all! Simple terms like SSD or Restore or Recover get no results. Anyway I have read the article by Steve Smith about Cloning, what NOT to do and intend to use a back-up and boot disk as recommended rather than cloning. I am using Acronis True Image 2017.

So, can someone please link me to any other pertinent topics? I was thinking there was one specifically for SSD's.

I do have one question. I normally just back up my individual partitions on a regular basis, but for this I intend to make a full disk back-up of the current SSD. When I select this in TI, the back-up shows 2 partitions on the disk, System Reserved and the C: partition. There is a third hidden partition: "Recovery Partition" however. Do I need to make this visible in order to have it included in the back-up or is it necessary to back this up? I am a bit worried about that because I have tried once to update Win10 to the new Creators version and it failed, but automatically restored the previous version, and I thought the recovery partition might be important for that. (I had the same problem with the anniversary update. Took 5 tries before it succeeded!)

I also assume that when I restore to the new disk that the C: drive will be it's current size, and I will then use Disk Director to resize it to use the full capacity of the new disk.

One other thing. Sometime back I found that the bootmgr file on my system is on Drive D: (a separate physical disk from the boot drive.) I don't know when, or why that occurred, but wanted to make sure that would not be a problem.

Thank you!

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Bill, a full disk backup of your current smaller SSD is recommended and if you select Disks & Partitions for the Source of the backup, then select the SSD at the top level, all other partitions, including hidden / system partitions will be included.

See post: [IMPORTANT] CLONING - How NOT to do this!!! for the topic you referred to above.

I have corrected the tutorial link for the other post you raised.

When you do a restore to the new SSD there should be an option given to allow you to let Acronis automatically resize the restored partitions, but if you do not see it, then you can use any partition manager software (including Disk Director) to do this yourself.

Normally, the bootmgr / boot configuration data should be on your Microsoft System Reserved partition, but if this is on your second D: drive, then provided you keep the current configuration with the new SSD then all should stay the same as now.

OK I Recovered the back-up of my disk to the new SSD. However I'm not sure everything is right!

The recovery succeeded and the computer booted up OK on the new drive. However, I then shut down and tried to boot up on my Disk Director Boot disk (Linux based). During boot up, the optical drive was accessed, but didn't boot, it went on to boot from the hard drive. So I wasn't sure if I could move the recovery Partition and resize the C: partition from within windows with DD but I tried it and it worked. However in Disk Director I noticed that I now had a 100MB partition on the new disk Labeled "EFI system partition, which was not present on the old SSD. The presence of it doesn't bother me, but the fact that it's has EFI in the label does, because I had checked the boot mode before recovery using MSInfo32 and it showed it was Legacy not UEFI (the bios is UEFI capable). But now on the new drive the boot mode shows as UEFI with MSInfo32.

I know the instructions said to make sure to do the recovery using the same boot mode as what you are running. Since I was running Legacy, I used the Linux based TI boot disk because it was my understanding that that was for Legacy and that a WinPE was required for UEFI (I have not created a WinPE boot disk as yet). However the recovery process seems to have change the mode to UEFI. Is that possible? Is that why it won't boot on the Linux disks anymore?

Everything seems to be working right but I worry that there may be problems down the line. I really don't know what the difference is between UEFI and Legacy or why it was using Legacy when UEFI was available.

I also see that the SSD disk is shown as GPT rather than MBR.

So did I mess things up?

Bill,

Sounds like your restore performed by True Image converted your MBR Legacy installed Windows disk into a UEFI GPT installed Windows disk.  Is this a problem? No, in fact you are better off now than you were to begin with.  Your old disk as you know had somehow had the boot files moved to a secondary D drive.  Even though that worked it is not the norm nor does it follow Microsoft recommended configuration.  What you have now does.

As for DD media not booting this is a result of now having UEFI as the boot method.  What is necessary here is that the user learn how to boot removable media on a UEFI booted system.  That simply means in most cases that the removable media be first in the boot order list in the computer bios so that the media will boot. Check your computer manual for instructions on entering the bios to set boot priority if necessary and you should have no problem booting removable media.

Thanks Enchantech! The bios is set to boot off the BD drive as that's how I started it up to do the restore, and the disk is accessed, I assume looking for a boot disk, before it starts on the hard drive. I haven't gone to the bios to check since the restore tho'.

 

Have a look as what you should see now is Windows Boot Manager first in the list.  It would be necessary to change that to your BD drive to boot to that device.

OK I checked on that and the boot options are:

#1 UEFI: Sandisk...(This is the new SSD)

#2 P5 (this is the BD Drive

#3 P0 (this is the HHD (D:) that has the old bootmgr file on it)

#4 Windows Boot loader

#5 Disabled

FYI that bootmgr file is still there on D: as well as the one that was added to the system reserve partition.

Anyway, I changed #1 to P5 and that moved UEFI to the #2 position. That allowed it to boot on the ATI boot disk, but then it would not boot windows! It gets a blue screen that says a component is missing and repair is needed.

I went back to the bios and put UEFI first again and now windows is working again.

Also I am having lots of problems setting options in the bios. The mouse and keyboard both behave erratically, so I need to do something about that before I can try anything else there. I think in the past I had to use a wired keyboard which I don't have anymore, so I need to scrape one up. My mouse is also wonky on the menu screen of the ATI boot disk. Putting the cursor on an item activates it without pressing the mouse button. I don't think it did that before.

I also noted an error when I booted from the STI boot disk. "unsupported sector size 4096 on /dev/sdf". There are some lines after that but they are not on screen long enough to read.

I know UEFI should be better than Legacy mode, but I wonder if I should put the old SSD back in and boot it to set the system back to Legacy and then re-do the recovery making sure it's done in Legacy mode as per the instructions, but the instructions don't tell how to do that. I don't know what the advantages are to UEFI though, so I don't know if it's worth working this out and keeping it. :)

OK i got a different keyboard so I can actually use the bios set-up properly. I found something in there. something about PCI priority that was set to Legacy. I set that to UEFI. That seems to have added an option to the Boot options. That is aUEFI option for the BD drive. So I made that #1 and the UEFI Sandisk #2. Now the boot order appears to work! If I put a boot disk in the BD drive it boots on it if not it goes to windows a-ok. So I say that problem is solved.

EDIT: This actually only worked one time. I went to test it with the ATI boot disk and it bypassed it. I went back to the bios and it now shows Windows boot loader as option 1 and UEFI Sandisk is not an option any more. I put the BD drive back to #1 and it worked again but just one time. Apparently Win10 is resetting it ever time. Problem still solved since it's not an ATI problem and while it's a PITA, at least I know what I have to do in order to boot from a DVD. I do wonder if anyone has any idea if there's a way to keep Win10 from changing the boot order?

But I still wonder about the sector size error with the true image boot disk (I don't know if this last change may have fixed that, because I used the Disk Director boot disk instead of TI).

I also still wonder about "Making sure to start ATI in the same boot mode as the system. This may be important as I am probably going to use the same process to install the old 240 SSD in my laptop. Athough I do not know what mode it's set up with. I have some other questions on that deal anyway which I'll put into another topic.

 

Bill,

Sounds like you got most things sorted now.  With UEFI fully enabled you will have UEFI boot options showing in the boot order, that is normal. 

Unfortunately the UEFI bios has the pain of changing the boot order to the hard disk drive or SSD in your case and then back again to boot a different media. They all seem to do this, something we have to live with.

You are correct in your thought about making sure ATI is in the same boot mode as the system.  This is in all likelihood what caused the conversion of your backup file from Legacy to UEFI.  If you boot the ATI recovery media in UEFI mode (this would be an entry in your boot order that begins with UEFI such as UEFI P5 for you BD drive) True Image expects that you want to keep that boot option mode to the restore and does so accordingly.  To recover a Legacy boot mode you would need to boot the media that is listed in your bios boot priority order that does not contain the UEFI in the entry.