Unable to restore HDD to SSD

The right method is the image one.
Put your original system back into the laptop. Do not move around the boot files and boot mgr. If you have a hidden partition called system reserved, leave it alone.
If you have modified your c:\ by copying these boot files, delete them. Make sure your system is as it was before.
Leave your BIOS settings as they were originally.
Make sure your system is as it was before.

From the recovery CD of ATI or from ATI in windows, do a full disk backup of your laptop disk to an external disk. Make sure to select all partitions.

Remove your disk from the laptop, install the SSD, without changing the BIOS settings.

Boot from the ATI recovery CD. Watch out: fromt the recovery CD the drive letters are different from the Windows environment. Make sure you double check and triple check looking at the drive descriptions.
In tools, choose the drive cleanser and cleanse your SSD (NB: this is not a secure erase, if you wonder. If you don't know what I mean, don't worry).

Browse to your backup, select restore.

Select the entire disk to be restored, including all partitions and the MBR track 0, choose the new destination. being your SSD disk. No need to add the partitions now.

Select include disk signature to avoid activation issues.

Restore. If there was no hardware and no BIOS change aside from the new disk, you should be in good shape.

Pat L

"Select the entire disk to be restored, including all partitions and the MBR track 0, choose the new destination. being your SSD disk. No need to add the partitions now."
Doesnt entire disk restore all the partitions ? a little confused by what you mean here.

Also i should add i did do a Fast clean between each try, and yesterday after id given up applied the default US clean in prep for returning to store.

Okay doing it all over again, aside from the include disk signature, shouldnt the clone be the same as above, in theory anyway.
I will let you know how i go.

Pat L

Did everything you said above. I removed the e:\ drive label from the system partition, removed the boot and bootmgr from c:\ that i had copied over.
rebooted to make sure it worked, it did, created an image of the whole disk, and restored. BIOS settings remained unchanged, the only thing i tried there in the past was flipping between AHCI and Compatability, it was by default on AHCI.

Same result as before , i get to the windows error recovery screen with the launch startup repair/ boot normally options.

This time when i select startup repair the error code is 0xc0000225, i get a feeling that might be different than before but cant be certain.

I will try using the windows repair disc, although i dont hold much hope.

I unplugged the usb with acronis and the usb for the HDD before rebooting this time, should i have done that?

The windows repair disc does not work, it detects theres a problem as before , it never at this stage though detects that there is a windows OS anywhere and it never has.

This time i select boot normally, and press F8 madly, and im logged in as per the previous post...... Installing device driver software.....thats for the USB key chain that ive got plugged in, the USB for the HDD and the Corsair F60, the Corsair says it will need to be rebooted. So i reboot, and ....
same old, back to windows recovery......

Select boot normally, press F8 madly, and im logged back in.

So it sort of works. lets try rebooting again.....

nope. windows tries starting, crashes, reboots, back to windows error recovery screen where i get to play F8 on boot normally which ironically doesnt bring up the regular boot options but goes straight into windows.

so to recap.

the result of imaging the whole disk is the same as imaging just c , the same as cloning .
i get to the windows error recovery, where i need to select boot normally , then press F8 like crazy and im in.

im out of ideas. is it acronis, hardware, software, user mixture of all of the above.

At this point, we are confident you went through the right process in terms of imaging and restoring.

The behavior you have with the F8 key thing makes me wonder whether you don't have a problem with your boot records.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392

Start with the Windows recovery CD and launch a command prompt

Let's see if we can find your windows installation
Enter Bootrec.exe /scanOS
Is your Windows listed?

If yes, we are in good shape. If no, we still have a problem with your imaging/restoring, and I am running out of ideas.

> Let's continue trying to fix the BCD records

Enter Diskpart
Enter List disks
Enter Select disk 0 (the number should be your SSD's. let's assume it is 0)
Enter List Partitions
Enter Select partition 1 (let's assume this is the system reserved partition)
Enter Assign letter = D
Enter Exit

> Let's backup your current BCD records
Enter D:
Enter Bcdedit /export D:\BCD_Backup
Enter Cd boot
Enter Attrib bcd -s -h -r
Enter Ren c:\boot\bcd bcd.old
Enter Bootrec /RebuildBcd

Reboot. Is the behavior different now?

If this is the same, I am left thinking that your drive change is too much for Windows to handle without a reinstall.

i am at work right now, but i can confirm that in prior tries i did indeed try Bootrec.exe /scanOS and it does find 1 OS.
I have not tried with my latest effort, but im betting it will be the same. Will get back in another 12-24 hrs with latest results.

Thanks

Just to clarify, the windows recovery CD has not for me detected an OS install in that little GUI that pops up.
However, a manual scanOs does confirm that there is one OS installed.

OK. new day. new attempt.

This time windows recovery CD , or USB keychain in my case, detects automatically that i have windows installed and asks me to log in.
Strange, its not done that before.
I then select startup repair, it fixes something, i have a look at what it fixed, one of the items is the boot record. this fix is pretty quick and i reboot.

Same thing BSOD.

Now im back in the startup repair screen again and this time its taking far longer while "attempting repairs" its been about 10 minutes and windows determines it cant automatically fix the problem.

Ok now using your steps. (btw, small typo its list partition and list disk and in your example Enter Ren c:\boot\bcd bcd.old should be Enter Ren D:\boot\bcd bcd.old)

I cant assign to D as thats already used, when i list volume i have 6 volumes.

0 NTFS ( im guessing this is the boot/system)
1 E NTFS ( definitely my C\ drive)
2 D NTFS ( LENOVO restore partition)
3 F FAT32 ( this is my multiboot USB keychain)
4 ( 0B Removable , i dont know what this is ??)
5 NTFS Hidden ( this must be that partition i mentioned which didnt show a format type as it seems about the right size)

all say healthy except volume 4 which says No Media

when i list partition i get the following:

1 Primary
2 Primary
0 Extended
4 Logical
3 OEM

so i assign letter=y to partition 1

then i do all the commands except for Enter Ren c:\boot\bcd bcd.old it wont do that. so i change it to y:\
im guessing thats what you meant.

OK so i reboot.

Windows Boot Manger screen pops up. not seen this one before.

File:\Boot\BCD
Status:0xc000000f
Info: An error occcured while attempting to read the boot config data.

Any more suggestions?

There are some links out there which say its possible to clone to the F60 using Acronis, so im holding onto there still being some chance.

More info, and i dont know wether this helps any:

When i list volume i now get

* 0 C
1 E
2 D
3 F
4 G
5

the * is actually there on the screen .

compared with previously:

0 NTFS ( im guessing this is the boot/system)
1 E NTFS ( definitely my C\ drive)
2 D NTFS ( LENOVO restore partition)
3 F FAT32 ( this is my multiboot USB keychain)
4 ( 0B Removable , i dont know what this is ??)
5 NTFS Hidden

So now i try

bootrec.exe /fixboot
bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd

when i do rebuildbcd it detects that there are 0 windows installations which is odd given that on start of windows recovery it detects i have a windows OS. Also /scanOS comes up with 0 as well. In past i had that the other way around that the windows recovery had 0 and scanOS had 1.

EDIT:

Also i dont know why my original HDD C:\ became E:\ is this normal? i definitely dont want it the way its being reported, in fact i want E: to be C: and C: well that can be unlabeled as before.

Also when i type bcdedit it tells me that f:\ ( myusb keychain ) is the boot manager and that e: is the windows boot loader. Is this correct?

Here is what I would try next: do a restore only of partition 0 and 1. Dump the other partitions.

> First we will reset what we did so far on the SSD.
Boot on the windows recovery CD, repair, command prompt
Enter DISKPART
Enter List disks. Let's assume your SSD is Disk 0
Enter Select Disk 0
Enter Clean
> Now we will create the partitions we need.
Enter Create Partition Primary offset=1024 size=100
Enter Format FS=NTFS LABEL="System Reserved" QUICK
Enter Active
Enter Assign letter = y
Enter Create Partition Primary
Enter Format FS=NTFS LABEL="System" QUICK
Enter Assign letter= c
Enter List partitions- Verify this looks OK
Enter Exit
Boot on the Acronis Recovery CD
Recover your system reserved partition and your system partitions only. Watch out for the labels not the drive letters. System Reserved is Primary Active, System is Primary only. Do not recover the MBR and the track 0.
Boot on the windows recovery CD, repair, command prompt
Enter Bootrec /fixMBR
Enter Y:
Enter cd boot
Enter attrib bcd -s -h -r
Enter ren Y:\boot\bcd bcd.old
Enter bootrec /RebuildBcd
Reboot
If it doesn't work, reboot on the recovery CD and attempt repairs.

With this method, we have neutralized potential complications with ancillary partitions and came back to a basic system.
If this doesn't work, we are facing a driver issue within Windows (very likely already at this point).

Pat

Thanks for trying to help:

oK so i did what you suggested and went to boot up my Acronis from the USB keychain after following all the formating steps.
. I have multiboot setup on my keychain with both acronis and windows recovery. and it seems by following the steps exactly as above my USB key chain is no longer bootable. so now i have nothing i can boot right now. I will need to restore my USB keychain before i can proceed further. Can you please keep in mind that i have a USB plugged in as my recovery system and not a CD as the netbook has no optical drive.

Also this is the first time ive ever used Acronis to actually try to restore an image, so far the experience has been not so good.

Got you. Should be the same as a recovery CD...

You know, I have a hunch we won't be able to fix this blue screen of yours. But we are methodically eliminating other variables. I hope we will get through this.

Pat

After hosing my USB, i plugged it into mmy other laptop here and i note it has bootmgr and Boot on it. why?
was i supposed to change drive letters in one of the earlier steps?

Pat

check one of my earlier replies where i note that windows boot manager is on my f: drive which was my usb key chain, so im not surprised it has created a boot bootmgr on it. I accidentally edited my post probably just around the same time you replied so you might have missed that comment of mine.

The problem is that it is easy to get confused with the Acronis recovery CD/USB. It will show you drive letters that are different from Windows. So you have to use labels instead of drive letters, and double check the disk characteristics (size, etc.).

Same thing when using the Windows recovery and diskpart, use list disks and list partitions to double check labels and disk letters.

interesting. deleting Boot and bootmgr wont boot from key chain still, will need to build USB keychain again.
what other things does it do that makes it unbootable that are not visible? all the other files look intact.

you know, i had this problem on one of my earleier tries where i tried all that bcdedit stuff. same result. so for some reason the USB keychain is getting in the way perhaps?

Pat

F: was definitley my USB , look above where it lists it as FAT32 and it was alos listed as 4GB which is exactly what it is.
So no mistaking that, there absolutlely nothing else that is FAT32.

So can you please answer wether its correct that bcdedit should have listed F: as the boot manager? i mention this in one of the posts above.

I have to prep to go to work now so will not be able to help out much further today.

I do appreciate your help in this, its very frustrating at my end as well. Also as stated before people have used Acronis to clone to this F60 drive before.
thats if using the internet/youtube as a reference is valid.

pat

list disk and list partition ( you keep adding 's which does not work) are not enough to show me my drive letters.

i had to list volume to see what they were.

is that what you mean?

because definitely when i do that USB keychain is F: and the HDD c: was e:\. see post above

Yes. Sorry about the spelling errors.

No, your USB shouldn't be where the boot files are. From post #8, it looks like maybe you types the bootrec commands while the command prompt was still on your F: (USB) disk?

Before you use the bootrec commands, you have to move to the partition where they will be (system reserved).
So if Y: is the label you temporarily chose for the system reserved, when you boot on your F: USB disk, your command prompt will start with F:\. The first thing is to move it to Y: by typing Y:
Enter Dir *.* to verify you are on the right partition and not somewhere else. Now you can use bootrec.

In fact, you might be able to pull out your USB stick completely when the command prompt is active as the system is in memory. I know this works with ATI, and that avoids possible errors along the way. Having just your SSD plugged in will help.

Hi Pat

Im back at it, but i think ive messed something up.

I went back to windows recovery and changed to c:\ , which was my system active drive where i last left off, i dont know where y: went, oh well...

then i followed all your steps up to the end of restoring back the two partitions.

after that i can not do bootrec /fixmbr, says the system cannot find specified path.
ive tried making the c: drive active, removing the boot folder. but no luck.
i notice the system labels are missing as well, so something went wrong.

as you can see im just kind o doing things hoping there going to work but without really knowing what im doing ;)
then again i did pay for this software and cant understand what could possibly be the problem given that i can actually get in via the F8.

perhaps i should start by cleaning the drive again and starting from scratch?
So could we start this from scratch if you have time, knowing that its just two partitions im really interested in, well really just c:
cant i just build all that boot stuff onto c: after restoring ?

Success! Finally.

This is what i did. Feeling relaxed after my run i switched on the old lenovo s10-3, inserted the USB keychain and plugged in the external HDD.

Booted into Acronis, removed the USB keychain so there was no risk of it being written to like in the past by user error, and did a Fast clean.

Restored only my System Active(unlabelled partition) and System ( C:\), i did not select MBR or any other partitions.

Re-booted, and it starts! first go. Windows installs the Corsair drivers and asks to be rebooted, and it starts again!

woohoo! fingers crossed, looks like this might be it.

So it seems it was way simpler after all, dont restore MBR, and all seems to be OK.

Hope this might be of help to anyone else out there.

Thanks
Pat

An update:

While the image restore appears to have worked, one issue remains and that is the write speed is essentially half of what it should be.

The most common cause of this i've been led to believe from reading, is a partition offset problem not being a multiple of 64K, however i see that my offset is 1024K for primary active, and the offset for C: 201MB which (201*1024^2) is also a 64K multiple.

Obviously somethings not worked 100%. Does ATI 2010 even support this properly? i dont know....

I will try using Parted Magic to wipe my drive with before the restore, and see if it makes any difference.

the saga continues.

I think ATI 2010 is not quite the polished piece of software for restoring to SSD ;) Sure has been harder than simply hitting the restore button.

Hi there,

Sorry I was out for few days.

Glad to see you work it out.

I don't know about the write issues. You can double check your drive is aligned here http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/other/157

Also DO verify that Windows has properly recognized your SSD:
- SSD should not be showing in the scheduled automatic defragmentation,
- TRIM command active
- Superfetch services NOT started