It had been a while since I have had my laptop and I thought now would be a good time to upgrade the HDD to one of those new fangled SSDs. Sucker!
This is not a step by step procedure of how to manage the transition from an HDD to an SSD. It is more about the problems I faced doing it. It may help those who hit the same problems. For the record, I did manage to overcome all issues and am now posting from my upgraded laptop.
There are two possible approaches to moving disks. You can clone the disk and use a windows repair disk to get over any problems. Or you can do a full backup to a USB disk and do a recovery including a restore from backup. I tried the two approaches alternately - when I got blocked with one I tried the other.
To start with, you don't get any disks with the laptop (I think). The recovery software is on the hard disk itself. Which sort of messes up the transfer process right out of the gate. I started trying to make a repair disk. What I got was an error message saying "System repair disc could not be created", "The parameter is incorrect. (0x80070057)".
A post on the web seemed to imply creating a 5 DVD set of recovery media may allow me to create a repair disk. This set of DVDs can be created only once. I did this and tried the recovery disk creation. FAIL! I still got the same message.
A glimmer of hope was the image of a recovery disk recdisk.iso. It took a few tries to download it. Along the way, I found out Chrome does not allow you to resume a download. May be if it was written by a larger company they could have afforded to put in the feature but them's the breaks. I had to actually use Firefox to do this reliably. When I burnt a disk, it would not boot. A disk utility told me this disk was not bootable. FAIL! It turns out Neosmart provides repair disks for a small fee of US$20. Being desperate, I bought it. Turns out it does many things but does not restore from backup. FAIL!
While I was trying to find a way out, I thought I would shrink the disks on my HDD and consolidate it. If the overall contiguous size of partitions on the HDD is less than the SSD, it is a lot easier to clone. For this I used two tools. For defragmenting the disk as a prelude to shrinking it, I used Defraggler - a free tool. This goes well beyond the standard Windows defragment tool. Occasionally, a file towards the end cannot be moved and the defragmentation cannot reclaim some empty space. For me, it was files for the Avast anti-virus utility. A quick google and it turns out it cannot be shut down! What's more the Avast fans think you should not have to shut it down at all. No option left except to uninstall it and reinstall it later. Defraggler allows you to highlight an occupied sector and find out the file that is in there. If it can't be moved, you can try deleting it or copying it and copying it back. For some system files like the hibernation file, disable hibernation and recreate it later. You may have to delete a lot of files to slim down the partitions. A utility I like using to check what the heck it is that is taking up all the space is WinDirStat. After the consolidation, this is what it looked like.
Ignore the J: and I: drive - they are from the WD Passport USB drive. I have a C: for the system software, a G: for my data and an F: drive for all my VMs. The other disks are part of the HP package. There is the usual SYSTEM disk at the start. There is also the Recovery and HP_TOOLS disks. At the moment they are all spread around a bit but to fix that is the next step. Note that for all partitions, the Type is Dynamic.
Once the defragmentation was complete, I used the Windows disk management tool to shrink the volume down. The next step is to consolidate all partitions so that they cover the initial part of the HDD and all unallocated space is in one chunk at the end of the disk. For this, I used EaseUS Partition Manager - free for home use. I could not move the partitions - it was not available as an option. At this point, I discovered that the disk used a Dynamic MBR. A ha! That is probably the source for some of the problems I have been having. Fortunately, my luck was turning and EaseUS allows you to convert a Dynamic MBR to a Basic MBR. When you exit, the PC reboots a a few times and comes up all fixed! This is what it looked like after the conversion. Note that for all partitions, the Type is now Basic.
I decided to play it safe and spent three hours backing it all to a USB disk using Windows backup. Once it was converted to a Basic MBR, things got easier. I moved all the partitions to one side. This is what that looked like.
Just to check my theory that the Dynamic MBR confused the Samsung software, I fired it up again. And sure enough, it was happy to run this time. Unfortunately, it could not do the HP partitions. Another FAIL! But I felt I had turned a corner. EaseUS also allows you to copy a disk. Using the USB cable I connected the SSD and set up a copy from the HDD to the SSD. I got a warning about not copying the unallocated space which is dandy. A couple of hours later, it was all copied across. Next comes the mechanical bit - a subject for the next blog
This is not a step by step procedure of how to manage the transition from an HDD to an SSD. It is more about the problems I faced doing it. It may help those who hit the same problems. For the record, I did manage to overcome all issues and am now posting from my upgraded laptop.
First my system details. It is an HP Envy 15(Model 15-3012TX). It runs Windows 7 Home Premium. The current hard disk is 600+GB. The Samsung SSD is the 840 series 250GB disk. The Samsung 840 SSD comes in two editions - a bare disk (MZ-7TD250BW) or a kit (MZ-7TD250KW). I bought the kit version for AU$205 (incl postage). The kit comes with a USB cable, a SATA cable, assorted mounting hardware and most importantly software to clone your existing disk to the SSD. The USB cable in the kit is to allow a SATA drive to be hooked up to a USB port. All very painless and straightforward, right? Wrong! I plugged the SSD using the USB thingamajig and ran the software. What I got was an error message saying "Cannot locate a Disk with a Windows OS installation".
There are two possible approaches to moving disks. You can clone the disk and use a windows repair disk to get over any problems. Or you can do a full backup to a USB disk and do a recovery including a restore from backup. I tried the two approaches alternately - when I got blocked with one I tried the other.
To start with, you don't get any disks with the laptop (I think). The recovery software is on the hard disk itself. Which sort of messes up the transfer process right out of the gate. I started trying to make a repair disk. What I got was an error message saying "System repair disc could not be created", "The parameter is incorrect. (0x80070057)".
A post on the web seemed to imply creating a 5 DVD set of recovery media may allow me to create a repair disk. This set of DVDs can be created only once. I did this and tried the recovery disk creation. FAIL! I still got the same message.
A glimmer of hope was the image of a recovery disk recdisk.iso. It took a few tries to download it. Along the way, I found out Chrome does not allow you to resume a download. May be if it was written by a larger company they could have afforded to put in the feature but them's the breaks. I had to actually use Firefox to do this reliably. When I burnt a disk, it would not boot. A disk utility told me this disk was not bootable. FAIL! It turns out Neosmart provides repair disks for a small fee of US$20. Being desperate, I bought it. Turns out it does many things but does not restore from backup. FAIL!
While I was trying to find a way out, I thought I would shrink the disks on my HDD and consolidate it. If the overall contiguous size of partitions on the HDD is less than the SSD, it is a lot easier to clone. For this I used two tools. For defragmenting the disk as a prelude to shrinking it, I used Defraggler - a free tool. This goes well beyond the standard Windows defragment tool. Occasionally, a file towards the end cannot be moved and the defragmentation cannot reclaim some empty space. For me, it was files for the Avast anti-virus utility. A quick google and it turns out it cannot be shut down! What's more the Avast fans think you should not have to shut it down at all. No option left except to uninstall it and reinstall it later. Defraggler allows you to highlight an occupied sector and find out the file that is in there. If it can't be moved, you can try deleting it or copying it and copying it back. For some system files like the hibernation file, disable hibernation and recreate it later. You may have to delete a lot of files to slim down the partitions. A utility I like using to check what the heck it is that is taking up all the space is WinDirStat. After the consolidation, this is what it looked like.
Ignore the J: and I: drive - they are from the WD Passport USB drive. I have a C: for the system software, a G: for my data and an F: drive for all my VMs. The other disks are part of the HP package. There is the usual SYSTEM disk at the start. There is also the Recovery and HP_TOOLS disks. At the moment they are all spread around a bit but to fix that is the next step. Note that for all partitions, the Type is Dynamic.
Once the defragmentation was complete, I used the Windows disk management tool to shrink the volume down. The next step is to consolidate all partitions so that they cover the initial part of the HDD and all unallocated space is in one chunk at the end of the disk. For this, I used EaseUS Partition Manager - free for home use. I could not move the partitions - it was not available as an option. At this point, I discovered that the disk used a Dynamic MBR. A ha! That is probably the source for some of the problems I have been having. Fortunately, my luck was turning and EaseUS allows you to convert a Dynamic MBR to a Basic MBR. When you exit, the PC reboots a a few times and comes up all fixed! This is what it looked like after the conversion. Note that for all partitions, the Type is now Basic.
I decided to play it safe and spent three hours backing it all to a USB disk using Windows backup. Once it was converted to a Basic MBR, things got easier. I moved all the partitions to one side. This is what that looked like.
Just to check my theory that the Dynamic MBR confused the Samsung software, I fired it up again. And sure enough, it was happy to run this time. Unfortunately, it could not do the HP partitions. Another FAIL! But I felt I had turned a corner. EaseUS also allows you to copy a disk. Using the USB cable I connected the SSD and set up a copy from the HDD to the SSD. I got a warning about not copying the unallocated space which is dandy. A couple of hours later, it was all copied across. Next comes the mechanical bit - a subject for the next blog
thank you for this. If I hadn't changed my hdd from dynamic to basic then I would have just given up. An excellent article and I would click on your ads if you had any! Now my db queries and video editing are enjoyable.
ReplyDeletereally thanks again!!
S
This page and something in another language were the only pages I found that mentioned the "Cannot locate a Disk with a Windows OS installation" error. I also tried a number of things, but continued to get this error. Changing the disk from dynamic to basic is what fixed it. Thanks so much!
ReplyDeleteI had the same problem you had. The Samsung software (or Acronis True Image) couldn't clone my dynamic disk. I used EaseUS to convert the dynamic disk to a basic disk. Now I shouldn't have any problem cloning my drive.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the advice!
An excellent blog. After hours of research and many dead ends, your solution was the only one that worked. Well done and thank you for publishing your travails.
ReplyDeleteHi may i know what EaseUS version did you use? I don't see the convert disk from dynamic to basic option anymore
ReplyDeleteThis was a while ago but the version was EaseUS Partition Master 9.2.1 Home Edition
ReplyDelete