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Factory restore with a cloned SSD
Hi all, I have a hopefully basic question.
I have a Dell Inspiron 17 - 3721 laptop.
I plan to replace my original HDD with an SSD (a Samsung Evo 240GB, if it matters).
I plan to clone the HDD including the Recovery partition onto the new SSD.
My question is -- if I ever need to do a factory restore on it using the instructions provided by Dell here -- http://www.dell.com/support/troubleshooting/us/en/19/KCS/KcsArticles/ArticleView?docid=DSN_362066
... can I do so with just the SSD? Or do I have to put the HDD back in first? I am only minimally tech-savvy, so my concern is that the system will not recognize the SSD as it is trying to reset itself, or if I will run into issues somehow.
Thank you in advance.
ejn63
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February 11th, 2014 04:00
You may or may not be able to clone the data partition, but you will not be able to clone the recovery partition - it is encrypted.
The other issue you'll face is that unless they've changed something recently, you can't use the Dell recovery utility to recover to a drive smaller than the one originally in the system.