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How to clone hdd to sdd for Inspiron 14 7437
I wanted to install a ssd into the inspiron 14 7437 but didn't want to do a fresh install. The one solution I could think of was to clone the current dell hdd onto an external hard drive, boot off that after installing the ssd, then cloning the external hdd to the sdd. Seems simple enough right.
Well I cloned to the external hdd except I can't seem to boot up using the external hard drive. In the bios, I had to turn on legacy to be able to set boot option to external usb drive. When it tries to boot up into Windows, I get an error message. How do I go about cloning hdd to ssd?
ejn63
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August 7th, 2014 13:00
It would likely be best to make your recovery media (use a 16G or larger flash drive) and then use it to restore the system to factory condition.
That said, at least as far as I am aware, the SSD you install must be the same size or larger than the hard drive you're replacing.
ejn63
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August 7th, 2014 07:00
First, secure boot must be OFF.
You can clone to an image, and then restore the image, if your cloning software supports that. Otherwise, purchase an external drive carrier to allow both drives to be attached to the system. You can't boot an external drive you've cloned to.
The other thing to do first is make a set of recovery media (cloning will break the recovery partition on the drive, which is encrypted - so you will not be able to do this after cloning). You can simply delete the recovery partition once you're done.
Mkhadi1
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August 7th, 2014 12:00
If cloning breaks recovery, should I just do a clean install? If doing a clean install, how would I install win8.1 when there's no DVD rom drive?