Unable to boot from CD, USB, second drive (SSD) - only from original HDD

Hi Calum,

Not sure I can help you all that much but if the system is detecting both drives have you tried to physically unplug the HDD and try to boot so that the only option for the system is the SSD?  Then once (hopefully) the system reads that as the bootable drive then plug the HDD back in and set it'as a data drive.  

Maybe that will help.   Let me know if it does.

Todd

Another couple of things.

Firstly, the HDD is actually an SSHD - Seagate ST1000DX001. I don't know if this would make any difference.

Secondly, there's a small hidden (100 MB) "System Reserved" partition on the SSHD, before the main OS partition. I only cloned the OS partition - not the hidden partition - I assume that this was correct? Does the MBR live on the OS partition, rather than the hidden partition?

Thanks - Calum

Hi Todd

Thanks for getting back to me. I tried that - along with many other things - and have not been able to get the cloned SSD to boot. I also tried cloning with EaseUS, but came across the same issue.

I have been able to use the original Windows 7 installation disk to install Windows 7 successfully on the SSD as a clean install. However, I've not been able to clone my original HDD. So it looks like I might have to go with a clean install (and reinstalling everything + settings) instead of a clone :emotion-6:.

Thanks - Calum

Secondly, there's a small hidden (100 MB) "System Reserved" partition on the SSHD, before the main OS partition. I only cloned the OS partition - not the hidden partition - I assume that this was correct? Does the MBR live on the OS partition, rather than the hidden partition?

The MBR should be separate from the OS partition.   The reserved partition is either the onboard diagnostics or the image restore utility. 

If you're cloning the drive I would think you would need to clone the entire drive to get the MBR included.  (That may, honestly, depend on the software you're using to clone. It's been a long, long time since I've cloned a drive).  Just the OS partition alone would not include the MBR, which may be why it won't boot.

If the system boots off the drive using a clean install that sort of reinforces my thoughts.  You can always delete those partitions later.

Todd

ucalumm

You need to clone the entire hard drive to the SSD, not just part of it.

Bev.  

Ps. I'm using the free Standard version AOMEI Backupper with great success, especially with SSD's

Thanks for the advice, Todd, Bev.

So my HDD (SSHD) is 1TB, with a 120GB OS partition and a 814GB data partition (80% full). As I'm wanting to clone to a 240GB SSD, does this mean that I'd have to back up the data partition, then delete the content? After that, the whole HDD content would fit on the SSD, so cloning that should work?

Afterwards, I'd recover the data which I had previously removed from the data partition.

Is that right?

Thanks - Calum

There's also the 100MB hidden partition. And I meant to say that I'd be cloning the whole drive in this scenario, not just one partition.

Thanks - Calum

Thanks for the advice, Todd, Bev. So my HDD (SSHD) is 1TB, with a 120GB OS partition and a 814GB data partition (80% full). As I'm wanting to clone to a 240GB SSD, does this mean that I'd have to back up the data partition, then delete the content? After that, the whole HDD content would fit on the SSD, so cloning that should work? Afterwards, I'd recover the data which I had previously removed from the data partition. Is that right? Thanks - Calum

ucalumm

I'm having problems understanding, what you intend to do.

If you mean, that it is cloning a 1tb hard drive that has 120gb partition and a 814gb partition, for a total of 934gb, to a 240gb SSD, sorry but that will not work, you need a hard drive, that's at least 1000gb, or larger in size to accomplish this.

Bev.

I was trying both Macrium Reflect and EaseUS. But I was originally trying to clone only the OS partition, and it seems that I need to clone the whole drive.

As I'm going from a bigger HDD to a smaller SSD, it seems that I need to delete stuff from the HDD until it will all fit in the SSD.

For example, these sites indicate that I would need to do this:

http://lifehacker.com/5837543/how-to-migrate-to-a-solid-state-drive-without-reinstalling-windows

http://www.howtogeek.com/97242/how-to-migrate-windows-7-to-a-solid-state-drive/

Thanks - Calum

Hi Bev

I've got an new SSD, and I want to make this my OS drive, for speed etc. But I don't want to do a fresh install of Windows onto my SSD - I want to copy/clone the OS as currently installed on my HDD (with all currently installed applications and settings).

After this is complete, I will be able to boot off the SSD, and use the HDD just as a data drive.

As the OS partition on the HDD is only 120GB, I thought that I could clone this partition to the SSD. But it seems that cloning only the OS partition won't work, and that I would have to clone the whole HDD instead. In order to clone the whole HDD, it seems that I'd have to delete everything from the data partition, in order that the total amount of data actually stored on the HDD is smaller than my SSD. After that, I think that I could do the clone of the whole HDD to the SSD.

That's what I'm understanding now. But I'm really still trying to work it out...

Thanks - Calum

I use the free cloning program Clonezilla and it will not work if the hard drive used for saving the cloned image of the original hard drive is smaller than the original hard drive. 

cloning process:   hard drive #1 --->  hard drive #2 ---> SSD

Which cloning software are you planning on using?