XPS 8700, clone of HDD of to SSD crashes on boot

I've found cloning to be a hit or miss.  I've tried it several times, doing some testing and upgrading of drives.  Most of the time it failed for one reason or another.  Even with Macrium Reflect.  But, remember to clone the entire drive, all partitions, not just the "C" drive. 

The best and most positive way I've found is to make a full drive (all partitions) disc image (backup) with Macrium Reflect to a separate drive.  Then "restore" the disc image to the new drive (in this case SSD).  That has worked every time for me.

1. steps, to do.  I can only guess the 1TB is HDD, RUST to SSD cloned.
2. First run full  smart tests in the 1TB, HDD, if fails at all or unrecoverable sectors is greater than 0 , it is bad.
3. then run full SFC and DISM checks on windows , for corruption, and full AV scans. W7 is dead in jan 2020.
4. why run w7 going forward.? but it be wise first to upgrade to w10 or fresh load it to new SSD.
5. one why to make it more easy is doing this, run defrag on the RUST drive
6. then shrink the large partition, on the RUST just below size of new SSD, both are 1TB but make the old drive a tad less, say 1GB less.
7. then clone it and do not run both drives at the same time, I use mintools, migrate and it does all this at once.
8. cloning also clones corruption or and  if HDD is bad?, the same deal.  yes cloning is hit or mis, how can it not be?  in all cases a fresh load of w10 is in order.  your dell support page clearly shows w10 support , would not that be first?
9. run ePSA on the HDD yet, power on , hammer F12  ,pick ePSA diag and run hdd test?

When you finished cloning the HDD, you should shut down the computer, disconnect the HDD, and only have the SSD installed before you first boot up the SSD.

do not run old cloning programs.

the size of any 1TB HDD and 1TB SSD< are not exactly the same, if you run poorly made clone apps it can get confused.

so that is why to shrink the old rust drive first a tad so the clone can be done more easy.

do not run W7.

W7 is now dead. (nor are the old 400 win updates fun to get and load) w7 is the next XP, soon to be a virus magnet.

if the new SSD crashes , or hangs booted.

in w10 , reboot Cold, up to 3 times, at 3 it will go to self repair mode, LET IT.

this also happens changing GPU cards the wrong way.

I have just been doing the same thing and having the same problems with my XPS 8700 and Crucial SSD.  I fixed by getting  an Inateck FD2102 which supports offline cloning.  Worked first time.  I now have mine set up with one SSD as Windows 10 and one as Windows 7.  Toughest part was mounting them.  I used the Inateck SA04003.  I had actually purchased the older design, cheaper ST1002S.  But it does not have threaded holes in the bottom for mounting upside down like the HDD was mounted.

David

Thanks,Fireberd, but this did not work, either.  I still got the crash on boot.  I wonder whether the system just cannot recognize the SSD as a hard drive.

It is hard to believe that the Crucial SSD is not compatible. One quick way to check would be to install the SSD as a backup drive and not the boot drive, boot from the HDD, and check to see if you can use the SSD as a backup drive. You may have to re-initialize the SSD. You can re-initialize to SSD using DiskPart and this procedure: https://macrorit.com/partition-magic-manager/initialize-disk-gpt-mbr-from-cmd-diskpart.html

Be careful when using DiskPart that the selected drive you are re-initializing is the SSD.

Another way to check if the Crucial SSD is compatible is to do a fresh install of Windows 7 on the SSD.

Did you do as I suggested and that is after you completed the cloning process you do nothing else other than shutdown the computer, disconnect the HDD, before trying to boot the SSD?

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@Photo Jerry wrote:

XPS 8700,

1TB Crucial solid state drive (Model CT1000MX500SSD1) to replace the 1TB spinning HDD

problems cloning

2. running Win 7 Pro 64 bit. 

 

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1. Life is short buddy. If cloning (or even a proper re-imaging to "bare-metal" ) doesn't work, you just clean-install Windows.

 https://www.dell.com/community/Alienware-Desktops/Aurora-R7-M-2-NVMe-bootable-options/m-p/6073081/highlight/true#M3401

2. Windows-7 is obsolete, dead, and gone.

Your XPS-8700 will run Windows-10 Pro 64-bit and Activate genuine.

https://www.dell.com/community/Vostro-Desktops/Vostro-460-XPS-8300-Upgrade-Adventures/m-p/6055730/highlight/true#M1225

Clean-install it and machine should run fine until you retire it in a few years. Grab that Crucial-1tb-SATA3-SSD before you recycle it.

Thanks, Vic384.  As I originally posted (it may not have been clear), when I kept my original HD as the primary drive and booted to the original HD while the Crucial SSD was connected to the SATA3 port of the motherboard, the system immediately crashed on boot several times.  Once, for some reason, after the first crash with this setup, the system did reboot to Win 7 from the hard drive and showed the SSD as another drive in the system, but after a few minutes of use, the system crashed to a blue screen again.

To answer other questions, yes, I cloned the entire hard drive, not just the OS partition, and after the cloning completed, all I did was close the cloning software, shut down, disconnect power, hold the power button 5+ seconds, remove the SSD from the USB port, connect it to the SATA1 motherboard port which the HD had been connected to and to the power supply, completely disconnect the hard drive, and then powered on the system.

Also, I was able to clone my less than half full 1TB HD to a Seagate 500 GB HD, shrinking the 3 partitions proportionally, install it in place of my HD, and boot normally to Windows.  This tells me that the cloning operation does work properly and makes me suspect hardware compatibility.

Although Crucial's site claims this SSD is compatible, the original spec sheet on the Dell site for the XPS 8700 states the system can accept one mSATA SSD, which, combined with my experience, makes me believe this drive will never work with my system except as a USB-connected drive.  Thanks, everyone.

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@Photo Jerry wrote:

 

1. Although Crucial's site claims this SSD is compatible,

2. the original spec sheet on the Dell site for the XPS 8700 states the system can accept one mSATA SSD,

3. this drive will never work with my system except as a USB-connected drive. 

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1. Yes, it is compatible. That is the way industry-standards like "SATA-3/600" work.

2. Irrelevant to your issue.

3. What would be the point of that ?  

Maybe you got a bad one ?