XPS 8700, mSATA, boot drive

Question

I added an mSATA drive to my 8700 with the intention of using it as a boot drive. The hardware installation was fine and the system sees the drive. When I try to clone my current boot drive to it I get an "incompatible sector size for this operation" error.

Any advice appreciated...

speedstep · Answer

Cloning is not supported by Dell or Microsoft or me. Clean install works fine. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/backup-and-storage/windows-installations-disk-duplication

Vic384 · Answer

Perhaps this article can help: https://kb.macrium.com/KnowledgebaseArticle50193.aspx#:~:text=When%20restoring%20or%20cloning%20you,sector%20size%20of%20the%20disk. Just because Dell or Microsoft does not support cloning does not mean it does not work. Major manufacturers of SSDs and HDDs offer cloning software with their drives and lots of Dell users here have been successful in cloning their drives.

redxps630 · Answer

While cloning is one way to install OS on the mSATA ssd, another way is to do a fresh clean install of Windows 10 on the ssd (disconnect the HDD when you are doing this).  After you are done, the OS on ssd will be automatically activated on line by Microsoft.  When you feel the mission of bootable ssd is accomplished, you can then delete the old HDD containing OS after backing up data.

RoHe · Answer

@Shaunss

What cloning software are you using?

Try wiping all partitions off the mSATA first using Disk Management in Windows, then try cloning.

BTW: How big is the current boot HDD and is the mSATA SSD bigger or smaller? If the mSATA is smaller (or just too small), that may be why you see that error.

redxps630 · Answer

a community user reported successful cloning of boot hdd to ssd using Marcium. ' The key is setting up the clone process correctly. In order to clone a boot drive, you need more than just the main NTFS partition. You also need the EFI partition in front of it. ... I switched to Macrium Reflect free edition. So, go in Macrium and clone your C drive to your D drive. Since my drive/partition sizes for the NTFS partition were going to be very different, I did this partition by partition. This way I could shrink the NTFS down to about 118G from 900+GB to fit on the SSD. So I ended up with 500MB EFI, 118GB NTFS (new C drive)... Structurally my two disks now looked virtually identical. You can see this in Macrium and confirm it with the Windows Disk Manager.' https://www.dell.com/community/Inspiron-Desktops/Inspiron-27-7775-AIO-clone-SSD-create-UEFI-partition/td-p/6205336

XPS Desktops

XPS 8700, mSATA, boot drive

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