Creating an SSD Replacement

[R. C. White]

Hi, Juan.

Did I actually boot from the SSD...

Open Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc). Look under the Status column. One -
and ONLY ONE - drive will have the "System" status. THIS is the partition
that your computer booted from for the current session.

Now, look in the Graphical Display below and see which DISK that "drive"
letter is on. That is the physical dick drive that booted your computer
THIS TIME. You MIGHT boot from a different disk next time, depending on all
the settings you've been working on, but Disk Management will tell you
clearly what you status is for THIS session.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2012 (Build 16.4.3508.0205) in Win8 Pro


"Juan Wei" wrote in message
When I restart my computer and hit F12 before Windows starts, I get a
menu of devices from which to boot.

After cloning the C: partition to the SSD and restarting and getting
that menu, I selected the SSD.

Did I actually boot from the SSD or did the system, not finding an MBR
on the SSD, go on and seek out adrive with an MBR?

Thanks.

 

[Juan Wei]

BobbyM has written on 8/25/2013 5:40 AM:

Juan, we've been through this several times.

Actually, we haven't.

I asked a specific question but you ignored it.

1. Disconnect your original drive. Assuming your old drive is a SATA
just disconnect both plugs & plug them into your SSD. You can
physically install it later & pull out the old drive if everything works.
3. Boot up & see what happens.

Suppose it doesn't boot. What do I do then?

FYI - you should change BIOS settings from IDE to ACHI when using an SSD.

Why is that?

Thanks.

 

[Juan Wei]

Timothy Daniels has written on 8/25/2013 6:10 AM:

"Juan Wei" catches on well:

My advice is to find out through experimentation, and then YOU
tell US! I suspect that you have the correct idea - the BIOS found
2 drives enabled, it responded to your F12 input and presented the
choice of which to try to boot from, but not finding an MBR on the
drive of your choice, it moved to the top of the boot priority list
and found an MBR on the HDD and subsequently booted the
original OS that still resides there. In short, you still haven't booted
the clone. And don't forget, when you do that for the FIRST time,
have the "parent" OS hidden from it, most easily done by disabling
the HDD. And as I suggested elsewhere in this thread, put a folder
on the desktop (or at the root of the file system) of each OS that has
a name that tells you whether it's in the "parent" or the clone OS.

I like that! Thanks.

 

[Juan Wei]

R. C. White has written on 8/25/2013 11:51 AM:

Hi, Juan.


Open Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc). Look under the Status column. One -
and ONLY ONE - drive will have the "System" status. THIS is the partition
that your computer booted from for the current session.

Now, look in the Graphical Display below and see which DISK that "drive"
letter is on. That is the physical dick drive that booted your computer
THIS TIME. You MIGHT boot from a different disk next time, depending on all
the settings you've been working on, but Disk Management will tell you
clearly what you status is for THIS session.

Thanks. I will try booting from the SSD and then look at the DM display.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Macrium is far from unique when it comes to shrinking while cloning. This
has been a common cloning software feature for a very long time now, pretty
much across the board.

To support what you said: although I only mentioned Macrium when I
talked about successfully cloning to a smaller partition earlier in the
thread, I have also done the same with EaseUS and with Casper.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

If you're looking for a forensically good duplicate of a partition,
"dd" is the way to do that.

Another way to do it: use the Forensic Sector option in Macrium Reflect.

Here's their Help screen:
http://www.macrium.com/help/v5/reflect_v5.htm

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Understand - sorry if I confused you.

Nobody can confuse me as well as I can confuse myself

 

[Paul]

Another way to do it: use the Forensic Sector option in Macrium Reflect.

Here's their Help screen:
http://www.macrium.com/help/v5/reflect_v5.htm

I think this is still missing the difference between physical and logical
file system size. We had a poster here, who got a demo of that in spades,
when a resize failed, and the physical size of a partition was twice
as big as what NTFS thought it was (something you can fix from Linux).
"Copying every cluster", copies the logical portion. It's still not "dd",
and not an "exact duplicate". When "dd" is run without a count parameter,
it processes sectors until it hits the physical end. It will copy more sectors
than Macrium will, regardless of whether we feel they're important
or not.

http://www.macrium.com/help/v5/Advanced_Topics/Understanding_Forensic_Copy.htm

Sometimes, you don't want the type of copying that "dd" does, because
perhaps you know some malware or rootkit is taking advantage of the
flaky design of these storage containers. And you seek to "filter off
unofficially stored information". Perhaps if some expensive piece of
software stops working, that is less important than if the malware can
be eliminated, by using Macrium to copy just the officially
occupied clusters (as noted in $MFT).

Paul

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I think this is still missing the difference between physical and logical
file system size.

IIRC, Macrium's fine print says that when you do a Forensic clone in
Reflect, you will not be able to get a reduced partition. Nor would you
want to, if you mean the word forensic literally...

 

[Char Jackson]

The example I found, that did not support resizing, is this one.

http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm

There are plenty of backup programs available. I wouldn't use one that
didn't do what I need.

 

[Char Jackson]

And from the FAQ page:

http://www.runtime.org/driveimage_faq.htm

"Vista Boot Problem:

If your _cloned_ Vista drive refuses to boot with a
"winload.exe is missing or corrupt" message, you
might need to change the BCD store.
"

It's simply not a "full service" utility. It requires manual
fiddling as described in the FAQ. Still, in a pinch, you
can use that to get the job done. But you can't "clone n' shrink".
That capability is not there. No amount of fiddling will make
it do that on its own.

So my advice would be to simply avoid it. There are quite a few other
solutions out there that are apparently much more refined.

 

[Char Jackson]

To support what you said: although I only mentioned Macrium when I
talked about successfully cloning to a smaller partition earlier in the
thread, I have also done the same with EaseUS and with Casper.

Yep, those are popular examples, as well as Acronis True Image. Thanks.

 

[Char Jackson]

Sometimes, you don't want the type of copying that "dd" does, because
perhaps you know some malware or rootkit is taking advantage of the
flaky design of these storage containers. And you seek to "filter off
unofficially stored information". Perhaps if some expensive piece of
software stops working, that is less important than if the malware can
be eliminated, by using Macrium to copy just the officially
occupied clusters (as noted in $MFT).

I haven't heard of a legitimate application storing a license key or other
data in a 'hidden' sector since about the late 1980's. I'm not saying no one
does it anymore, but I don't think it's nearly as common as it once was, and
even back then it wasn't at all common.