Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations strongm on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Change from SSD to HDD 2

Status
Not open for further replies.

BadChough

Programmer
Dec 20, 2007
137
0
0
GB
I have been booting Win7 from an SSD (partitions C and D) and have had an HDD (partitions E and F) as Back-up/Data storage.
I now wish to remove the SSD for use in another machine. If I clone C: drive to E: on the HDD, remove the SSD, and rearrange the jump plugs from Slave to Master on the HDD will the PC boot as normal?
 
If you remove the SSD, format(HDD) and clone to the HDD from the SSD, rearrange jumpers(assuming IDE drive from above), and set up that HDD in the BIOS as the main boot drive, Yes it should boot as if it was still connected to the SSD.

Learning - A never ending quest for knowledge usually attained by being thrown in a situation and told to fix it NOW.
 
Thanks, Doc. I'll go ahead and give it a try!
 
Depends on the drive...If western Digital, just remove the jumper, or place it in spare position which is shorting any of the bottom row as they are all ground. WD has Single drive jumper position, which is what it should have been in, as the SSD was most likely SATA, and has no bearing on the jumper positions of an IDE drive. The jumpers do not mean how many drives are in the system, but how many are in the IDE chain.
 
Wait - first step would be to backup data off E: and F:
Then clone from C: and D: from SSD to spinning drive.
Then remove SSD, boot computer.
No jumper moving involved as mentioned if spinning drive is SATA

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.
 
Thanks all.
Just to get this clear before I do something silly . . .
I've done the backing up and cloning.
However the drives are ATA, it seems
SSD = Crucial CT500MX200SSD1 ATA
Spinning = Samsung SP2514N ATA
Do I move the jumper on the Spinner?
 
Did you actually pop open the case and verify that it's an IDE connection? It can still say "ATA" in Device Manager when it's attached to an SATA interface. I don't think they make IDE SSD's, so I seriously doubt you need to worry about jumpers here.



-Carl
"The glass is neither half-full nor half-empty: it's twice as big as it needs to be."

[tab][navy]For this site's posting policies, click [/navy]here.
 
Ok. Now I've looked under the bonnet, and can report that the SSD is SATA but the spinning drive has IDE connection.
Whilst I was there I disconnected the SSD and tried to boot up, but was quickly sent a message to say that I needed to use a Bootable Device, or words to that effect.
I next reconnected the SSD and went into BIOS and appeared to select the HDD as the boot device, but I think the PC ignored my orders and booted from the SSD.
Presumably I need to use a Jumper on the HDD to make it Master and persuade the PC to boot from it?
 
How exactly did you clone the SSD onto the HDD?

It appears your HDD is not correctly bootable. i.e your cloning did not successfully transfer the Operating system from the SSD.



----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Web & Tech
 
It may have cloned the drive, but it may not have made the partition active. Per Samsung, the drive should be on Master as a single drive in the chain.
 
Thanks for further help.
I have not cracked the problem yet.
I have made the E: partition "Active" and then cloned the C: partition to it.
I have then tried to boot from the HDD by putting the jumper to make it Master and removing the SSD. I have tried the same without the jumper. I have tried with both drives in place but selecting the HDD as the boot disk in BIOS.

I have received the following message from the Hardware Monitor "Reboot and Select proper Boot Device or Insert Media in Selected Boot device."

I have also been given the following messages, amongst others as the PC starts to boot:
"Auto Detecting Pri.... IDE Hard Disk Samsung etc.
Sec Master Hard Disk: S.M.A.R.T.Status BAD, Back Up and Replace"

I attach an image of my Disk Management status.

Any other ideas before I give up and hand it over to the professionals?
 
 http://files.engineering.com/getfile.aspx?folder=f293d043-1866-41da-8da5-a1b70b0bf583&file=Capture.JPG
Well, I see an issue, you say you cloned the drive partitions, but I don't think you cloned them, you are trying to go to a smaller hdd from a 500GB ssd drive, and none of the partitions are the same size, so how did you clone the partitions? simply copying the data over or doing an image backup is not cloning. If you see e: is not bootable, as C: is, if you had cloned it with actual cloning software, first error you would get is the partition is too small, and you would have to take C: and make it smaller to fit the size of E: then you could clone bit for bit c: to e: and it would be bootable. What software did you use, and how did you do it, or what options did you choose.
 
I made, or thought I made the clone of C: using EaseUS software. It was certainly not an image backup. The software made no complaint, and because the C: contained only 64GB of data, I assumed that the clone would fit on the E:
It sounds as if I don't really understand what a Clone is, doesn't it?
 
Can someone explain, please.
I used EaseUs Todo to make a clone of Partition C: (which is on my SSD) to Partition E: (which is on my HDD).
EaseUs appeared to do the job, and gave no indication that there was anything amiss.
rclarke250 seems to be suggesting that this is not possible, and that therefore I cannot expect the HDD to be bootable.
Is he right?
Many thanks for your help.
 
I would think that cloning a partition would strictly clone the partition where cloning the drive would get all the partitions and the support stuff that is needed to make the drive bootable.

I do whole drive with Acronis, earlier with ghost, so haven't run across these issues but generally had no issues cloning to smaller partitions.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.
 
You can use that program, but unless you do the whole drive as in the directions you may not make it bootable. You would be better off making a backup of the partition and then doing a restore after making the partition bootable. Here is from the knowledge base from Easeus Link
 
Cracked it!
Through the help of the TekTips posse I came to realize that just cloning the partitions was not going to do the job. I should have been cloning the whole SSD to the HDD. The smaller size of the HDD did not matter so long as there was room enough for the data, as it turned out. (This would not have been the case, of course, if I had opted for the "Sector by Sector" process)
Having used EaseUs to do the job I then disconnected the SSD, put the jumper on the HDD to make it Master, and tried to reboot. No luck.
I then removed the jumper, and tried again. This time The PC suggested that I inserted the Windows7 disk and opt for "Repair Windows".
This I did, and here we are! Sorted.
Thank you rclarke250. Your latest post arrived after the event, and no doubt would have served me well, and thank you edfair for pointing me in the right direction.
 
Thanks for sticking with it, and reporting back with the success.
 
I know the thread is effectively closed but recent experience of the above in reverse may help others looking in.

I cloned a Seagate SATA HDD onto a Samsung SSD using the Samsung software provided, it completed the clone but then said failed. I tried and it worked anyway. So thought I might as well try another method just for fun. Using Acronis True Image 11 (Home) I cloned the SSD back to another HDD and that too worked fine. Have used Acronis for years and it's always worked 100% for me so can thoroughly recommend it.

HTH

Chuck.

[EDITED for spewling mistook ;) ]
 
The only time I've seen the Samsung Data Migration software fail is if the original hard drive is failing OR needs a CHKDSK run on it. Had that just the other day. Failed cloning attempt 1 at 99%, new drive would not boot.

Ran a CHKDSK /F, rebooted and let it run, laptop restarted, cloning went fine.

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top