Asus g501vw upgrade harddrive to SSD

[iforgotrofl]

Hello Tom's Hardware community,

I recently attempted to change my Asus G501vw stock hard drive to a samsung 840 evo ssd I had laying around. In the past, reinstalling the ssd after cloning the drive using samsung data migration brough upon no problems. However, the asus laptop was not able to recognize the after cloning and re installation. The laptop immediately loaded to the bios after installation. I have confirmed the sata connector was in ahci and have also tried disabling secure boot. I have also tried changing the format of the drive to a dynamic disk in disk management to no success. What could be a possible solution to successfully move my windows os to my SSD? I currently do not have access to a copy of windows for a fresh install.

Thanks for the help

 

[ArtPog]

1. For a start, everytime I see a sentence like "I have also tried changing the format of the drive to a dynamic disk...", it sends a chill up (down?) my spine. You do NOT want to do this. Trust me.

2. So for starters, delete all the volumes (partitions) on that you-know-what drive (or use Diskpart to "clean" the disk). Your Samsung SSD should be a Basic disk and we'll start over, capiche?

WAIT A MOMENT! I JUST REALIZED YOU MAY HAVE CHANGED YOUR BOOT DRIVE TO A DYNAMIC DISK. TELL ME YOU DIDN'T DO THAT.

3. It's hard to tell what happened with the apparently botched disk-cloning operation. The SDM program is generally quite effective. Maybe you screwed up somehow during the process or the program was corrupted or who knows?

4. We'll assume your present boot drive - what you labeled as the "stock hard drive" is non-defective and has been booting to the OS and functioning without problems. That's right, isn't it?
If not, STOP RIGHT HERE.

5. And of course the disk-space capacity of your Samsung SSD (you never indicate the capacity) is sufficient to contain the contents of the "stock hard drive", i.e., the source drive.

6. Perhaps it's a good idea to download the SDM program again, just on the off-chance the one you used was corrupted.

7. And give it another try...

 

[iforgotrofl]

1. Fortunately the change to dynamic failed because of some compatibility issues of some sort.
3. I'm not sure if I messed up part of the cloning process but the data seems to have transferred successfully in terms of storage space. If the issue of a corrupt file is true, I will try again and post results.
4. The stock harddrive is a HGST Travelstar 2.5-Inch 1TB 5400RPM SATA 6Gbps 8MB Cache Internal Hard Drive and is currently working flawlessly --- I reinstalled it and am using the laptop to type this message.
5. The disk space should be sufficient. The ssd has 466 gbs available vs the 100gb or so data occupying my current harddrive.

1. For a start, everytime I see a sentence like "I have also tried changing the format of the drive to a dynamic disk...", it sends a chill up (down?) my spine. You do NOT want to do this. Trust me.

2. So for starters, delete all the volumes (partitions) on that you-know-what drive (or use Diskpart to "clean" the disk). Your Samsung SSD should be a Basic disk and we'll start over, capiche?

WAIT A MOMENT! I JUST REALIZED YOU MAY HAVE CHANGED YOUR BOOT DRIVE TO A DYNAMIC DISK. TELL ME YOU DIDN'T DO THAT.

3. It's hard to tell what happened with the apparently botched disk-cloning operation. The SDM program is generally quite effective. Maybe you screwed up somehow during the process or the program was corrupted or who knows?

4. We'll assume your present boot drive - what you labeled as the "stock hard drive" is non-defective and has been booting to the OS and functioning without problems. That's right, isn't it?
If not, STOP RIGHT HERE.

5. And of course the disk-space capacity of your Samsung SSD (you never indicate the capacity) is sufficient to contain the contents of the "stock hard drive", i.e., the source drive.

6. Perhaps it's a good idea to download the SDM program again, just on the off-chance the one you used was corrupted.

7. And give it another try...

 

[ArtPog]

Good. Glad to hear the dynamic disk drive conversion failed. Creating a dynamic disk is a curse for 99% of PC users. While it can be a useful drive configuration in some situations, for the average PC user it's a continuing headache. Do a Google search on the subject when you have some time.

Anyway, I trust the disk-cloning program using the SDM program will sort things out. If you want to try a different program, here are some detailed instructions...

Try this Casper disk-cloning program which you can download from https://www.fssdev.com/products/casper/trial/
We've been using this Casper disk cloning program for many years and find it easy-to-use and quite effective. While the program is a commercial one costing $49.99, a 30-day Trial Version is available from the above download site that you can use should you want to give it a try.

After installing the Casper program and before undertaking the disk-cloning operation, close all open programs. (Generally you need not disable your anti-virus program).

1. I assume your Samsung SSD, i.e. the proposed recipient of the laptop's boot drive, will be connected to the laptop as a USB external drive.

2. The opening screen of the Casper program will highlight "Create a Bootable Backup". Click on "Add drive" and the Samsung SSD (destination drive) will appear.

3. Click on the destination drive's listing and then the "Back up now" button.

4. Casper will run in the background and alert you when the disk-cloning operation is completed. (You can view the actual progress chart by clicking on the Casper icon in the Notification Area on the Taskbar.)

5. Following the (hopefully!) successful disk-cloning operation you may want to try booting to the external drive while it's still connected as a USB external drive to possibly determine whether the disk-cloning operation was successful. Casper does have the capability of booting to a cloned USB external drive provided that the OEM PC will allow this type of boot from a USB external device. Some OEM PCs allow such a boot, others do not. So please understand it is NOT AT ALL definitive if the boot fails at this time. If you DO want to give it a try, ensure you select the destination drive as the boot drive from the laptop/notebook's boot menu when you power-up the laptop/notebook.

6. So understand it is NOT AT ALL MANDATORY that you boot to the destination drive while it's connected as a USB external device. The "proof of the pudding" as to whether the disk-cloning operation was successful is obviously when you disconnect the internally-connected drive from the laptop and replace it with the newly-cloned drive and you then determine the newly-cloned drive properly functions.

Good luck and let us know how things turn out regardless of the disk-cloning program you use.

 

[iforgotrofl]

I
I
E
I used samsung dta migration once again and reinstalled the ssd. The laptop went straight to bios again.
I tried test booting via USB and disabling the other boot options which seemed to have work because it loaded windows
However when I installed it manually into the laptops sata windows did not load.

Good. Glad to hear the dynamic disk drive conversion failed. Creating a dynamic disk is a curse for 99% of PC users. While it can be a useful drive configuration in some situations, for the average PC user it's a continuing headache. Do a Google search on the subject when you have some time.

Anyway, I trust the disk-cloning program using the SDM program will sort things out. If you want to try a different program, here are some detailed instructions...

Try this Casper disk-cloning program which you can download from https://www.fssdev.com/products/casper/trial/
We've been using this Casper disk cloning program for many years and find it easy-to-use and quite effective. While the program is a commercial one costing $49.99, a 30-day Trial Version is available from the above download site that you can use should you want to give it a try.

After installing the Casper program and before undertaking the disk-cloning operation, close all open programs. (Generally you need not disable your anti-virus program).

1. I assume your Samsung SSD, i.e. the proposed recipient of the laptop's boot drive, will be connected to the laptop as a USB external drive.

2. The opening screen of the Casper program will highlight "Create a Bootable Backup". Click on "Add drive" and the Samsung SSD (destination drive) will appear.

3. Click on the destination drive's listing and then the "Back up now" button.

4. Casper will run in the background and alert you when the disk-cloning operation is completed. (You can view the actual progress chart by clicking on the Casper icon in the Notification Area on the Taskbar.)

5. Following the (hopefully!) successful disk-cloning operation you may want to try booting to the external drive while it's still connected as a USB external drive to possibly determine whether the disk-cloning operation was successful. Casper does have the capability of booting to a cloned USB external drive provided that the OEM PC will allow this type of boot from a USB external device. Some OEM PCs allow such a boot, others do not. So please understand it is NOT AT ALL definitive if the boot fails at this time. If you DO want to give it a try, ensure you select the destination drive as the boot drive from the laptop/notebook's boot menu when you power-up the laptop/notebook.

6. So understand it is NOT AT ALL MANDATORY that you boot to the destination drive while it's connected as a USB external device. The "proof of the pudding" as to whether the disk-cloning operation was successful is obviously when you disconnect the internally-connected drive from the laptop and replace it with the newly-cloned drive and you then determine the newly-cloned drive properly functions.

Good luck and let us know how things turn out regardless of the disk-cloning program you use.

 

[ArtPog]

I honestly don't know why you're experiencing this problem with the SDM program.

I assume you haven't tried the Casper disk-cloning program I recommended. If you haven't, perhaps you should do so and please follow my instructions.

Should the problem you've reported continue to exist, please provide a screenshot of Disk Management following the failed d-c operation (with both drives connected).

 

[iforgotrofl]

I'm not quite sure either. I've done this with past laptops but this is the only time where the SSD does not even register. I can still see the contents when I connect it to the laptop via usb but installing it has not been successful. I will try your solution tomorrow and hope for the best.

I honestly don't know why you're experiencing this problem with the SDM program.

I assume you haven't tried the Casper disk-cloning program I recommended. If you haven't, perhaps you should do so and please follow my instructions.

Should the problem you've reported continue to exist, please provide a screenshot of Disk Management following the failed d-c operation (with both drives connected).

 

[IvoRV]

I have been looking for information about it since i have the same laptop but im looking to upgrade to m.2, could it be and achi standar instead of nvme for this port? i tried the nvme 970 evo plus with 500gb and it was recogniced but it is not booteable. Now im looking for m.2 ssd that work with achi protocol, is that correct?

 

[USAFRet]

I have been looking for information about it since i have the same laptop but im looking to upgrade to m.2, could it be and achi standar instead of nvme for this port? i tried the nvme 970 evo plus with 500gb and it was recogniced but it is not booteable. Now im looking for m.2 ssd that work with achi protocol, is that correct?

Please start a new thread for your particular situation.