Question HP ENVY Changes

[Hutchins4292]

My very old HP ENVY laptop needs a new network adapter. I say this because the system is not receiving the 5Ghz signal from my router and is running at only about a tenth the download speed it should (33-35Mbps). My Dell Inspiron runs at about 175 Mpbs in the same room and sees both networks. My ISP delivers ~300 Mbps capability.

Replacing the network card should be simple. If it works, I want to replace the 1TB hard drive with a 512Gb SSD. I'm not using even a fourth of the space on the hard drive and would rather have the speed of SSD than the space. I can always use peripherals if I need more space. My questions are about migrating from the HDD to the SSD, successfully, without bricking the system.

• I would prefer to clone the HDD to the SSD to avoid reinstalling Windows 10 Home and all the software on the machine. Is this possible?
• I have a viable SD card slot and recently backed up the entire HDD to a 1TB SD card to valid that it works. I used AOMEI Backupper Pro.
• Can I clone the HDD to an SD card; remove the HDD replacing it with the SSD; then clone back to the SSD? The laptop doesn't support 2 SATA drives.
• Assuming I can clone the HDD to the SD card, how would I go about booting from the SD card to complete the process of getting up on the SSD?
• What else should I consider? (other than making ample backups before starting)
• Is there a how-to that I can read and follow to do this?

Thanks for any advice and pointers. I want to extend the life of this old machine as it has served me well and seems to need only a little love.

 

[USAFRet]

What size is the SD card?
How much consumed space on the current C drive, exactly?

 

[Hutchins4292]

The HDD is split into 5 partitions as shown in the table below. The SSD is 512GB. As a test, I used AOMEI Backupper Pro to clone the HDD to an SD card. It worked; the result was a 259Mb (yes megabyte) NTFS partition with 998.77 GB unallocated. I'm still trying to find out if the BIOS on the laptop will allow me to put the SD drive in the list of bootable devices. That's TBD at the moment.

Thanks for the response.

All Gigabytes	Allocated	Free	Used	% Free
C:	471.43​	336.99​	134.44​	71.48%​
D:	21.66​	2.17​	19.49​	10.02%​
P:	4.88​	1.26​	3.62​	25.78%​
X:	259.19​	245.91​	13.28​	94.88%​
W:	171.88​	171.67​	0.21​	99.88%​
	929.04​	758.00​	171.04​	81.59%​

 

[USAFRet]

Don't worry about the SD card being bootable.
There are other ways to do this.

What actual size is the SD card?

 

[USAFRet]

And can you post a screencap of the Disk Management window.

 

[Hutchins4292]

I have a screenshot of the DM screen but cannot paste it or insert it here. How does one post images at Tom's?

 

[USAFRet]

I have a screenshot of the DM screen but cannot paste it or insert it here. How does one post images at Tom's?

Upload your pic to imgur.com, post the link here.

 

[Hutchins4292]

here you go

https://imgur.com/a/VeyyhR1

View: https://imgur.com/a/VeyyhR1

 

[Hutchins4292]

I have an external SATA hard drive enclosure, USB attached, that I use for backups. I suppose I could mount the new SSD in that enclosure and clone to it. This raises more questions:

• Will cloning the existing HDD automatically make the resulting cloned drive bootable or must I do that by formatting it as a bootable drive?
• AOMEI Backupper software offers three options for cloning: system, drive and partition. If I want a bootable drive with Windows 10 as configured whencloned PLUS all the installed software capable of being executed and all my data, which option should I choose? My guess is 'drive'.

Sorry for such basic questions. It's been a long time since I did this and I'm not any younger at 81yo. I've been reading articles online without getting these answers, probably because I'm not forming good enough search arguments to find articles.

Thank you for your help and for your patience.

 

[USAFRet]

OK....

For THIS thing, take the word "Clone" out of your lexicon.
Here, we want an Image.

Basically, software to make an Image of the current C drive on the HDD
This Image is written to some storage space...ANY storage space, with enough free space to hole it.
Then, a bootable USB to recover that Image to the new SSD.
I use Macrium Reflect for this.

Specifically, these steps:
Assuming you have another drive (any type of drive) with sufficient free space to hold the entirety of your current C drive:

1. Download and install Macrium Reflect
2. Run that, and create a Rescue CD or USB (you'll use this later). "Other Tasks". Create this on a small USB flash drive or DVD.
3. In the Macrium client, create an Image to some other drive. External USB HDD, maybe. Select all partitions. This results in a file of xxxx.mrimage
4. When done, power OFF.
5. Swap the 2 drives. Take out the HDD, put in the new SSD.
6. Boot up from the Rescue USB you created earlier.
7. Restore (on the toolbar), and tell it where the Image is that you created in step 3, and which drive to apply it to...the new SSD
8. Go, and wait until it finishes.
9. That's all...this should work.

 

[Hutchins4292]

Thanks, Titan. I'm curious about why you recommend imaging instead of cloning.

I might not remember it correctly, but I thought that images were best used for backups and that cloning was best for hardware migration. Since my last post I've found some articles that discuss this. Those articles state that, for example, an SSD recently cloned from a bootable Windows system's HDD can be put into a computer and the computer booted just as if the original HDD was still in place because it is an exact replica of that HDD whereas an image file (or ISO) is a specifically compressed file that requires a bootable device to load, which the CD or USB you mention would be.

What do I have wrong? It seems to me that cloning is a much more straightforward process because there is no compression and no separate bootable device is needed.