SSD clone won't boot.

[darkness1123]

Hello,

I have recently gotten a new HP SSD S700 2.5" 500gd drive and tried to install it to into my laptop. I cloned the original drive by deleting some of my games to lower the content then changing the partition size to 400gb using Free Partition Manager. I then cloned the drive using EaseUS partition manager free edition. I have 3 partitions on my original hard drive. A: drive 32GB I use to store a few games, C: drive for my operating system and all day to day stuff, 841MB for recovery partition(would have deleted this if I knew how). so I only cloned C: since it's my page file, boot primary active partition. When I install the SSD it's boots through my bios page then get stuck on a blinking _ and I don't get passed that. I've tried going into bios and making sure it's booting from my SSD which it is but it doesn't do anything. Please Help. ireally don't want to have to do a fresh install of windows and lose all my programs and info. Thank You

Dell Inspiron 17R N7110
Unlocked A13 Bios
Intel I7 2960XM 2.7Ghz
EVGA GTX 1060 3GB EGPU setup
16 GB Samsung DDR3 1600 Dimm

Ok so I forgot to put that the hard drive I'm migrating from is 750GB so I can't copy the complete drive from one to the other. when I try it says while cloning that the job is 73% complete when the new drive is 100% and then finishes with those numbers if anyone has used EaseUS then they know what I'm talking about. even if the drive is only got 120GB of data on it cuz the partition size is 750GB it says that but if I change the partition size to 400GB then the unallocated size is 350 how could it get the stuff not on c-drive if that's all it says is on there?

 

[Saga Lout]

There's a lot more crucial booting data on the disk that doesn't appear in C:\. Cloning the entire disk will probably give you a better result.

 

[USAFRet]

Specific steps for a successful clone operation:
-----------------------------
Verify the actual used space on the current drive is significantly below the size of the new SSD
Download and install Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration, if a Samsung SSD)
Power off
Disconnect ALL drives except the current C and the new SSD
Power up
Run the Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration)
Select ALL the partitions on the existing C drive
Click the 'Clone' button
Wait until it is done
When it finishes, power off
Disconnect ALL drives except for the new SSD
This is to allow the system to try to boot from ONLY the SSD
Swap the SATA cables around so that the new drive is connected to the same SATA port as the old drive
Power up, and verify the BIOS boot order
If good, continue the power up

It should boot from the new drive, just like the old drive.
Maybe reboot a time or two, just to make sure.

If it works, and it should, all is good.

Later, reconnect the old drive and wipe as necessary.
Delete the 450MB Recovery Partition, here:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/4f1b84ac-b193-40e3-943a-f45d52e23685/cant-delete-extra-healthy-recovery-partitions-and-healthy-efi-system-partition?forum=w8itproinstall

Ask questions if anything is unclear.
-----------------------------

 

[darkness1123]

Ok so I forgot to put that the hard drive i'm migrating from is 750GB so I can't copy the complete drive from one to the other. when I try it says while cloning that the job is 73% complete when the new drive is 100% and then finishes with those numbers if anyone has used EaseUS then they know what i'm talking about.

 

[darkness1123]

Specific steps for a successful clone operation:
-----------------------------
Verify the actual used space on the current drive is significantly below the size of the new SSD
Download and install Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration, if a Samsung SSD)
Power off
Disconnect ALL drives except the current C and the new SSD
Power up
Run the Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration)
Select ALL the partitions on the existing C drive
Click the 'Clone' button
Wait until it is done
When it finishes, power off
Disconnect ALL drives except for the new SSD
This is to allow the system to try to boot from ONLY the SSD
Swap the SATA cables around so that the new drive is connected to the same SATA port as the old drive
Power up, and verify the BIOS boot order
If good, continue the power up

It should boot from the new drive, just like the old drive.
Maybe reboot a time or two, just to make sure.

If it works, and it should, all is good.

Later, reconnect the old drive and wipe as necessary.
Delete the 450MB Recovery Partition, here:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/4f1b84ac-b193-40e3-943a-f45d52e23685/cant-delete-extra-healthy-recovery-partitions-and-healthy-efi-system-partition?forum=w8itproinstall

Ask questions if anything is unclear.
-----------------------------

It's a laptop so there are no sata cables and I can't clone the whole drive cuz C: is 750gb and the SSD is 500gb

 

[USAFRet]

It's a laptop so there are no sata cables and I can't clone the whole drive cuz C: is 750gb and the SSD is 500gb

How much actual consumed space is on the current drive?
All partitions.

Please show us a screencap of your current Disk Management window.

 

[TerryLaze]

841MB for recovery partition(would have deleted this if I knew how). so I only cloned C: since it's my page file, boot primary active partition. When I install the SSD it's boots through my bios page then get stuck on a blinking _ and I don't get passed that.

The 800mb partition probably contains your BCD store that is needed to boot windows.
The flashing _ usually means that it can't find the boot files.
If you can connect the cloned disk to a bootable system you can run easybcd, create a bcd store on the cloned drive, load in this bcd store and add windows to the boot menu so that it will boot.
You can get the free version of Easybcd,look up a guide on how to create a bcd store and how to add an OS before you screw things up.

 

[darkness1123]

It's a laptop so there are no sata cables and I can't clone the whole drive cuz C: is 750gb and the SSD is 500gb

How much actual consumed space is on the current drive?
All partitions.

Please show us a screencap of your current Disk Management window.

Hello.
Here is the current window and the reason that Drive 1 looks like that. I was planning on just installing the ssd into the laptop, using the ESD-USB portion to install windows 10 then using the the back-up portion to restore my version of windows. ?? how do I add a picture here ?? it keeps asking for a url do I have to host it somewhere or something? the actual used space is 172GB of the 400GB and not sure how much of the 841MB is used cuz I can't access it.

 

[USAFRet]

Detailed instructions on posting images on Tom's hardware.
http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2580030/detailed-instructions-posting-images-tom-hardware.html


Basically, upload your image to imgur.com, and post the link here.

 

[darkness1123]

Detailed instructions on posting images on Tom's hardware.
http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2580030/detailed-instructions-posting-images-tom-hardware.html


Basically, upload your image to imgur.com, and post the link here.

I did this and no picture is showing up.

heres the url https://imgur.com/6Lv9g67

 

[kerberos_20]

set that cloned partition to active, that will make it bootable

 

[USAFRet]

So you're trying to clone from the 750GB drive that is Disk 0, to the 500GB drive that is in Disk 1?

Power off.
Disconnect ALL drives except your current C drive, the Disk 0.
Power up.
Does it boot correctly?
If so, we can proceed on.

But we need to KNOW if it actually works like that.