Question testing cloned SSD before installing in notebook

Megunticook

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Mar 13, 2019
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I bought a Samsung EVO 360 500MB SSD to replace the HDD that came with my Lenovo IdeaPad 330. I hooked the new SSD up to the laptop with a USB-SATA adapter and cloned the drive using Samsung's cloning utility. That operation completed successfully.

But before I tear into the laptop, I just want to verify that the new SSD is bootable. I figured I could just change the boot priority in the BIOS and then boot from the SSD using the USB port (I can see the SSD on the USB port in BIOS). But no matter what I do I can't get it to boot. After multiple attemps, here's the troubleshooting steps I've taken so far...please tell me if I'm missing something:

1. tested a bootable USB flash drive to make sure the Lenovo was able to boot from USB (it worked)

2. switched "Boot Mode" in BIOS from UEFI to "Legacy"

3. changed "Boot Priority" in BIOS to "Legacy First"

4. disabled "OS Optimized Defaults" in BIOS

5. re-cloned the SSD using AOEMI Backerupper

6. scanned the SSD for errors in Windows 10

7. checked the SSD in Windows Disk Manager to verify the partitions match what's on the internal HDD

Every time it simply boots from the internal HDD.

What am I missing here?

Thanks.
 

Megunticook

Commendable
Mar 13, 2019
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OK, well that explains it.

So there's no way to confirm if the SSD is bootable other than installing it in the laptop? I was thinking I could test it first.

Guess I'll dive in and hope for the best!

Thanks for clearing that up.

The IdeaPad was a bargain basement deal ($300!) but has a decent 17" display. Once I get this SSD in there, plus a new stick of RAM, it should be more productive (kind of sluggish now). Here's hoping anyway!
 

Megunticook

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Mar 13, 2019
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I put the hard drive in and turned on the laptop but instead of booting into Windows I got this:

boot-menu.jpg


If I hit enter it just repeats.

I went into BIOS setup and tried a few settings, but each time I saved and exited I got a series of warnings like this:

warning.jpg


There's a setting in BIOS called "AMD Platform Security Processor" and I tried disabling that setting but no change.

What's going on?

Thanks.
 
Try using Macrium Reflect to clone the old drive to the SSD, make sure you do a full disk clone. Install the program, then use it to make a USB boot stick, boot off that and do the clone. Swap in the SSD and see what happens. You should not need to change any options in the BIOS to boot off the new drive.
 

Megunticook

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Mar 13, 2019
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Appreciate the prompt response.

OK, I put the old drive back and it boots up normally. At least the memory swap worked!

Just so I make sure I understand you, you're saying don't clone the HDD to the SSD while booted into Windows, boot instead with a USB stick that I create with Macrium Reflect, then do a full disk clone in that environment?

I'll try that and report back.

But just so I understand...what in the world went wrong?
 
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Appreciate the prompt response.

OK, I put the old drive back and it boots up normally. At least the memory swap worked!

Just so I make sure I understand you, you're saying don't clone the HDD to the SSD while booted into Windows, boot instead with a USB stick that I create with Macrium Reflect, then do a full disk clone in that environment?

I'll try that and report back.

But just so I understand...what in the world went wrong?

Correct, not from Windows. I don't like doing any type of work on the full disk while actually running off that disk. You want the system running off a secondary boot.
Just be very sure you are cloning the correct disk to the new one, one wrong selection and you will clone your new disk to the old one and that will cause issues.

Having a backup of your data is a good idea also before messing with disks, so make sure your backups are good and current.

Can't say what went wrong with the first try, I never used the Samsung utility.
 

Megunticook

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Mar 13, 2019
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Great, thanks for explaining. Basically want that disk completely inert, doing absolutely nothing, while you copy it over. Makes total sense.

Macrium is copying it now. One detail. This is a 500MB disk but the HDD is 1TB (long story short, this SSD was purchased with another computer in mind). About 75% of the HDD is unused disk space, so I figured no problem. From what I could tell the Samsung program was smart enough to handle this. AOEMI Backerupper and EaseUS Todo both handled it no problem (although EaseUS threw an error toward the end of the process).

Thanks for the data warning...rest assured I am operating under the assumption that everything on that HDD could be lost in a worst-case scenario, so all data is copied elsewhere.

Interestingly Macrium made me deselect a couple of the volumes before proceeding, saying there was not enough space. Fortunately, there's the "Lenovo" volume and another very small volume that constitute Lenovo's recovery utility. I told Mac to leave those behind on the HDD. Should still be bootable, right?
 

Megunticook

Commendable
Mar 13, 2019
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Holy hard drive, Batman...it worked!

magician.gif

Muchas gracias for the advice. Good lesson there about cloning.

It went from power up to login screen in 20 seconds...not too shabby. Looks like I have Windows Defender (antimalware executable) hogging a bunch of the CPU which is slowing things down, but once I get that resolved it should be a much nicer machine to work on.

Thanks again.