Cloning an SSD is it really so difficult?

[Generalchaos]

Boy what a headache. I have an Intel 240GB 520 series SSD as my C: (Boot Drive) running off of an Asus P8Z77V-De-Luxe MB. I bought a new SSD today, an Intel 480GB Series 535 which I want to transfer the original win 10 x64 OS onto and just copy it over and reboot.

Intel supplies a tool, Intel Data Migration Tool to do this, you wouldn't think it would be too much to ask a company as big as Intel to be able to copy everything from one Intel drive to another would you?

Well, it isn't going well I can tell you!

When you install the Intel software, it isn't actually from Intel, it is from Acronis.

So you follow all the instructions, select the source drive and the destination drive and away you go.

After a couple of minutes when you set up all of the parameters and click to proceed, Acronis springs into action. It does a few calculations as expected, shows you the results of what it will look like when finished, then asks you to PROCEED.

 

Here is where the fun begins, it starts to run the cloning software, then as it states in the Intel Manual, it will ask you to reboot, where the Acronis loader then takes over. Which it does.

It starts off with the old DOS type black screen and starts to load up Acronis, then it goes into a sort of Safe Mode Screen, rubbish graphics etc, 640 x 480 or similar.

 

Then it stars to clone.....wait 30 seconds and the screen goes blank and it completely powers the PC to power off. When you reboot, it ignores Acronis and goes straight back to windows and boots back up as if nothing happened.

 

Any ideas or any ideas of some better software? ( I am convinced it is something within the ASUS UEFI BIOS, but I have no idea what needs to be fixed, surely someone like Intel could write a bloody program to copy one disk to another?

 

Thanks!

Edited November 18, 2016 by Generalchaos

[Generalchaos]

I Forgot to mention too, I did a speed test on the 535 SSD and it seemed to max out at around 4mb, write read were about 160419/ 48497 MB/s

where the old 520 was running at 507679 and 545534

[lostinisaan]

Download Macrium. It's free and the best one. 

 

          http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

 

  P.S. You can do all your backup and restore stuff with it. It never left me in the rain like Acronis did. 

Edited November 18, 2016 by lostinisaan

[NeverSure]

2 hours ago, lostinisaan said:

Download Macrium. It's free and the best one. 

 

          http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

 

  P.S. You can do all your backup and restore stuff with it. It never left me in the rain like Acronis did. 

 

I agree. Another great free utility is MiniTool Partition Wizard Free. Before or after cloning it will easily resize partitions to fill the new HD.

 

Macrium has a scheduler. I have mine set to run at 3:00 AM every morning as I sleep. It makes an image of my entire HD to a USB external drive. It's set to keep two images and delete the oldest. 

 

Another great free program is Cobian Backup. It also runs on a scheduler and every night it backs up files and folders that I chose. One of its benefits is that it can defeat the Windows File Protection System that normally says something like "Can't copy/delete/move etc. file because it's in use by another program".

 

Both programs also take a snapshot of the drive so that if a file changes while they are running you get the original file. This is done using the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) in Windows.

 

With Macrium be sure to make the bootable rescue disk on a DVD using the easy utility in the program. I haven't tried it but I think you can also make it on a USB stick if your computer will boot from USB. It's best to make it with the target computer and it MUST be made with a 32 or 64 bit OS depending on what you have.

 

My Samsung 850 SSD went nuts a couple of weeks ago and totally corrupted. No idea why but I inserted the rescue DVD, booted from it and used that to restore the HD from the image it made the night before. Everything went perfectly and is still perfect. What a treat to be able to get back to normal in about 30 minutes. Could have done the same thing with a new HD if needed.

 

Cheers.

[Generalchaos]

Thanks for the suggestions, I am going to give Macrium a go!

[Generalchaos]

11 hours ago, lostinisaan said:

Download Macrium. It's free and the best one. 

 

          http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

 

  P.S. You can do all your backup and restore stuff with it. It never left me in the rain like Acronis did. 

 

7 hours ago, NeverSure said:

 

I agree. Another great free utility is MiniTool Partition Wizard Free. Before or after cloning it will easily resize partitions to fill the new HD.

 

Macrium has a scheduler. I have mine set to run at 3:00 AM every morning as I sleep. It makes an image of my entire HD to a USB external drive. It's set to keep two images and delete the oldest. 

 

Another great free program is Cobian Backup. It also runs on a scheduler and every night it backs up files and folders that I chose. One of its benefits is that it can defeat the Windows File Protection System that normally says something like "Can't copy/delete/move etc. file because it's in use by another program".

 

Both programs also take a snapshot of the drive so that if a file changes while they are running you get the original file. This is done using the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) in Windows.

 

With Macrium be sure to make the bootable rescue disk on a DVD using the easy utility in the program. I haven't tried it but I think you can also make it on a USB stick if your computer will boot from USB. It's best to make it with the target computer and it MUST be made with a 32 or 64 bit OS depending on what you have.

 

My Samsung 850 SSD went nuts a couple of weeks ago and totally corrupted. No idea why but I inserted the rescue DVD, booted from it and used that to restore the HD from the image it made the night before. Everything went perfectly and is still perfect. What a treat to be able to get back to normal in about 30 minutes. Could have done the same thing with a new HD if needed.

 

Cheers.

Thank you both for your help! I just did with Macrium in 16 minutes, what that piece of junk Acronis would not even attempt! Cloned, booted up and seems to be running just fine.

I saw some examples on YouTube which were some help as I was a bit confused about some of the partitions on my existing drive - i.e. it had more than normal.

Anyway, it looks fine. Thanks.

I almost never bothered putting the damn disk in with the hassle from Acronis, plus when I did a bench test on it when it was just formatted I was getting lousy results - i.e. less that 200MB/s Read and not much better writes. After cloning, the disk is where it should be, over 530MB/s.

I am going to run the new drive for a couple of days, make sure no errors, then get my old SSD into my laptop.

Thanks for all the help.

[impulse]

1 hour ago, Generalchaos said:

Thank you both for your help!

---------

Thanks for all the help.

 

I appreciate you taking the time to come back and post your results, as well as showing your appreciation to the guys who helped you out.  

 

Great forum etiquette, and a good example!

[Generalchaos]

If you could have seen me cursing today! Not everything went as well as the clone of the old 240 Intel to the 480 drive.

(not the software program, maybe me, maybe Windows 10)

After I got my main PC running using the Macrium, I did a few checks, SFC etc. and all seemed well, no hanging or BSOD. So I thought great, now let me get the old SSD 520 into my laptop (which was running Win 10 Pro X64 on a 1 TB WD Blue drive.

I already made sure the partition that was running Win 10 was a lot smaller than the new SSD.

Here is where things got a bit weird.

I bought an adapter to replace the old DVD drive with another WD Blue 1TB drive, and I swear 100% that Win 10 was installed on the original C Drive and the 1TB Blue was an add on.

 

Seems this was not the case, after I cloned what I thought was the C drive - the original internal drive, the laptop would not boot! No System!!!!

 

By trial and error, I found for whatever reason, (and I have no idea why) the laptop had been running from the add on Hard Drive in the DVD Bay!

 

End of the day (and it was all day - and I am not finished yet....but nearly) I had to reinstall Win 10....what a PITA!! as HP Bios is a nightmare to get it to boot in GPT and UEFI.....maybe 10 attempts, eventually I have a fresh win 10 install that is running well, and finally got it to recognize the 1TB WD Blue in the DVD Drive (However, it still calls the boot drive - The Intel SSD installed in the main Laptop Bay Disk 1 and the 1TB in the DVD tray Disk ) - it is working so I will leave it alone. (I never realised what was going on during the boot sequence (it was slow) because the cradle you get to strap in the add on hard drive in the DVD slot is covered over with your original DVD front cover, however, today I had the cover off and every time I tried to boot up you could see the damn DVD activity blue light going crazy.

 

Also, this win 10 software is a bit strange, I used an USB drive that had worked many times before, just kept crashing. In the end I had to reformat and install an ISO from November using a program called RUFUS, which actually worked very well in the end.

 

So thanks guys, cheers for all the help, it is massively appreciated, hopefully I won't need to do this again for a while.

[Generalchaos]

I know this is a bit of an old topic, but, you guys were so helpful in the first stages of my query I thought I might try to pick your brains again if that is OK?

 

I used the software that was recommended, the Macrium clone / backup software and actually it is a really great free piece of work.

 

Since I spoke to you last week I have loaded it up on all three of my computers and ran the disk imaging program.

 

I have also went and bought some 8GB USB Flashdrives with the intention of backing up all of my computers.

 

My question here is, when the Macrium Software asks you to create a rescue drive, is that drive individual / unique to the PC it is created on?

 

From my first attempts, it looks like the software creates an interchangeable boot device that can run some sort of low level Windows on any machine.

 

Forgive me if I am wrong but from what I see, this low level program can be run on any PC running Windows, then it can be used to locate and restore the system created with the Macrium backup software???

 

Please let me know if this is in fact the case.

 

I was hoping to be able to boot a failsafe USB Drive that would allow me to boot any of my PC's using this one drive (which it seems to do)

 

Then using this drive / OS locate the Macrium Backup and restore the original data. (I was hoping I did not need an individual Flashdrive for Macrium for each PC then another individual flashdrive containing each PC's individual data)

 

Cheers!

[RichCor]

Yes, the Macrium rescue drive should create a Windows PE edition boot that can then be used to boot most PCs. Though you may run into boot issues depending on the GPT/UEFI BIOS used.

 

Once you've created the thumb drive, poser off and test it to make sure you can boot into the rescue imaging software and access your images.  

[Generalchaos]

Thanks a lot!

[lostinisaan]

On 11/19/2016 at 0:34 AM, NeverSure said:

 

I agree. Another great free utility is MiniTool Partition Wizard Free. Before or after cloning it will easily resize partitions to fill the new HD.

 

Macrium has a scheduler. I have mine set to run at 3:00 AM every morning as I sleep. It makes an image of my entire HD to a USB external drive. It's set to keep two images and delete the oldest. 

 

Another great free program is Cobian Backup. It also runs on a scheduler and every night it backs up files and folders that I chose. One of its benefits is that it can defeat the Windows File Protection System that normally says something like "Can't copy/delete/move etc. file because it's in use by another program".

 

Both programs also take a snapshot of the drive so that if a file changes while they are running you get the original file. This is done using the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) in Windows.

 

With Macrium be sure to make the bootable rescue disk on a DVD using the easy utility in the program. I haven't tried it but I think you can also make it on a USB stick if your computer will boot from USB. It's best to make it with the target computer and it MUST be made with a 32 or 64 bit OS depending on what you have.

 

My Samsung 850 SSD went nuts a couple of weeks ago and totally corrupted. No idea why but I inserted the rescue DVD, booted from it and used that to restore the HD from the image it made the night before. Everything went perfectly and is still perfect. What a treat to be able to get back to normal in about 30 minutes. Could have done the same thing with a new HD if needed.

 

Cheers.

 

 

 

It works well with a memory stick, but you need the right version. You can't start a 64-bit version with a 32-bit rescue media.

 

  Mini Tool's Pro visible at some bays these days/  

 

  Those with only a few programs on their machine can do a clone in a few minutes. 

 

 Acronis would be another alternative, but not free. It depends on where you're are looking at it. 

 

        

Edited November 25, 2016 by lostinisaan

[lostinisaan]

On 11/24/2016 at 0:10 AM, RichCor said:

Yes, the Macrium rescue drive should create a Windows PE edition boot that can then be used to boot most PCs. Though you may run into boot issues depending on the GPT/UEFI BIOS used.

 

Once you've created the thumb drive, poser off and test it to make sure you can boot into the rescue imaging software and access your images.  

 

 

 The program even tells you to give it a try.