Help replacing 256GB mSATA with 1TB

Greetings all.

New AW17 with 256GB mSATA.

I seriously underestimated the amount of space I need on the primary drive. All the Steam/iTunes/etc stuff is on the 750GB HDD already.

As soon as it is available, I am ordering the Samsung 1TB mSATA SSD.

Does anyone have a guide for transferring the existing partition/data structure from the 256GB to a new 1TB? I have a USB/mSATA adapter so I can have them both connected at the same time.

I would have no problem doing this on OS X or Linux, but I'm lost in Windows.

Thanks in advance.

 

Hi, I'm sure you will get advice to just install clean but I have used partitioning utilities for years to do this without problem. Norton Ghost was my favourite, although I do remember using Partition Magic with success. Many new SSD's/HD's now come with such a utility, maybe someone here can advise?

It can be done in windows using images (for the OS not the recovery partition) but you'll run into problems with partition sizes and need to start with one(s) the same size as the original, then extend it later

You could even think about leaving some (32mb?) unpartitioned on the new drive and use it to cache the existing HDD, speeding that up considerably as well (link to instructions if you're interested Chipset Software — Intel® Smart Response Technology User Guide, the IRST software and bios settings are already set up on the AW)

Good Luck.

 

When moving from HDD to SSD the best thing to do is to clean install Windows.

 

SSD to SSD

 

I thought it was 750HDD to 256SSD xD

 

Just use AlienRespawn and clone that baby over. It will be perfect for such a process. I plan to do the same with my system, if it never sells.

 

Thanks for the suggestions. I have used Ghost and Partition Magic in a former life. I didn't even realize they were still around!

I'll investigate AlienRespawn.

It is SSD to SSD. I am replacing the 256GB mSATA with a 1TB mSATA.

 

Cool, TBH not actually sure they are still around, the version of Ghost I was using was old back in the day when I used it for imaging hundreds of laptops!

The Respawn option may be the simplest. Just use the 'create an emergency USB' (need a 16gb one but may get away with 8gb), swap out the drives and boot from the USB to recover it - good call J.Dre .

Also, when I installed respawn on a replacement drive install it detected no factory partition and went ahead and created one using the current windows setup as the recovery option - nice

One little 'gotcha' you should watch out for. Mine (and another I have seen here) came from the factory with the windows bootsector on the HDD, even though the boot drive was the SSD and it would boot fine and fast. Some sort of weird dual-boot option but defaulting to the SSD. You can see which drive is the primary in Disk Manager. When I saw it on mine I changed it in DM - bad move! It would no longer boot and I had to run windows repair a couple of times off the CD to get it to put the boot manager on the SSD. Safest way (IMO) to avoid any confusion or problems would be to remove the HD when you do the transfer and then put it back after the machine is all working fine on the new one

 

I used this EaseUS Todo Backup Free - Free download and software reviews - CNET Download.com to clone my HDD to SSD, but it should work SSD to SSD no problems. Since my original drive had different partitions you have to clone the OS partition to the new drive and repair the bootmanager which you can do with a windows 7 repair dvd or anything similar.

You can clone whilst booted into windows as well, should be pretty quick between SSD to SSD too.

make sure you uninstall when finished, it does annoying pop up messages to make you buy stuff.