Quick question regarding hard-drive swapping

Hello,

I just got my R4 after a long long wait. What I want to know is if I can put my windows partition SSD from my R3 to my R4 without having to fully re-install windows?

Thank you

timurStas

 

It's always recommended to reinstall from scratch. Here is how.
This is to avoid any conflict between the different HW's present on the 2 machines.

 

Thank you for the fast reply. I guess I have no choice but to re-install

 

No problem. You can use Norton Ghost or some other cloning SW but it is never the same.

 

Yes you can. The easiest way is to use SYSPREP on your current machine. This will seal you operating system as from factory while keeping your current system setup intact including profiles and applications. This will reset all SID and hardware related issues that occur with a new machine.

If you are using Win7 go to C:\Windows\System32\sysprep and launch sysprep.exe
1. Select "Enter System Out-of-Box Experience
2. Select the "Generalize" checkbox
3. Select "Shutdown" for the shutdown options.

After the system shuts remove the hard drive and place it in the new computer. It will boot as if starting from the factory where you configure time zone, computer name, and license key, etc. After you log in you will have to install the most recent drivers due to new hardware. Besides the drivers reinstall, all user profiles, applications, games, and other configurations are intact. I can't believe how many people reinstall their O/S when this is so much easier. Another bonus is imaging the drive that was shutdown. This way you can reimage the system every time with this method.

 

One bit to note here. You will most likely be forced to create a profile and you will find you won't be able to enter your old username because "it already exists". Don't worry. The profile is still there with all of your information. Just create another "dummy" profile and when it reboots you should see your old one as well. Once you login to your old one and verify all is good then you may delete the dummy profile that was created during OOBE.

 

I saw this advice given by Mr. Fox in a different thread and thought it was very accurate.
But Porras has a point. A fresh windows installation is the preferred method.

 

That method is flawed and incorrect.

No need to do a fresh install or uninstalling of anything. Learn to use SYSPREP and problems go away. When you configure a system with SYSPREP and shutdown, a person can then image the system that will behave as a freshly sealed O/S, which reconfigures the SID and hardware components just like in a fresh install. If a person boots the drive instead of an imaging tool like Ghost they have rerun the SYSPREP tool again.

 

There are many items that may require reactivation anyways. Also the method doesn't work 100% and is only ideal on similar configuration. While most of the time it can work it can also still fail miserably. I should know. It did fail for me once and I was very surprised at the time. Luckily I was able to mount it externally but it was a lesson learned. Backups will still be key here. Make sure to backup any critical data in case it goes south. The best route still remains as a reinstall. Especially if you are going from an HDD to an SSD. The system does some internal changes when you install it to an SSD. Among them is automatically alighting to 1024KB mark and disabling unnecessary services.

 

What method are you talking about? Using SystemPrep always works unless the user did something wrong. That is the whole point of it. It is a solution used when creating a one image solution going out to machines with different hardware configurations. A person does not have to image the drive. Once they seal a system and shut it down, they can place the hard drive in another system.

The system detects the SSD after the setup on the first boot on a sealed drive and installs the appropriate items needed. Also, Win7 does not always detect a drive as an SSD to make those changes in the operating system. Alighting? Did you mean aligning? No need since the drive is being swapped with an intact operating system.

 

SysPrep is exactly what I was referring to. It did amazingly enough fail. I have no idea why but it went through its bits then on next boot crashed. I really don't know why it did that though. I'm fairly familiar with SysPrep at this point. I've used SysPrep in new Windows installations for my prior laptops I've sold in order to make new recovery partitions. I've also taken shortcuts and just done a normal install and forced Audit mode when OOBE screen came up so I could load the OPK of MSSE and a few other items for the new owner (their request usually) then reseal. I did use SysPrep once as a means of going back from AHCI to IDE mode (software compatibility reason...) and that's when I found out about the username bit but it was on the same system.

P.S. - I know in a typical scenario SysPrep should not fail regardless of the configuration due to it picking up hardware again on first boot but if it somehow does not have a driver for the drive controller then it can still fail to boot. These are systems that you would need to do a F6 install on anyways. Pre-loading the driver prior to sysprep is likely a way to resolving that issue if it is known in advance.

 

This can alleviated using an answer file and pointing to a folder with drivers but should not be a problem for Win7.

Depending on the operating system in use the AHCI/IDE will have big impacts on boot no matter if it is an SSD or standard mechanical drive. Sometimes the user has to configure the BIOS prior to imaging a Sysprep sealed image or booting a sealed drive. It becomes problematic on earlier Windows machines. Some SSD drives do not play well with AHCI even though the TRIM feature needs AHCI in order for the operating system to correctly send garbage collection commands to the drive. This does not matter because most SSDs have their own GC features that run on their own.

PS - I am an engineer for a defense contractor (Aerospace and Defense field). I have to incorporate every bit of information technology for our product lines. This includes implementation, testing, programming, solutions, and security. I have come across almost anything imaginable with Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, and Linux products. If you or anybody else have any interesting issues, I can probably help.

 

Will this allow me to install the HDD in another computer, and then Use that computers License? I want to use my M17x R2 HDD in the Clevo X7200 I'm getting through trade. The Clevo is coming with the Win7 Home, and a Win Ult upgrade disk.

Any idea if this will work in this case?

 

The part of the discussion that wasn't quoted is my comment that a clean install is always the best option. The "method" was a suggestion to someone trying to avoid a reinstall.

Using SYSPREP is a good option if the only thing you are doing is moving the drive from one machine to another with a slightly different hardware configuration. If changing from HDD to SSD, starting over from scratch is the best approach versus cloning from HDD to SSD and then trying to make the OS installation work correctly in a different system.

Doing a clean install gets rid of a lot of crud that accumulates over time and frees up drive space occupied by obsolete files that serve no valid purpose. Unless there is critical data and files that cannot be copied to storage media for some reason, it's silly to burn a lot of calories to avoid a clean install... IMHO.

 

I second that. When I installed a Crucial M4 into my neighbor's R4, he was adamant I copy his hard drive over to the new SSD (he didn't want to lose all his settings and stuff). Well, I tried Macrium, then Acronis, and despite their only being 110GB of data, his HDD had so much crap and was so corrupted it took both programs several hours to align the hard drive image. Even with an aligned image and all the tweaks, the SSD was still slowed to a crawl. It only sped up when I did a clean install, so I understand how sometimes a clean install will perform that much better than aligning and cloning an existing disk image.

 

My statement still stays true. The creator of this thread is moving an SSD from one system to another. Using SYSPREP is the way to go.