Migrating to SSD. What to do for recovery?

This is my current partitions. Have 1 TB HDD with SSD cache.



I'm thinking of migrating to a SSD.
What should I do to keep the recovery and system partitions?

 

Users with the newer Samsung Recovery Solution 6 (and presumably the latest SRS7 as well) have several options (see here), including the Disk Copy and Factory Image features inside Recovery.

But based on your partition layout, I can see you have the older SRS5, which limits your options:

1) The easiest solution is to use Clonezilla to clone the entire HDD to the SSD. Member @go45cvi has often pointed out that it will preserve SRS (see this discussion) as long as you create a full disk image (not individual partition images). There are many other cloning and disk imaging utilities, but they generally break SRS in the process because they don't copy the exact partition table. For users going from a small SSD to a larger one, Clonezilla is a great option. But you are going from a 1TB HDD, and if the SSD is smaller, disk cloning with Clonezilla won't work.

2a) Use an Admin Tool USB to re-create working SRS on the SSD (wiping and re-partitioning it in the process) then copy the complete file and folder contents of the Recovery partition from the HDD to the new Recovery partition on the SSD. Use the steps in the posts here and here (the same links you gave to @DrShikima yesterday). Admin Tool must be created in SRS Management Mode (again, described in those linked posts). Instead of copying the file & folder contents, you can create an Initial Image in Management Mode (must be saved to a Removable USB stick, not a HDD). But frankly, I find copying the file & folder contents easier.

2b) If SRS will not F4 boot after this, you can try installing Win7 on the big partition on the SSD (it should add itself to the boot list on the small 100MB MSR partition) and install the SRS Windows app from SW Update. The first time you run the SRS Windows app it should verify and update the F4 link. You don't have to worry about drivers or activation, this is just a temporary Windows installation to help SRS get its bearings right.

2c) Once you are able to get into Recovery (F4) you can restore the factory image or any of your backed up images. Or you can use any partition imaging tool to clone the Windows installation from the HDD to the SSD.

Personally I don't think it is worth the considerable time and effort to preserve SRS5 going forward. Its factory image is a 3+ years old Win7 installation, and it is not compatible with Win8.x (presumably not Win10 either). But of course if you have SRS5 backups you need to access, you have to get it working.

After writing innumerable posts on this subject, I finally wrote a more complete guide to backing up and re-creating SRS last year. It can be found in the General section of the Sticky List on top of the Samsung forum. The guide also contains a number of other relevant links.

I hope this helps.

 

Thanks @Dannemand Will try the procedure. I know this forum has abundance of information just that its too deep