HDD to SSD Clone - Not quite working as I planned...

Hi guys,

I just bought an HP Envy 4-1130US laptop and a 512GB OCZ Vertex 4 SSD to swap with the HDD (the laptop has a 500GB HDD). Prior to swaping the drives, I created a USB recovery disk (it's an ultrabook - no optical drive). With the SSD installed, I changed the default boot device to USB stick and booted into the HP recovery manager. It "appeared" to work okay, until it tried to boot into Windows, where it came up with a CTO Errorflag.

When I plugged the OCZ SSD into my desktop, it looked like it failed to create some of the partitions (including the EFI partition). Not only that, but with the SSD installed in the laptop, I cannot access the BIOS. I can bring up the startup menu, but when I hit F10 to access the BIOS, it continues to boot into the failed recovery of Windows. Not only that, but the recovery manager expanded the files on the USB recovery disk and then deleted the original file, so now my recovery disk is useless.

My question is, what is the best way to clone my 500GB HDD and transfer it to the 512GB SSD? i've tried Acronis, and I get a "warning after operation completion operating system will not boot from the destination disk in the bios" error. Is this okay to proceed with this and have it still bootable in the laptop?

Any help would be greatly appreciated! I'm seriously frustrated with this!

 

Is it set up for a GPT partition? Also the SSD needs to be aligned before cloning. General rule of thumb - I don't advocate cloning/imaging unless it's for an enterprise solution, in which you need disk deployment done quick on a large scale.

 

It's set up for a GPT partition, EFI Partition, and FAT32 partition. There's like 5 different partitions on this drive. I would have thought that acronis/easus/whatever software would have aligned the SSD during the process to make it bootable? Or is there a secondary step that needs to be followed?

As for imaging vs clean install, I'm sort of stuck with cloning because when I used the recovery USB I made (the ultrabook has no optical drive), the recovery corrupted the USB stick and now my recovery disk is gone (and I can only make 1 copy)...

 

You should be able to get a set of recovery disks from HP for some money.

I've never tried to clone a HDD install to SSD. It's more trouble than it's worth (as long as you have the recovery disks).

 

I don't believe Acronis ensures alignment during cloning process. Unfortunately very few do, at least the free versions.

 

I was hoping to avoid paying $45 for the discs + shipping and tax ($52.07 total). I'm still angry that the HP recovery USB stick got corrupted after I tried to perform the recovery the first time...

 

If it's just a matter of aligning the partitions, GParted can solve that.

Google...and good luck.

 

Why/how would the HP recovery become corrupted on the USB drive? Were the files not copied over correctly? Or was there something wrong with the recovery image on the drive, perhaps?