Windows Upgrade on SSD

[Dave McElderry]

Thanks John. I'll check it out.

[Chuck Engels]

I would say the same about EaseUS; backup , restore, does all of the necessary stuff by system, partition or the entire drive and includes cloning. Anything that John recommends has got to be good so there are a few good options out there that have been thoroughly tested by Muvipix

[sidd finch]

I used the EaseUS free version and it worked like a charm.

Sidd

[Dave McElderry]

I used the EaseUS free version and it worked like a charm.

[Chuck Engels]

Found out that this is an mSATA SSD, not a normal SSD. There are still options for up to 1TB but are a little more expensive.

[Chuck Engels]

Update:
I attempted to clone the existing mSATA 50gb SSD system drive to a new mSATA 240gb drive in an enclosure connected via USB using the current version of EaseUS Todo Backup.

Time after time I received a "Failed to Write Sector" error message and the software would only right the 1.17gb system partition and nothing else. I ran Windows Disk Check on the new drive, ran another drive check tool and finally completely formatted the entire drive (not the quick format). Everything checked out perfectly and I found no errors or problems with the drive at all.

Another recommendation from EaseUS; create a rescue disk then remove the old drive and insert the new drive and boot from the rescue disk (or USB flash drive). After booting I should then be able to clone the old drive to the new one. I decided to try one other thing prior to attempting that solution.

I am still running version 6 of EaseUS Todo Backup Workstation on my laptop, it has worked flawlessly for years and clones without error. I decided to try cloning the drive on my daughter's laptop to a standard SATA external drive using the new version of EaseUS, version 9. This clone worked perfectly and ran without a hitch, now the clone was on the external SATA drive. I then connected the mSATA SSD in the enclosure along with the cloned external SATA drive to my laptop. Ran the clone from the SATA to the mSATA using version 6 of the software and it cloned perfectly, the laptop is up and running with a new 240gb drive. Tested all programs and everything possible, all is working exactly as it should.

All's well that ends well

[Dave McElderry]

So is this a case of them "improving" the software until it doesn't work anymore? Congrats on figuring out a solution Chuck. Always more than one way to skin the cat.

[sidd finch]

From Laptop magazine

Resize the current drive partition to be the same size or smaller than the SSD. While you're in Disk Management, check to see if your current disk's primary partition (usually, C:, the one that has Windows and your installed programs) is larger than the SSD. If not, you'll need to shrink the partition so that it and the other system recovery partitions are smaller than the SSD. Right-click on the OS partition and choose "Shrink…"

In the next window, leave the defaults and click "Shrink." This will resize the primary partition so it's smaller and leave the rest of the space as unallocated. Don't worry; during the cloning process, the cloning software will properly resize and allocate extra space to the main partition on your SSD.

At this time, you should restart your computer to make sure that the partition works before cloning.

Sidd

[TreeTopsRanch]

This whole takeaway from this important thread is that it is still to complicated for the average Joe to do it correctly. Even just trying to clone a drive for the future is too complicated (I have found that there are so many parameters to pick in the cloning software that make it confusing)

I know the experienced computer users that frequent this forum can do it but the average person out there is overwhelmed. We all have had family members come to us with computer problems that seem simple to us (to solve) but they could not handle it. That is why MS keeps dumbing down their OS with little pictures and voice commands.

[Chuck Engels]

Normally cloning with EaseUS is very easy, nothing to select except what drive you are cloning and what drive you are cloning to. In this case it was a little different because this was not a standard hard drive.

Sidd, the mSATA drive was only 64gb to start with and it was almost full, only 4gb free. I was originally trying to clone from that one 64gb mSATA SSD to another larger one, 240gb. Part of the problem was that EaseUS was not allocating the partitions on the new drive properly. Not sure if the article is accurate when cloning from one mSATA SSD to anther. Anyway, something about it that EaseUS didn't like but in the end it all worked out fine.