Cloning a HDD to a Samsung 830 256GB SSD?

[FAUguy]

(I have never used or installed an SSD before)

Earlier this week I stated in another thread that I had ordered a Samsung 830 256GB SDD and two Seagate Barracuda 3TB drives.

As of now I've got all my data from my four older Western Digital drives to the new two Seagate 3TB drives. This includes my Win XP, Vista, and Win 7 x64 Ultimate partitions that are set-up as a tri-boot. I left my BIOS set to IDE Enhanced, since the "original" and "clones" of Windows do not have the ACHI drivers & registry entries.

Now comes the part of installing the Samsung 830 SSD, so I don't want to mess this up. I'd like to be able to "clone" my Win 7 x64 Ultimate from the 3TB HDD to the Samsung SSD, as that would prevent me from having to re-install all the programs & settings. The Samsung came with a copy of Norton Ghost 15, so I'm not sure if that's the best way to copy the partition, since the SeaTools is just for drive cloning. I guess that TRIM would happen automatically, but since my Win 7 isn't set-up for AHCI on the HDD, how would I go about implementing that on the SDD "clone"?

Thanks for any advice or help.

 

[Puppies04]

If I'm reading this correctly you want to clone an IDE HDD onto a SSD as AHCI and I don't think that is possible. Sorry if I am missing the point it is getting late :S

 

[FAUguy]

My four old Western Digital HDDs were SATA/IDE as they were used on my older system that the motherboard died a few months ago. I built a new PC (2600k, ASRock Fatal1ty Z68) at that time, and have been using the four old drives in it for a couple months.
But since those 4 drives are range between 7-5 years old, I've now (today) replaced them with two Seagate Barracuda 3TB drives.

AHCI was not used on the old drives, since the AMD motherboard didn't support it. Now that I've cloned my old tri-boot drive (XP, Vista, Win 7) to one of the new 3TB drive, it still would not have AHCI on it either (since its a clone, not a new install).

What I'm asking is if it's possible to now copy/clone just my Win 7 x64 Ultimate partition from the new 3TB drive to the Samsung 830 SDD, so I would not have to reinstall all my programs & settings. My concern is that since ACHI isn't being used on the new 3TB drive, that it won't work right when cloning to the Samsung 830 SDD.

 

[ccbadd]

Boot into Win7 and enable AHCI like this: http://www.ithinkdiff.com/how-to-enable-ahci-in-windows-7-rc-after-installation/

After you reboot with AHCI enabled in the bios and all is working, go ahead and clone your Win7 install to the SSD.

 

[FAUguy]

Boot into Win7 and enable AHCI like this: http://www.ithinkdiff.com/how-to-enable-ahci-in-windows-7-rc-after-installation/

After you reboot with AHCI enabled in the bios and all is working, go ahead and clone your Win7 install to the SSD.

I was able to get both Win 7 and Vista to work with AHCI by first extracting the Intel AHCI drivers to the Windows/System32 folder and doing the registry edit. Same thing applied to Windows XP, but had a few other reg edits to do. So as of now all three versions of Windows is up and working fine with AHCI enabled in the BIOS.

The main HDD has separate partitions with Win XP Pro, Vista, and Win 7 x64 Ultimate set-up as a tri-boot. Windows Boot Manager shows this:

--------------------
identifier {bootmgr}
device partition= D :
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-US
inherit {globalsettings}
default {current}
resumeobject {1edaf20c-dd5e-11dd-9143-dc2fca7377a7}
displayorder {ntldr}
{current}
{435d0598-f07b-11db-98ed-df52af5dcb86}
toolsdisplayorder {memdiag}
timeout 6
displaybootmenu Yes

Windows Legacy OS Loader
------------------------
identifier {ntldr}
device partition= D :
path \ntldr
description Earlier Version of Windows

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {current}
device partition=C:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Windows 7
locale en-US
inherit {bootloadersettings}
recoverysequence {1edaf20e-dd5e-11dd-9143-dc2fca7377a7}
recoveryenabled Yes
osdevice partition=C:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {1edaf20c-dd5e-11dd-9143-dc2fca7377a7}
nx OptIn

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {435d0598-f07b-11db-98ed-df52af5dcb86}
device partition=E:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Microsoft Windows Vista
locale en-US
inherit {bootloadersettings}
osdevice partition=E:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {435d0599-f07b-11db-98ed-df52af5dcb86}
nx OptIn

Now comes the part I'm really having a problem with....

When I clone the C: drive (Windows 7) to the new Samsung SSD (that is drive R), it then automatically adds a 4th value to the boot manager for drive R. I can boot to drive R (the SSD), but all the links to all the programs are still pointed to the standard C HDD. If I remove the HDD and just try to boot the SSD by it self, it wont work, saying BOOTMGR is missing.

So here's what I'd need help with:
How to clone my C: Windows 7 partition from the tri-boot HDD to the SSD and have it so that the SSD can boot-up the Windows 7 on it by itself. That way the SSD will be as drive C (not R).

 

[Coup27]

permission to ask the obvious?

Why do you need all this tri-boot? Anything that runs on vista will run on 7. 7 ultimate also comes with XP virtual machine.

?

 

[FAUguy]

permission to ask the obvious?

Why do you need all this tri-boot? Anything that runs on vista will run on 7. 7 ultimate also comes with XP virtual machine.

?

I've answered this in another thread, but it's because I have some phone-tools programs that will only work in XP and Vista. I have tried the XP Virtual PC within Windows 7, and it does not work with the phone-tools programs. So that is why I keep the older versions.

 

[FAUguy]

So after a few more attempts of cloning the Windows 7 C: partition from my tri-boot HDD to the SSD, it does copy, but does not allow the SSD to boot Win 7 that is on it by it self.
I know the issue has to be with the boot manager (bcdedit).
With just the SSD connected (that is the Win 7 clone) I first tried a repair of Win 7, but still has the "BOOTMGR missing" error. Then I tried to install Win 7 over it self on the SSD, but instead it did a fresh install and took the clone and made it into a Windows.old folder.

So I'm still having problems getting it to work.

 

[Thronsen]

I am no expert, so take this for what its worth.

But I have frequently heard that people have a lot of problems using Norton to clone a Win 7 system drive to another HDD/SSD. Something in Win 7 needs the original hardware it was installed on, or for it to be reinstalled and reregistered.

Good luck. Im having my own issues with my Samsung 830 drive not waking up from sleep.

 

[FAUguy]

Update:

After using the two Seagate 3TB Barracuda ST3000DM001 drives for two days, I've started to get a "clicking" sound that has become louder and more frequent over that time. It sounds like a needle moving across a vinyl record, or the drive head is hitting something inside. I'm not sure if this sound is "normal" for these Seagates, but it sounds loud to me, and is happening more frequent. Also, since I've tried to use Norton Ghost to clone the Windows 7 C: partition from the HDD to the Samsung SDD a few times and make changes to the boot manager, the SSD is now "locked" and I can't get it to work right either.

So I'm formatting everything and doing a secure erase and returning them all back to Amazon.

I've ordered two Western Digital 2TB Black drives instead. Hopefully those will work better than the Seagate. My current 4 drives that I was looking to replace are Western Digital, and I haven't had any problems with them, but they range between 5-7 years old, so needed something newer and larger. After I get the two 2TB WD Black drives installed and make sure they are working OK, then I "might" look at SSD again. But I guess the next time around I'd just have to do a fresh install of Windows 7, since doing a clone doesn't seem to work that well.