• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Cloning HD to mSATA

B

Brian Stirling

Diamond Member
I posted this to the notebook sub forum but think perhaps this is a better place for it...


I'm thinking about buying a new laptop and instead of buying it with a very expensive mSATA drive I think I'll buy it with the cheapest HD option then clone it to an mSATA drive that I can purchase separately for a whole lot less money than Dell will offer. To be more precise, I'm looking at the Dell M3800 laptop and instead of paying Dell over $700 for a 512GB mSATA drive I can go with the default 500GB HD (lowest cost option), pay about $450 for a 1TB mSATA drive, then install the mSATA and clone the 500GB HD to it saving $250 while getting an mSATA drive twice as big.

So, the question I have is --- how best to clone the HD to the mSATA drive?

The M3800 has a mSATA port and a separate 7mm HD port and so long as you chose the 61WHr battery you can have both -- if you go with the 91WHr battery the larger battery occupies the space where the HD goes so that would no longer be availabe. I plan to go with the 61WHr battery so I can have both the mSATA drive as well as a 7mm 2.5 inch HD.

The question I have is what software and/or what procedure to clone the factory HD to an aftermarket mSATA drive. Specifically, I plan to order the M3800 with the 500GB HD then order a Sansung 840 1TB mSATA drive and install it. I suspect I may have to go into BIOS at some point but don't know that for sure. In any case, I'll want to clone a 500GB HD to a 1TB mSATA -- how best to do this?


Brian
 
Any recently (last few years) made cloning program should work, as long as they understand how to handle a SSD, it should align everything for you.

You can use the free version of Acronis that is on seagates & WD's site to clone over, assuming you have a seagate or WD HD.

Then, you stick in the mSATA card, and the HD, do the clone, then, you go into BIOS, and change boot device to mSATA, and it should work.
You can then use the HD for data or whatever, just remember to format it, or take it out, and use it as a archival copy of the OS.
 
I like Clonezilla. Completely free, just burn to CD or make a bootable USB stick and off you go.

There's a litany of options, and the gui is more "command line-y" than Acronis' is, but it's always been reliable for me and gets the job done nicely. Just select a disk-to-disk clone, set the source and destination drives, and off you go. No need to change any options.

If you get the one with the bigger battery, just find an external enclosure and plug the 2.5" drive into it. Otherwise just plug both drives in and boot from the CD/USB drive with Clonezilla on it. If cloning isn't something you wanna touch, you could always just download a copy of Windows and apply your license key to it.
 
Well, I ordered the Dell M3800 yesterday and am about ready to order the 1TB mSATA drive to replace the 500GB HD that comes with it. There are a number of mSATA to USB 3.0 enclosures I can use to clone the HD to the mSATA drive and it looks like Samsung has a utility to do the cloning. So, in summary, this is what I'm looking to get...

1. ZTC Sky Board mSATA to USB 3.0 SSD Enclosure Adapter (http://www.amazon.com/ZTC-Enclosure-.../dp/B00I4701O6)

2. Samsung Magician Software (http://www.samsung.com/global/busin...re/Samsung_Magician_45_Installation_Guide.pdf)

3. Samsung 1TB mSATA drive (http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-MZ-MTE.../dp/B00HWHVNUU)


Items 1 and 2 used to clone factory HD to mSATA drive to be installed in Dell M3800 with 4K display, 500GB HD and 8GB RAM. I'll replace the HD with the mSATA drive and add 8GB RAM.


Brian
 
Dell offers this laptop with the option for a 1TB mSATA drive -- at $1050 premium over the 500GB drive. There is two ports: one is a standard 2.5 inch 7mm HD slot and the other is an mSATA slot. If you go with the larger 91WHr battery the HD slot is no longer available as the battery occupies that space.

I opted to go with the smaller 61WHr battery so I can install both an mSATA drive and a HD.


Brian
 
I originally posted to the notebook sub forum but figured this was the better place.

Also, the other post was about "cloning" a hard drive to make a working copy on another drive whereas the question about imaging was about making an archival copy of the original drive.


Brian
 
Last edited:
Use a tool like PartedMagic to shrink the partitions on the existing HDD as much as you can.

Then run, from the command line:

dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/sdY bs=1G count=Z

where X is the source drive enumeration point, Y is the destination drive enumeration point, and Z is a very generous estimate of the total number of gigabytes occupied by the shrunk partitions.

Once that's run, then use PartedMagic to unshrink the partitions on the destination SSD.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top