Had some issues with SSD migration drove clone. Intermittent MBR boot error, etc.

[GoodEnough]

Laptop #1: Old 2010 HP laptop, but with newer 128GB SSD
Laptop #2: New 2014 Dell with 340GB 7200 platter drive.

Being cheap, I wanted to harvest the SSD drive from the HP, since the HP is just a spare now. I would take the SSD and put back the original HP hard drive, which I saved. To keep it current, I decided to clone the SSD onto the original hard drive. I dug out the original hard drive for the HP, and cloned the current SSD image onto it. No errors.

Then I took the Dell hard drive and cloned that new image onto the SSD (which currently had the HP image on it) Well, the Dell->SSD clone would not start. Something about not enough room. Meanwhile, the Dell HD must only use like 50GB, so the 128GB SSD sure does have the room. I gave up on the clone, b/c it would not proceed.

So, I figured, well at least I have the SSD out of the HP, maybe I can reuse for something else, and I will keep the retired HP laptop with its original HD. But, when I booted the HP with old drive (with current SSD image cloned onto it), I'd get boot errors. Weird, since the clone did not report any errors! I tried rebooting a few times, but no dice. Original HP drive does not work.

So, I decided to put the SSD back into the HP. I was SO GLAD the Dell->SSD clone failed, or I'd have been out of luck with 2 Dell images and no HP image. So, the the SSD still has the HP image, since the Dell->SSD clone wouldn't start...Well, when I put the SSD back into the HP, I got MBR boot errors! Crap. I rebooted a few times, and eventually Windows started. Weird.

To recap:

1) I have the SSD back into the HP, but it sometimes gets a boot errors now. (Did the aborted Dell->SSD clone mess with MBR?)

2) The original HP drive now has the SSD image on it, but will not boot. I assume this drive is dead.

3) The new Dell laptop still has its original 7200RPM drive. I think I will just buy a new 128GB SSD and try to clone the drive onto it, but fear running into sizing issues again. Like I did with the HP's 128GB SSD.

Any feedback on this episode?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

What clone tool did you use?

Without a video of what you did, it's hard to say where you may have gone wrong, but a failed clone attempt could cause issues on the destination disk, for sure.

Cloning HDs to SSDs is touchy business - getting the partition alignment right usually breaks the MBR and so on. Better off doing a clean install IMO.

 

[GoodEnough]

Acronis True Image 11
No errors reported.
This has worked from HD -> SSD in the past.

 

[Elixer]

Cloning HDs to SSDs is touchy business - getting the partition alignment right usually breaks the MBR and so on. Better off doing a clean install IMO.

The alignment of a partition has nothing to do with how MBR reacts.
When you add/delete partitions, then you might have issues, depending on how you do it, but alignment itself ? No.

Acronis 11 might be too old to correctly align/resize partitions. Get the latest trial version, or use one of the free versions available from the HD device maker.

IIRC, the laptops have recovery partitions + main partition, so, when you clone, you need to clone everything, not just the main partition.
Then, it should work.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

The alignment of a partition has nothing to do with how MBR reacts.
When you add/delete partitions, then you might have issues, depending on how you do it, but alignment itself ? No.

When you realign the partition alignment, it breaks the boot record.

https://social.technet.microsoft.co...3804d6d4/steps-of-manual-hdd-to-ssd-migration

Maybe that's a Windows problem than an MBR thing? *shrug*

Supposedly easy to fix, but I've never had it go right. Maybe newer cloning software handles this?

 

[GoodEnough]

At this point, I will just buy a new 128GB SSD for $50 so I don't need to keeep swapping drives out of machines. It would have been nice if it worked, but not sure it's worth troubbleshoooting.

 

[Elixer]

When you realign the partition alignment, it breaks the boot record.

https://social.technet.microsoft.co...3804d6d4/steps-of-manual-hdd-to-ssd-migration

Maybe that's a Windows problem than an MBR thing? *shrug*

Supposedly easy to fix, but I've never had it go right. Maybe newer cloning software handles this?

MBR works by looking at the partition table, then once that is found, then it knows the starting sector of that partition that is marked bootable, and then it loads the boot sector from that partition, and finally, it executes it.
So, if the disk layout is basically the same at to what it was, like, having 2 partitions originally, and then having 2 partitions again but different sizes, it will make 0 difference.
The boot loader is the one that will get confused when partitions are added/deleted, but, again, alignment is a non issue as long as the disk layout is basically the same. (2 partitions originally, 2 partitions again, but different sizes is fine.)

Alignment only plays a role in SSDs, in that, it must be aligned to start at 1K offset. That alone won't break anything if it isn't aligned, it will just make the SSD access much slower than it should be.

Sorry OP for going OT.