Imaging To an Identical SSD, Question

I don't really want to get in the way but I think I can help a little getting everybody on the same page.

Thanks, I need all the help I can get and have been well taken care of so far.

One thing that jumps out at me is, Why is Disk 2 marked Active ?

Showing my experience level here, I had not noticed or even knew what it meant. This drive was populated as a test to make sure its worked. I will be wiping the drive.
But learning an Active drive has a boot function I will unplug it first and restart to make sure I am not somehow booting from it. Heh!

I will be trying ignatzatsonic's suggestion this weekend in seeing if I can boot and run from an image recovery perhaps on the drive mentioned above.

How do you guys wipe. C:\ Format w: U/ My memory is faded. Its been a while.

You need to verify that you can boot your system with only drive/disk (0) hooked up.

Wiping large drives can take a long time; many hours.
I wipe drives seldom. You are the one who know if the information on those drives is sensitive or not.
If it is sensitive information, I would wipe the drives, leaving drive/disk (0) alone.

If you decide you need to wipe some drives/disks this tutorial by Bare Foot Kid will be very helpful.
It gives several examples and methods.

We need to know whether drive/disk (0) all by itself will boot into Windows 7.

Secure Erase / Wipe : Definition and Methods

** AddRAM, I have a question: could 2therock have a System Reserved partition which needs to be Active? I cannot well enough see the image posted earlier of the disk management to tell if a SysRes partition exists **
If his Windows has no SysRes partition to make Active, then he only needs to make Disk 0 - Partition C Active, correct?

After getting the proper partition marked Active, then:
-- power down and remove all external hard-drives [I can't tell if those ext HDs require the Safely Remove Hardware or not]
-- Coldboot/startup and publish the disk management's view of your now lonely internal hard-drive

2therock said:

I had more partitions shown right after installation but used Minitool Partition Wizard Free to merge them leaving me just the two.

2therock:

You definitely need to confirm per Layback Bear that the PC will boot with ONLY disk 0 connected. Yes or no?

I'm also wondering about the above quote from an earlier post you made in this thread.

I'm wondering why you did that--even if it's harmless? I'd hope it won't affect any imaging you intend to do.

Was the install to disk 0 a "clean install" and were those "merged" partitions created by the Windows installation procedure?

I note that your system partition is EFI, so I'm thinking maybe that means there are unseen partitions such as "Microsoft Reserved"?

At any rate, confirm you are bootable with only disk 0 connected.

WoW, I have a can-o-worms here.

I'm going to owe you guys!

Except for the SSD OS drive "disc-0" the disc numbers change here as I disconnect to try different combo scenarios so you will be better off going by the drive letter for the non OS drives because they do not change no matter the combo connected.
Remember the (E: is the one marked active and is not the disc-0 SSD OS drive.
None are setup to be safely removed. I power down each time.
I used a utility called minitool to merge the extra partitions on the 0-drive because I thought I got them from not doing a clean install correctly.
The removable drive at the bottom is my printer.

OK, I took her down to just disc-0 and she booted lightning fast and she was already pretty quick.
I noticed disc-0 is not marked as active.

I ran some programs to make sure she was good to go and ran shutdown. Well.... she cut the monitors, I heard the little pop my speakers make when it shuts down but my fans kept running. No HDD activity light was going on.
I left it alone for 5 minutes and had to do the hold power button hold down for 4sec thing for it to cut off. I repeated this three times to confirm.

So I added disc-D: to the chain, (was never marked active). It booted, shown the discs, and ran fine and powered down fine.

Next I disconnected disc-D: and connected disc-E: to the chain having only disc-0 and E: (marked active) and it booted, ran and shut down fine.

So I decided to show hidden system files on the E: (marked active) to see whats on there. Have a look.

I hope I answered things correctly. Let me know.

Can I save her without a total system re-install or refresh?

If I understand correctly:

The system will boot with ONLY the SSD connected.

And when booted with just the SSD connected, that SSD is not shown as "active". Meaning no disk is shown as active since the SSD is the only disc connected.

Is that correct???

My guess is that maybe you have an active partition on the SSD that is hidden and is not shown by Windows Disk Management.

Not sure what you mean by "Can I save her without a total system re-install or refresh?"

Why would you think, at this point, that you might have to reinstall? What are we not understanding?

As far as I know, your only problem is that we did not know if the system was bootable with only the SSD installed and that you weren't exactly clear on how to make and restore images.

Or are you saying you have performance issues or something else going on that you don't understand?

Along with the other very excellent advice from the others, I also believe our dear new-found friend needs to use disk management and mark Drive 0 Active.

Here's an example of a working system with no active partition shown. It's mine.

If I understand correctly: The system will boot with ONLY the SSD connected.

Yes

And when booted with just the SSD connected, that SSD is not shown as "active". Meaning no disk is shown as active since the SSD is the only disc connected. Is that correct???

Yes

My guess is that maybe you have an active partition on the SSD that is hidden and is not shown by Windows Disk Management.

Just a hidden partition =This is good news.

Not sure what you mean by "Can I save her without a total system re-install or refresh?"
Why would you think, at this point, that you might have to reinstall? What are we not understanding?
As far as I know, your only problem is that we did not know if the system was bootable with only the SSD installed and that you weren't exactly clear on how to make and restore images.
Or are you saying you have performance issues or something else going on that you don't understand?

I was perhaps thinking the not marked as active, and the the other being marked as active was a sign if corruption or something more serious.

So where I stand now is I know I can boot from the Disc-0 with no other drives connected.

However for some reason when running the disc 0 alone and I run shutdown the displays turn off, the speakers pop indicating its shutting off, but my PC does not seem to shut down.
My fans continue to run, my power light is on, and responds to nothing (keyboard, mouse movement, momentary power button press, reset button press). No HDD activity light.
My BIOS power button setting is set to hold down for 4 seconds to force shut down. Thats what I have to do to get it to power down.
If I connect another HDD, any HDD it will run shut down successfully. Weird.

I have a question about the "System Volume Information" folder being on my disc-0 and on the E: drive, the one marked as active.

Open disk management with E and SSD connected.

Go to action menu, "all tasks".

Mark E as inactive.

Reboot.

Go to Disk Management and confirm E is not active.

Shut down.

Disconnect E again.

Confirm you can still boot with only SSD connected.

Then confirm you still have that shutdown weirdness with only SSD connected.