2 HDD = 1 C Drive question

alphanumeric · 09 Dec 2013

LMiller7 said:

Another advantage of an SSD in a laptop is the much better resistance to mechanical shock. Many a conventional drive has been killed by what was thought to be a minor fall. An SSD has shock tolerance on a par with other laptop components, and better than some.

No moving parts.

eiranix · 09 Dec 2013

Thanks for the input. I was going to attempt cloning the Raid 0 drives onto the single new drive using the free version of Macrium Reflect. This way I should get the Recovery partition intact on the other side. Do you see any problems with this? I am assuming it's possible to clone to a smaller drive as long as the data fits on it and it'll let me scale down the empty space of the C partition...

whs · 09 Dec 2013

As long as the data fits you don't have to do anything. Make sure you don't miss the little system partition - if any.

I would not bother with the recovery partition. Images are much better.

eiranix · 09 Dec 2013

The idea of transfering the recovery partition is so I can reinstall a fresh copy of windows after getting the new drive working.

whs · 09 Dec 2013

You can always do this - then you don't get all the OEM garbage.

Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7

Geeks do not reinstalls from a recovery partition. At a minimum, you take am image after the initial installation and all the updates and use that. Saves you a lot of time. Better even is to make images weekly.

eiranix · 09 Dec 2013

Thanks, that's a handy link. That might be an easier way to do it. I just hope the new drive boots without problems, I'm expecting all the technical difficulties ever.

alphanumeric · 10 Dec 2013

eiranix said:

The idea of transfering the recovery partition is so I can reinstall a fresh copy of windows after getting the new drive working.

More than likely it won't work. I swapped out the factory drive in my laptop for an SSD. Before doing that I made a Recovery Thumb Drive and ticked the option to copy the factory recovery partition to it. When I tried to do the restore/reset all I got was errors about a missing partition etc. This was with Windows 8 though not 7. Your original setup being a RAID setup may throw even more wrinkles into it. Go ahead and try if you like just don't be surprised if it doesn't work and have a backup plan.

eiranix · 10 Dec 2013

One problem I'm worried about is the fact that my optical drive is acting up lately. Is it possible to make the Windows 7 installation disc run from a USB flash drive instead?

Another question I was wondering - If I remove the raid-0 drive and set the bios/Intel rapid storage tech to no more riad... later if I had to, can I put those old drives back in and have them work as they were?

alphanumeric · 10 Dec 2013

eiranix said:

One problem I'm worried about is the fact that my optical drive is acting up lately. Is it possible to make the Windows 7 installation disc run from a USB flash drive instead?

Another question I was wondering - If I remove the raid-0 drive and set the bios/Intel rapid storage tech to no more riad... later if I had to, can I put those old drives back in and have them work as they were?

Yes you can install from a USB thumb drive, USB Windows 7 Installation Key Drive - Create

If disable RAID and want to use the drive as a normal drive in non raid, you'll have to reparation and reformat it. All data currently on the drive will be lost.

AddRAM · 10 Dec 2013

Use the 1 time boot key on your keyboard to choose the usb stick, if you set the usb stick to 1st in your bios, the install will start over again every time the machine reboots, the usb stick works differently then a dvd in this respect. At least it did for me. Just something to watch for.