New/Old Hard Drive Installation Problem

razy60 · 25 Jul 2011

Is the ssd set to AHCI mode in the bios? Also is the bios showing the original hard drive?

magicapples · 25 Jul 2011

karl: yes, my system reboots fine. i am in windows right now, loaded on the SSD drive... but windows thinks it is the old hard drive. And because of that, i have no information about the SSD drive.

MJF:
no, the disk management screen doesn't make sense at all. it is like windows is loading some old cache file and won't reexamine my hdd.

so you think the root of the problem is reimaging onto a new hard drive that is smaller than the original hard drive?

will windows figure out what is wrong if the disk is full 200 gb too early?

karlsnooks · 25 Jul 2011

The bigger to smaller isn't the problem. I've done that with no difficulties.

If you do the following:
Go to an elevated command prompt.
Diskpart
list volume

do you still see the wrong information?

Do NOT have the hard disk connected when you do this.

mjf · 25 Jul 2011

karlsnooks said:

The bigger to smaller isn't the problem.

Whatever you say.

Magicapples,
A stab at explaining what went on. ACER did a factory recovery including the original MBR which is what Windows Disk Management is picking up. For some reason it's also seeing another disk, your physical SSD. Basically Disk Management is totally confused.

You could try to download Partition Wizard (see free programs area) and see what it says.

What I would do is use Macrium Reflect for this exercise.

I'll leave my input to you at that for the time being so as not to confuse things with too many inputs.

Edit: deleted some comments

karlsnooks · 25 Jul 2011

magicapples,

although this isn't the way I do it,
Here is a tutorial we have on restoring the MBR.

MBR - Restore Windows 7 Master Boot Record

mjf · 25 Jul 2011

I'll come back into the discussion again rather than leave things hanging.
Can we define your end goal.

Is it to have your new 240GB SSD replace your existing spinning 500GB HDD as your one and only HDD?
If so you then have 2 options:
1) Retain the Acer OEM OS or
2) Do a clean install of Windows using the COA sticker key which should be on your notebook. This will require access to Windows installation disks.