Replacing drive 1 with Larger

My intent is to replace the existing Lenovo desktop Samsung 2 1/2 128GB SSD boot drive 1 with a new Crucial 2 1/2 ~500GB SSD drive.


My plan is to have 2 current drive 1 images, one image on drive 2 and one on an external drive (overkill), physically remove the existing (boot drive) drive 1, physically install the new, blank Crucial SSD, boot the machine from a Macrium Reflect rescue USB, then restore the old boot drive 1 image to the new.


Questions:


1. Am I missing a step or is the process that straight forward?


2. I'm presuming that cloning, in my case, has no advantage to a regular backup disk image and restore?


3. The preceding will not hamper my next step--an in place Win7 - Win7 upgrade?


Mark

It's simpler to put the new disk in boot from MR copy disk. Remove old disk boot up and you have the old drive as backup

samuria--


She has a second, 1T, mechanical drive. It stores MR, scheduled images and separate backups of her data. I toyed with the idea of 'moving per Brink/Kari' her Users from drive 1 to 2 but, knowing my wife and the few real and potential downsides of the move, after further thought have come back to tripling the size of drive 1 which, btw, arrives tomorrow.


My biggest challenge (don't laugh!) will be removing and replacing the SSD's. I've never opened a desktop (vs. the simplicity of a laptop) to change HD's and not gotten confused as to which screws hold the da*mn HD and which something else and which wires go where. I downloaded Lenovo's schematics for opening the box, removing and installing the SSD. I think the engineer tasked with these schematics sat up long nights trying to figure out how to make the schematic as unclear and difficult to read as possible!


Mark

markg2 said:

My intent is to replace the existing Lenovo desktop Samsung 2 1/2 128GB SSD boot drive 1 with a new Crucial 2 1/2 ~500GB SSD drive.

As far as making it quickest and easiest, here is what I would do.

1) shutdown, remove case cover, plug in data and power cables for the crucial
2) boot up, using the boot menu to make sure the samsung is still the boot drive
3) use macrium to clone the samsung onto the crucial
4) shutdown, unplug the samsung cables AND physically remove it from the machine, putting the crucial in its physical place AND moving the samsung cables over to the crucial which makes the crucial the primary boot drive without needing to change anything in bios
5) boot up, use diskmgmt.msc to expand the crucial partition if desired.

Johnhoh--


Bear with me.


1) shutdown, remove case cover, plug in data and power cables for the crucial
2) boot up, using the boot menu to make sure the samsung is still the boot drive

I don't understand 1 & 2 cabling. No cables come with the new drive. There are 2 sets of power/data cables in the machine: 1 set in use Samsung boot SSD and 1 set in use drive 2. So if I'm booting off the Samsung, that means I'm disconnecting drive 2 and using those 2 cables for the Crucial?

3) use macrium to clone the samsung onto the crucial

I have not used MR Cloning nor do I get the difference/benefit between cloning/restoring.

I'm missing the time, ease or ? benefit to your process. What is the gain vs. just Restoring a MR image of the Samsung to the Macrium after switching the SSD's and booting from a MR rescue USB?

4) shutdown, unplug the samsung cables AND physically remove it from the machine, putting the crucial in its physical place AND moving the samsung cables over to the crucial which makes the crucial the primary boot drive without needing to change anything in bios

Are you saying that after I were to Restore the Samsung image to the Macrium that the machine would not automatically recognize the Macrium as the boot drive and boot even though the Macrium should look the same to the preload??? That when I first booted up off the Macrium I'd have to stop at the BIOS and identify a(the) boot drive?

5) boot up, use diskmgmt.msc to expand the crucial partition if desired.

So regardless of whether I were to Restore or Clone, the Samsung image on the Macrium will leave the difference between 128GB and ~500GB as an unallocated partition?

quote....

I don't understand 1 & 2 cabling. No cables come with the new drive. There are 2 sets of power/data cables in the machine: 1 set in use Samsung boot SSD and 1 set in use drive 2. So if I'm booting off the Samsung, that means I'm disconnecting drive 2 and using those 2 cables for the Crucial?

your way should work fine. I do it my way (disconnecting drive 2 as you said) only because the main thing that seems to go wrong in clones or restores is the boot sector gets improperly created due to other disks being in the system so I always remove extra drives. But your way should work, since the boot sector of your original boot drive already knows about your extra drive.

I have not used MR Cloning nor do I get the difference/benefit between cloning/restoring.

what a clone does in one step a restore does in two steps.

I'm missing the time, ease or ? benefit to your process. What is the gain vs. just Restoring a MR image of the Samsung to the Macrium after switching the SSD's and booting from a MR rescue USB?

your way should work fine. I just do not do it myself as I like to have the simplest possible set up of one source disk, one target disk. I was just saying what I would do, not saying your way is not good.

Are you saying that after I were to Restore the Samsung image to the Macrium that the machine would not automatically recognize the Macrium as the boot drive and boot even though the Macrium should look the same to the preload??? That when I first booted up off the Macrium I'd have to stop at the BIOS and identify a(the) boot drive?

since you used the same cables for the new boot disk that you used for the old boot disk, then no, you will not need to touch bios.

So regardless of whether I were to Restore or Clone, the Samsung image on the Macrium will leave the difference between 128GB and ~500GB as an unallocated partition?

I would bet macrium will offer you the chance to automatically expand the restored or cloned partition at the time you do the restore or clone. But if not, use diskmgmt.msc.

Your whole plan is sound. I was just saying how I do it. I clone a lot, it always works perfectly, its always simple.

Normally during clone you have an option to resize the partitions. If so you can set the C: to the maximum leaving the other partitions with same original sizes.

There are many advantages on using Kari tutorial to move C:\Users to D:\Users. I also have a 128G SSD for (windows & programs) and 1T HDD for data. It's a way to have the speed of a SSD and the size of a HDD at low cost.
- All trash on users profile will be on the HDD
- As user settings and data are stored under /Users, if /Users is on a different disk, you can do a fresh install on C: keeping all settings and data on D:

>>>>>There are many advantages on using Kari tutorial to move C:\Users to D:\Users>>>>


From what I've read here in one of the tutorials, there's a good chance that some installed programs will have a problem click opening due to the changed location--even with a re-install?

I know this is against etiquette but I'm pressed for time and have an easy question for you all.


I did a test run on Connie's machine just now.



First (and fortunately) I created a second MR rescue USB. Macrium had rebuild the tool so I now have the latest on the USB and on C.


I changed the boot order, booted from the USB and came across a problem. The rescue couldn't locate the network driver(s). I don't need to see the network since the images are on her drive 2. But it doesn't make sense not to have a completely functioning rescue media.


I found the drivers through device manager and have attached a screen shot of (what I suspect are) the WiFi driver and the Ethernet driver.


Questions:



1. Do I add BOTH the wireless AND the Gigabit drivers or just the Gigabit since her machine is wired to the router?


2. Do I only add the *.sys file and not the *.din and *.dll files?


Thanks,




Mark