Solved Can a SSD with Win7 on it be used again?

[ratronic]

I had an OCZ 120gb SSD for a while and decided to go for a larger drive a Samsung 840 EVO 750gb.

I transferred my image using Reflect and unplugged my original drive and the new one booted just fine.

Then I unplugged the new drive and plugged the original back in and booted Partition Wizard CD and

deleted/wiped the partition with 0's and created/formatted a new partition. My problem is whenever the old

drive is plugged in having been erased Windows7 will end up calling itself non genuine and not run on the

new drive. I can get Windows to run if the old drive(erased) is unplugged. Do any of you guru's out there

know if once a SSD has had Windows on it can it be used again as a spare?

 

[Brink]

Hello Dave,

Please go ahead and post a screenshot showing all of you Disk Management window while both drives are connected to see if it may show what the issue is. Please point out which drive is which.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/274797-disk-management-post-screen-capture-image.html

 

[ratronic]

Thanks Brink. I have imaged the old drive again with Windows7 to make sure it is all right. But when I erase it as

described above and plug it in along with the new drive Windows won't fire up in the end after trying to repair itself thus

no screen shot using both drives. I was wondering if the conflict has to do with the serial# on the old drive having been

used with Windows if that maybe throw's a monkey wrench but it seems like I have done this with regular HDD's.

 

[AddRAM]

Have the data cable plugged in on the old ssd, fire up your new drive, let windows come up. Then plug in the power cable to the old ssd, give it a few seconds, windows may install drivers. You should then be able to format it using disk management.

 

[ratronic]

Here is a screen shot of it working with the new drive.

 

[Brink]

Dave,

If Disk 1 is not your OS drive, then you need to mark it as inactive instead. Were you planning on doing anything with the unallocated space on Disk 0?

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/197157-partition-mark-inactive.html

Be sure to try what Brian posted above as well.

 

[ratronic]

Brink my system has 2 bootable disks 1 Windows7 and 1 Debian. The Windows7 disk 0 has an unallocated

section that works with the Samsung disk controller. I can use F8 at bootup to pick the Debian drive instead of

Windows. I have tried AddRAM's idea and now the drive shows up as drive 8 and is offline. When I right click

on the drive the only thing available is help. Now that it is showing up is there any tricks you know of to format it?

 

[AddRAM]

Partition Wizard should let you format it, mark it inactive if it`s still marked active.

All can be done with PW

Best Free Partition Manager Freeware and free partition magic for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista and Windows XP 32 bit & 64 bit. MiniTool Free Partition Manager Software Home Edition.

 

[Brink]

In that case, you don't want to make Disk 1 inactive.

See if you may be able to run a "clean" (not "clean all") command on the old SSD to wipe it out to be unallocated afterwards. If it won't let you do it in Windows, then see if you may be able to do so at boot.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/52129-disk-clean-clean-all-diskpart-command.html

 

[ratronic]

It is not marked active and I have erased as described above. When I cursor over

the offline word it brings up a note "Offline(The disk is offline because it has a signature

collision with another disk that is online)". Any more idea's?

 

[Brink]

It is not marked active and I have erased as described above. When I cursor over

the offline word it brings up a note "Offline(The disk is offline because it has a signature

collision with another disk that is online)". Any more idea's?

OK. Go ahead and post another screenshot of Disk Management with the old hard drive connected to see what it shows.

In addition, see the video below for this offline collision error to see if it may help.

Blogs - Mark's Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

 

[ratronic]

I tried your last idea Brink and it will not let me do a "Clean all" in diskpart because it say's

it can't with an offline disk. Thank you guys for all the help so far. Any other ideas?

 

[ratronic]

Here are a couple of screen shots as I had to scroll to see drive 8.

 

[Brink]

As a test, try only having the old SSD connected, and run the "Clean" command in a command prompt at boot. When finished, connect the other drives and see if you are able to create a new partition on the old SSD to use.

If not, then try the guide below is for this error to hopefully help with the old SSD.

Blogs - Mark's Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

 

[ratronic]

You guy's are guru's! Thanks to AddRAM's idea I was able to see it when

Windows started and thanks to Brinks last video helper I now have all drives working!

Thanks guys Dave

 

[whs]

Interesting case. I would have attached the old SSD to another PC and dealt with it there. But then we would not have learned anything, LOL.

BTW: never write a bunch of useless zeros on a SSD like with a Clean All or alike. That is detrimental to it's performance. Before you reuse it, I would suggest a Secure Erase.

http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-20115106-285/how-to-securely-erase-an-ssd-drive/

 

[Brink]

Great news Dave. Glad we could help.

 

[AddRAM]

Awesome