I want to swap 500Gb hdd with a 500Gb sdd. Hardware not compatible???

[stumper77]

I was curious if some one might be able to help me please...I have a vaio vpcf121gx. A 500Gb hdd Western Digital hard drive and I picked up a Crucial MX200 ssd 500gb. I took the hdd out and put the ssd in. Tried to do a clean install with win7 pro 64 bit recovery disks. After loading all the disks right after it loads the registry it kept telling me that win 7 can not finish the installation due to new hardware being un compatible. Any suggestions on how to fix this problem?

 

[dsperber]

How about just "cloning" you existing spinner hard drive to the SSD? Using "recovery media" isn't really a from-scratch install of Windows, even if it worked. It's a way to restore the exact factory image as your machine was initially delivered, with whatever came pre-installed from Sony. I don't know why it couldn't be used although it's obvious your new SSD is not the factory spinner.

But it's very easy to "clone" from HD to SSD, using a number of free products to do that... e.g. Macrium Reflect Free ("clone"), Partition Wizard 9 ("migrate OS to SSD/HD"), etc.

You would need to be able to see BOTH drives at the same time, so you should remove the SSD and reinstall the spinner back into the machine so that you can boot to it again and install the cloning product you wish to use.

Then you can connect the SSD temporarily as an external drive through an inexpensive USB 3.0 adapter like this one from Kingwin.

Then use the desired software product to "clone/migrate" from spinner to SSD. The advantage of this is that you'd immediately have your existing fully customized environment already living on the new SSD, and you wouldn't have to reinstall 3rd-party products or re-customize Windows. The SSD environment would immediately be ready-to-go.

Once the cloning if finished, now you can remove the spinner and install the SSD. I'd say you're almost done. Once you're up and running on the SSD, don't forget to adjust Windows settings for optimal performance. I don't know if Crucial provides special software to do this as Samsung does (with their Samsung Magician to tweak Windows for SSD).

 

[TVeblen]

I was curious if some one might be able to help me please...I have a vaio vpcf121gx. A 500Gb hdd Western Digital hard drive and I picked up a Crucial MX200 ssd 500gb. I took the hdd out and put the ssd in. Tried to do a clean install with win7 pro 64 bit recovery disks. After loading all the disks right after it loads the registry it kept telling me that win 7 can not finish the installation due to new hardware being un compatible. Any suggestions on how to fix this problem?

You say you are trying to do a clean install using "Windows 7 64 bit recovery disks".

I have never heard of Windows Recovery Disks. You could have a Windows 7 Repair Disk, or a retail Installation Disk, but not recovery disks.

Most likely you have the laptop manufacturer's recovery disks. These will restore the laptop to the condition it was in when you first took it out of the box. You cannot do a clean install with these recovery disks, at least as far as anyone here would define a clean install. And it is not a surprise that it would not work with the new SSD. The disks simply clone the original installation and if the hardware has changed then it will fail.

You can do a clean install using a retail Windows 7 DVD, even one you borrow from a friend, provided you enter the correct Product Key from the sticker on your laptop. You can also download an ISO file of the Windows 7 installation disk and do it that way.
Instructions here:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1649-clean-install-windows-7-a.html
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/219487-clean-reinstall-factory-oem-windows-7-a.html#post1839164

Of course you could clone the hard drive as dsperber posted, which is fine as long as you are not looking for a true "clean" installation.