I know this is the wrong place to ask for help for this but it's that time or year.
I just got a used pc with i5 cpu,8G ram and 1TB hd. The on board graphics handled open gl ok but I addeded a used ebay 2G ram radeon.
Any way I used macrium reflect to clone the windows and reserved to a 240GB SSD and I can boot off either from the bios. I haven't noticed a speed increase like when I changed the hdd in my laptop to ssd.
Anyway I have the original win 10 hdd c: and a clone e:
I've tried booting to the E: drive clone and tried various ways like mini partition manager and win 10 disk management to change c: drive to w: and E: , the clone, to C:
Won't have it. Any advise welcome ....all I want for xmas is a working C: ssd
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Try something like Paragon HDM, it will let you assign drive letters to suit your needs. I guess you're booting of a hidden partition. May be wrong but is it possible to have the windows drive not C:?
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You can change drive letters from win 10 disk management but not an active drive. So I can't change C: if I'm running on the OS on C: ie win 10.
If I press F12 on start I get boot choice so chose drive E: which is a clone of drive C:
It boots into drive E: ok but won't let you change drive C: letter although drive C: is not the active boot drive.
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Sorry, I misposted. You need to boot from the recovery media. On ver 15 it's on the Home tab "Build Recovery Media" to a flash drive then boot from it. Whatever media is C: will not be the boot device anymore.
Let us know how you get on.
Last edit: George Towler 2019-12-24
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Although not gcb relevant,people are useing new drives and cloneing need to be sorted.
A win 10 recovery stick lets you use a cmd promt..diskpart is useful but the stick changes the drive letters so confusing.
Disconnecting the drive C: sata and the ststem does not start so I think the clone is faulty and the bios booted next drive. trying aomei free cloner again and its free partition manager.
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No...and there seems a lot of paragon that is not free ..alas.
The first time i cloned my laptop hdd to ssd it failed second boot. I tried aomei free and it worked. The ssd was 10 gig bigger so thought it ok and working fine. Laptop is faster to use.
Gets more complicated..not much but numbers when say clone win on 1TB drive to 240G drive although win is 50Gig. It works...but doesn't..
I think I'll use https://www.belarc.com/products_belarc_advisor to get the serial key and other info.. Free and nice.
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I searched for free paragon hard drive cloner and got this https://www.paragon-software.com/free/br-free/.
I don't think it clones a disk.
I am being careful not to mess with drive c: which is the win 10 the pc came with. I will probably be content and remove the ssd but it's not the dream of using a ssd...which is noticably faster.
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I thought your problem was related to changing the assinged drive when it was C:
No Paragon doesnt clone a disk, maybe clonzilla or similar.
This is just me, I'm probably the only person who does it this way, but I still use Ghost (I know it's old and no longer support but it's never let me down). So if I wanted to clone I'd ghost and image, do what ever I needed to do with the hardware, then ghost it back.
I really think it would be helpfull if you restated the problem.
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The problem is replaceing a hdd with a ssd.
You use free software to clone the hdd to ssd then you should be able to swap them...which I have done on a win 7 laptop. I took the hdd out and fitted the ssd.
Trying to clone a win 10 hdd to ssd works but swapping the drives is not like a laptop. Win 10 complains that the machine needs repairing when I swap the original with the ssd clone.
This is a problem as people have to clone and change drives sometimes.
Try cloneing a drive to see what I mean.
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Revert back to the HDD
Then, using the Win10 system recovery option create a backup USB stick
Then, rebuild onto the SDD booting from the recovery USB.
You need to backup etc prior to do this.
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Not sure if this is stateing the obvious or not but don't forget the "System Reserved" hidden partition. I know thats on Win7 and I assum it is used on Win10.
Last edit: George Towler 2019-12-26
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Thanks George towler nd Anobium.
George, Macrium reflect free-you just pick the partition to clone,it asks...say win 10.. you click ok and then destination say ssd drive like drive E:
You select destination and next.
It now show source and destination, So you drag win 10 to ssd.
no room for the reserved file so you shrink the volume cos on a 1TB drive win 10 takes 30Gig?
shrink with a slider to 220gig...the ssd is 240Gig
Now there is room to drag the reserved files so do that.
then finish and you have a clone. Which if you use the bios will boot from and work.
Anobium- I have a win 10 usb boot recovery stick and as I said not much use...unless you want to reinstall windows.
Belarc Advisor shows your key.
Edit...If I disconnect my cd rom drive I think win 10 will moan...have not tried yet though.
I have another win 10 pc to experiment with.
Last edit: stan cartwright 2019-12-27
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Just recovery Win10 to the new drive and restore your data. Nothing hard about that. And, let Win10 control drive letters. And, for alternate boots... use a another computer... it will save us all many hours. :-)
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Evan, please clarify.
My aim is to change the hdd drive with a ssd drive.
In win 7 it's easy and works.
In win 10, if you disconnect the C: drive it says pc is broken and needs repair. That's after I changed bios to boot off another drive.
The free software for cloning to replace is changing. Aomei locks you in a loop.
I tried the cloning on another win 10 pc with same results.
If you had a ssd for xmas and your existing win 10 is on a hdd and you wanted to just clone and swap drives and everything works as before but faster, how would you do that?
The problems I've encounted are taking too much non related gcb stuff so I'll drop the subject..
but are things people do...who use gcb.
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With the Win10 in the HDD. Use the in-built Win10 recovery process. This will need a large USB stick. Complete the process of creating the recovery USB.
Replace HDD with SDD.
Using the USB to boot. Install Win10.
Then, restore data from you SAN, SVN or cloud.
This works. I know. I have tested. I now have 8 USB sticks. One for each of my Win10 instances. I have recovered/reinstalled to prove the Win10 process works.
All that Dias.... still may not address what you are trying to do... as I still don't know what the outcome you are looking for!
Last edit: Anobium 2019-12-28
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I used macrium reflect to clone a laptop 110G hdd to a 120G sdd I was given then swapped the drive and the old laptop starts,runs and shuts down noticably faster.
So thought buy a Kingston 240G ssd and clone win 10 and see if it works faster.
Tried on 2 win 10 pc's but changing the c: hdd to the ssd clone and I get a win blue screen and says pc needs repairing error 0000000C or similar.
I have no bought win 10 disks. One pc was updated by microsoft from win 7.
The other I bought recently with win 10 installed...no genuine win 10 disk included of course.
I have a win 10 recovery usb but no recovery image...do you think I'd trust it?!
It couldn't start a working pc!
For both your Win10 compuers, this applies to any and everyone, create the recovery USB... there is no other way of recovering that I am aware of.
re the trust. As I do not know how you created it, so, you need to ensure yourself the USB works. But, you have till Jan 14th (when Win7 to Win10 upgrade ceases). So, you can create the USB, test the recovery - if it fails then reinstalled Win7 followed by another Win10 upgrade.
I am trusting my USBs as I tested them.
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I know this is the wrong place to ask for help for this but it's that time or year.
I just got a used pc with i5 cpu,8G ram and 1TB hd. The on board graphics handled open gl ok but I addeded a used ebay 2G ram radeon.
Any way I used macrium reflect to clone the windows and reserved to a 240GB SSD and I can boot off either from the bios. I haven't noticed a speed increase like when I changed the hdd in my laptop to ssd.
Anyway I have the original win 10 hdd c: and a clone e:
I've tried booting to the E: drive clone and tried various ways like mini partition manager and win 10 disk management to change c: drive to w: and E: , the clone, to C:
Won't have it. Any advise welcome ....all I want for xmas is a working C: ssd
I think your ssd is working. I think you said that.
So, what is the issue?
Last edit: Anobium 2019-12-23
Try something like Paragon HDM, it will let you assign drive letters to suit your needs. I guess you're booting of a hidden partition. May be wrong but is it possible to have the windows drive not C:?
You can change drive letters from win 10 disk management but not an active drive. So I can't change C: if I'm running on the OS on C: ie win 10.
If I press F12 on start I get boot choice so chose drive E: which is a clone of drive C:
It boots into drive E: ok but won't let you change drive C: letter although drive C: is not the active boot drive.
Paragon will let you do that allbeit it will request a reboot.
I got the free version...It's the same. No change drive letter option when C: selected
Sorry, I misposted. You need to boot from the recovery media. On ver 15 it's on the Home tab "Build Recovery Media" to a flash drive then boot from it. Whatever media is C: will not be the boot device anymore.
Let us know how you get on.
Last edit: George Towler 2019-12-24
Is this relevant? https://www.infopackets.com/news/10682/how-fix-move-system-partition-c
Sorry, the link is blocked.
I have win 10 usb repair stick but no diskmanagement I can find.
I'll retry. Thanks.
Although not gcb relevant,people are useing new drives and cloneing need to be sorted.
A win 10 recovery stick lets you use a cmd promt..diskpart is useful but the stick changes the drive letters so confusing.
Disconnecting the drive C: sata and the ststem does not start so I think the clone is faulty and the bios booted next drive. trying aomei free cloner again and its free partition manager.
Disconnecting the C: sata drive lead and you get a message that a component has failed...this,I think is a win 10 thing about hardware changes.
Did you try booting from Paragon Recovery Media?
No...and there seems a lot of paragon that is not free ..alas.
The first time i cloned my laptop hdd to ssd it failed second boot. I tried aomei free and it worked. The ssd was 10 gig bigger so thought it ok and working fine. Laptop is faster to use.
Gets more complicated..not much but numbers when say clone win on 1TB drive to 240G drive although win is 50Gig. It works...but doesn't..
I think I'll use https://www.belarc.com/products_belarc_advisor to get the serial key and other info.. Free and nice.
Sorry to hear that. I stopped at ver. 15, newer versions just modify the UI and add stuff I don't care about.
Paragon HDM has gotten me out of all sorts of silly holes I've dug for myself.
I wonder if it would help if you restate the problem and add a screen dump of Paragon (or similar)?
I searched for free paragon hard drive cloner and got this https://www.paragon-software.com/free/br-free/.
I don't think it clones a disk.
I am being careful not to mess with drive c: which is the win 10 the pc came with. I will probably be content and remove the ssd but it's not the dream of using a ssd...which is noticably faster.
I thought your problem was related to changing the assinged drive when it was C:
No Paragon doesnt clone a disk, maybe clonzilla or similar.
This is just me, I'm probably the only person who does it this way, but I still use Ghost (I know it's old and no longer support but it's never let me down). So if I wanted to clone I'd ghost and image, do what ever I needed to do with the hardware, then ghost it back.
I really think it would be helpfull if you restated the problem.
The problem is replaceing a hdd with a ssd.
You use free software to clone the hdd to ssd then you should be able to swap them...which I have done on a win 7 laptop. I took the hdd out and fitted the ssd.
Trying to clone a win 10 hdd to ssd works but swapping the drives is not like a laptop. Win 10 complains that the machine needs repairing when I swap the original with the ssd clone.
This is a problem as people have to clone and change drives sometimes.
Try cloneing a drive to see what I mean.
Revert back to the HDD
Then, using the Win10 system recovery option create a backup USB stick
Then, rebuild onto the SDD booting from the recovery USB.
You need to backup etc prior to do this.
Not sure if this is stateing the obvious or not but don't forget the "System Reserved" hidden partition. I know thats on Win7 and I assum it is used on Win10.
Last edit: George Towler 2019-12-26
Thanks George towler nd Anobium.
George, Macrium reflect free-you just pick the partition to clone,it asks...say win 10.. you click ok and then destination say ssd drive like drive E:
You select destination and next.
It now show source and destination, So you drag win 10 to ssd.
no room for the reserved file so you shrink the volume cos on a 1TB drive win 10 takes 30Gig?
shrink with a slider to 220gig...the ssd is 240Gig
Now there is room to drag the reserved files so do that.
then finish and you have a clone. Which if you use the bios will boot from and work.
Anobium- I have a win 10 usb boot recovery stick and as I said not much use...unless you want to reinstall windows.
Belarc Advisor shows your key.
Edit...If I disconnect my cd rom drive I think win 10 will moan...have not tried yet though.
I have another win 10 pc to experiment with.
Last edit: stan cartwright 2019-12-27
Restate what your goal is.
Just recovery Win10 to the new drive and restore your data. Nothing hard about that. And, let Win10 control drive letters. And, for alternate boots... use a another computer... it will save us all many hours. :-)
Evan, please clarify.
My aim is to change the hdd drive with a ssd drive.
In win 7 it's easy and works.
In win 10, if you disconnect the C: drive it says pc is broken and needs repair. That's after I changed bios to boot off another drive.
The free software for cloning to replace is changing. Aomei locks you in a loop.
I tried the cloning on another win 10 pc with same results.
If you had a ssd for xmas and your existing win 10 is on a hdd and you wanted to just clone and swap drives and everything works as before but faster, how would you do that?
The problems I've encounted are taking too much non related gcb stuff so I'll drop the subject..
but are things people do...who use gcb.
With the Win10 in the HDD. Use the in-built Win10 recovery process. This will need a large USB stick. Complete the process of creating the recovery USB.
Replace HDD with SDD.
Using the USB to boot. Install Win10.
Then, restore data from you SAN, SVN or cloud.
This works. I know. I have tested. I now have 8 USB sticks. One for each of my Win10 instances. I have recovered/reinstalled to prove the Win10 process works.
All that Dias.... still may not address what you are trying to do... as I still don't know what the outcome you are looking for!
Last edit: Anobium 2019-12-28
I used macrium reflect to clone a laptop 110G hdd to a 120G sdd I was given then swapped the drive and the old laptop starts,runs and shuts down noticably faster.
So thought buy a Kingston 240G ssd and clone win 10 and see if it works faster.
Tried on 2 win 10 pc's but changing the c: hdd to the ssd clone and I get a win blue screen and says pc needs repairing error 0000000C or similar.
I have no bought win 10 disks. One pc was updated by microsoft from win 7.
The other I bought recently with win 10 installed...no genuine win 10 disk included of course.
I have a win 10 recovery usb but no recovery image...do you think I'd trust it?!
It couldn't start a working pc!
Last edit: stan cartwright 2019-12-28
For both your Win10 compuers, this applies to any and everyone, create the recovery USB... there is no other way of recovering that I am aware of.
re the trust. As I do not know how you created it, so, you need to ensure yourself the USB works. But, you have till Jan 14th (when Win7 to Win10 upgrade ceases). So, you can create the USB, test the recovery - if it fails then reinstalled Win7 followed by another Win10 upgrade.
I am trusting my USBs as I tested them.