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Can I just swap in a SSD and restore a backup?



 
 
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  #1  
Old March 29th 18, 05:00 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
mike[_10_]
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Posts: 1,073
Default Can I just swap in a SSD and restore a backup?

I have an older (thinkpad X200 Tablet) win10 pro laptop with a spinning
hard drive.
Can I just use linux to format the new SSD with
aligned partitions, plug it in and restore the Macrium Reflect backup
from the old drive?
It's a legacy BIOS if that matters.

The question boils down to how windows treats SSD's.
There are some operational parameter changes that
improve the life and performance of SSD's. Yes? No?
Do those get enabled automagically with the swap?
Do I have to reinstall win10 to make it happen?
Something different?
Anything else I'm missing?

Ads
  #2  
Old March 29th 18, 05:10 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Mr. Man-wai Chang
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Posts: 1,941
Default Can I just swap in a SSD and restore a backup?

On 29/3/2018 12:00, mike wrote:
I have an older (thinkpad X200 Tablet) win10 pro laptop with a spinning
hard drive.
Can I just use linux to format the new SSD with
aligned partitions, plug it in and restore the Macrium Reflect backup
from the old drive?
It's a legacy BIOS if that matters.


BACKUP your data FIRST!!!

i think you could just swap the 2.5" hard disk with the new SSD, the run
your Macrum Reflect. I don't use those ghosting software, so I might be
wrong.

And that's why I suggest you to backup your data then do a clean install.

Do I have to reinstall win10 to make it happen?
Something different?
Anything else I'm missing?


A clean install can remove a lot of uncertainties and gives you a clean
system. Of course, you don't clean your data. So you have to backup your
data before doing a clean install.

--
@~@ Remain silent! Drink, Blink, Stretch! Live long and prosper!!
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty!
/( _ )\ May the Force and farces be with you!
^ ^ (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10) Linux 2.6.39.3
不借貸! 不詐騙! 不*錢! 不援交! 不打交! 不打劫! 不自殺! 不求神! 請考慮綜援
(CSSA):
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  #3  
Old March 29th 18, 05:54 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
mike[_10_]
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Posts: 1,073
Default Can I just swap in a SSD and restore a backup?

On 3/28/2018 9:10 PM, Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:
On 29/3/2018 12:00, mike wrote:
I have an older (thinkpad X200 Tablet) win10 pro laptop with a
spinning hard drive.
Can I just use linux to format the new SSD with
aligned partitions, plug it in and restore the Macrium Reflect backup
from the old drive?
It's a legacy BIOS if that matters.


BACKUP your data FIRST!!!

i think you could just swap the 2.5" hard disk with the new SSD, the run
your Macrum Reflect. I don't use those ghosting software, so I might be
wrong.

And that's why I suggest you to backup your data then do a clean install.

Do I have to reinstall win10 to make it happen?
Something different?
Anything else I'm missing?


A clean install can remove a lot of uncertainties and gives you a clean
system. Of course, you don't clean your data. So you have to backup your
data before doing a clean install.

Nothing is ever simple...

Getting win10 drivers that worked was a big hassle.
While I saved the driver files, there's no guarantee that a
clean install, without the dozens of intermediate driver fails,
would get me back to where I am.

I'm quite confident that I can restore operation with a simple
swap/restore. The question is about automatic drive management
for SSD. I don't think they call it 'trim', but there's something
in windows that does periodic or background rearrangement of SSD data
blocks. Does this get set up when the SSD swap is detected?
Or do I have to do some unknown manual configuration?
Should I use device manager to uninstall the hard drive and have
it reconfigure itself when it reboots...if it will reboot in that situation?

I understand that a clean install is optimum. Question was if it was
necessary in this specific case? If I swap just before the April
major update, would that take care of it?

I built the system a few weeks ago. I haven't decided whether
the tablet screen with stylus is better or worse than the unusable
trackpoint nub.

It's not very 'dirty' at this point...at least not much dirtier than
a clean install.
  #4  
Old March 29th 18, 07:49 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Mr. Man-wai Chang
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,941
Default Can I just swap in a SSD and restore a backup?

On 29/3/2018 12:54, mike wrote:
Nothing is ever simple...

Getting win10 drivers that worked was a big hassle.
While I saved the driver files, there's no guarantee that a
clean install, without the dozens of intermediate driver fails,
would get me back to where I am.


I always have all the drivers needed to reinstall Win 10 anyway. I keep
backup copies of them..


I'm quite confident that I can restore operation with a simple
swap/restore.* The question is about automatic drive management
for SSD.* I don't think they call it 'trim', but there's something
in windows that does periodic or background rearrangement of SSD data
blocks.* Does this get set up when the SSD swap is detected?
Or do I have to do some unknown manual configuration?
Should I use device manager to uninstall the hard drive and have
it reconfigure itself when it reboots...if it will reboot in that
situation?


It's a total waste of time to debug a bad Window$. Your boss might ask
for it since you got paid to listen to his/her commands.

If you really wanna save time, CLEAN INSTALL is the way to go.

--
@~@ Remain silent! Drink, Blink, Stretch! Live long and prosper!!
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty!
/( _ )\ May the Force and farces be with you!
^ ^ (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10) Linux 2.6.39.3
不借貸! 不詐騙! 不*錢! 不援交! 不打交! 不打劫! 不自殺! 不求神! 請考慮綜援
(CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_...sub_addressesa
  #5  
Old March 29th 18, 08:55 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Paul[_32_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 11,873
Default Can I just swap in a SSD and restore a backup?

mike wrote:
I have an older (thinkpad X200 Tablet) win10 pro laptop with a spinning
hard drive.
Can I just use linux to format the new SSD with
aligned partitions, plug it in and restore the Macrium Reflect backup
from the old drive?
It's a legacy BIOS if that matters.

The question boils down to how windows treats SSD's.
There are some operational parameter changes that
improve the life and performance of SSD's. Yes? No?
Do those get enabled automagically with the swap?
Do I have to reinstall win10 to make it happen?
Something different?
Anything else I'm missing?


So what you're really worried about, is whether the
"Optimize" panel, shows "defragment" or shows "TRIM"
for the SSD drive. TRIM is supposed to show for SSDs.

After you boot up using the newly prepared SSD, you
can do Properties : Tools and select Defrag there, which
will take you to the Optimize panel. There, you can check
whether they know it's an SSD. Alternately, you can type
"Optimize" in Cortana, and see if you can jump directly
to the panel.

*******

In terms of format, the newer versions of Windows use megabyte
alignment, instead of CHS 63 sector style alignment.

Using Macrium, you can actually change the alignment when
cloning or restoring. (You don't have to buy the Paragon tool.)

This is a filmstrip I made, before PostImg.org got more restrictive
on content. Click the image to magnify it.

https://s9.postimg.org/6mko7k7m5/Macrium_Restore_CD.gif

About half-way down, there is a "Restored Partition Properties"
I'm playing with for dramatic effect. It offers "Vista/7/SSD (1MB)"
which causes the partition to be aligned on megabyte boundaries.
I have had modern OSes before, which by "accident" or stupidity,
were CHS aligned. And this reduces SSD efficiency if you keep
the divisible-by-63 alignment on the SSD. Both the Restore and
the Clone sequence, will give access to that Properties thing
so you can verify the alignment being used. And fix it with the
1MB option.

The only thing Macrium can't do, is provide fully functional
partition management. You can kinda approximate such management
with Macrium, but the danger then is not tapping into proper
boot manipulation when doing so. So if you needed to
"shift a partition to the left" say, it's harder to do that
and be absolutely certain the GUIDs got modded in the BCD
(as they should). Modifying some of the disk identifiers,
helps avoid tiny surprises when "putting two clones
next to one another" in the machine. When properly processed,
the two disks will have no effect on one another. Whereas a
"dd.exe" based clone, will cause problems (one disk will
automatically enter "Offline" state).

On a couple of occasions, I've done real bloopers on these OSes
(because I like to take already-prepared partitions and
install into them). I had a Windows 7 setup where I ended up
with the old MSDOS divisible-by-63 alignment (which was easy
to fix). Windows 7 does 1MB alignment if it makes its own
partitions, but I was installing into a disk that
already had partitions (a WinXP disk recycled for new usage).

The harder one, was when I managed to install Windows 10 onto
a 64KB-per-cluster C: partition (a partition formerly used to
hold backups or something). That was a bitch to fix (and switch
it back to default 4KB). For many Windows Insider upgrades,
it didn't seem to matter. Until one day... it did matter, and
the Insider would no longer accept 64KB clusters. I couldn't
get the next Upgrade to finish. And I was forced to fix it.
Acronis Disk Director failed when I tried to do that, and I
don't remember what actually worked. But I did get it fixed.
Took a while though. I probably spend more than a day on
that one.

While there have been some Release versions of Windows 10
where I would have told you to "slap it in and stop worrying",
these days there are a couple things you could/should check.
And since I've recently had problems getting Windows to show
"TRIM" for my SSDs as their optimize option, it's not your
handling that causes the issue, but some bug in Windows.
I still haven't figured out the root cause.

Paul
  #6  
Old March 29th 18, 02:07 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Stephen Chadfield
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 16
Default Can I just swap in a SSD and restore a backup?

On Wed, 28 Mar 2018 21:00:28 -0700, mike wrote:

I have an older (thinkpad X200 Tablet) win10 pro laptop with a spinning
hard drive.
Can I just use linux to format the new SSD with
aligned partitions, plug it in and restore the Macrium Reflect backup
from the old drive?
It's a legacy BIOS if that matters.


What has Linux got to do with this? I replaced a HDD with an SDD at
the weekend. Backed up with Macrium Reflect, switched drives then
restored to the new SSD. No issues at all.
  #7  
Old March 30th 18, 12:01 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
John Doe[_8_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,378
Default Can I just swap in a SSD and restore a backup?

mike wrote:

I have an older (thinkpad X200 Tablet) win10 pro laptop with a
spinning hard drive. Can I just use linux to format the new SSD
with aligned partitions, plug it in and restore the Macrium
Reflect backup from the old drive? It's a legacy BIOS if that
matters.


If you have trouble, Macrium Reflect's "fix boot problems" or
whatever it is called might help.

Macrium Reflect has a "deploy to different hardware" option
available on their $60 version. Too rich for my taste.
  #8  
Old March 30th 18, 04:53 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
mike[_10_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,073
Default Can I just swap in a SSD and restore a backup?

On 3/29/2018 12:55 AM, Paul wrote:
mike wrote:
I have an older (thinkpad X200 Tablet) win10 pro laptop with a
spinning hard drive.
Can I just use linux to format the new SSD with
aligned partitions, plug it in and restore the Macrium Reflect backup
from the old drive?
It's a legacy BIOS if that matters.

The question boils down to how windows treats SSD's.
There are some operational parameter changes that
improve the life and performance of SSD's. Yes? No?
Do those get enabled automagically with the swap?
Do I have to reinstall win10 to make it happen?
Something different?
Anything else I'm missing?


So what you're really worried about, is whether the
"Optimize" panel, shows "defragment" or shows "TRIM"
for the SSD drive. TRIM is supposed to show for SSDs.

After you boot up using the newly prepared SSD, you
can do Properties : Tools and select Defrag there, which
will take you to the Optimize panel. There, you can check
whether they know it's an SSD. Alternately, you can type
"Optimize" in Cortana, and see if you can jump directly
to the panel.

*******

In terms of format, the newer versions of Windows use megabyte
alignment, instead of CHS 63 sector style alignment.

Using Macrium, you can actually change the alignment when
cloning or restoring. (You don't have to buy the Paragon tool.)


You don't need to buy anything. Everything you need is on the
hiren's 15.2 cd. Don't remember which partition manager,
but at least one of them claims to be able to align on the fly.
With hiren's, you can make the partitions anything you want.
And you don't have to make the extra partitions that windows likes
to create. Make sure the entire disk is partitioned and formatted.

If installing windows 7, MS skips creation of the extra partition.
If installing windows 10, MS wants to reduce the size of the first
partition and add another in between C: and D:. I'm not sure exactly
how it happened, but I think I updated 7 to 10 and didn't get the
extra partition. Or maybe I backed up only C: and restored it to
a fully formatted disk and let macrium decide the partitioning.
Then go back and stretch c: to what you want and partition the rest.

This is a filmstrip I made, before PostImg.org got more restrictive
on content. Click the image to magnify it.

https://s9.postimg.org/6mko7k7m5/Macrium_Restore_CD.gif

About half-way down, there is a "Restored Partition Properties"
I'm playing with for dramatic effect. It offers "Vista/7/SSD (1MB)"
which causes the partition to be aligned on megabyte boundaries.
I have had modern OSes before, which by "accident" or stupidity,
were CHS aligned. And this reduces SSD efficiency if you keep
the divisible-by-63 alignment on the SSD. Both the Restore and
the Clone sequence, will give access to that Properties thing
so you can verify the alignment being used. And fix it with the
1MB option.

The only thing Macrium can't do, is provide fully functional
partition management. You can kinda approximate such management
with Macrium, but the danger then is not tapping into proper
boot manipulation when doing so. So if you needed to
"shift a partition to the left" say, it's harder to do that
and be absolutely certain the GUIDs got modded in the BCD
(as they should). Modifying some of the disk identifiers,
helps avoid tiny surprises when "putting two clones
next to one another" in the machine. When properly processed,
the two disks will have no effect on one another. Whereas a
"dd.exe" based clone, will cause problems (one disk will
automatically enter "Offline" state).


I gave up trying to clone drives. Seems like there was always
some hiccup. Not worth the frustration. Backup/restore has
always worked for me.

On a couple of occasions, I've done real bloopers on these OSes
(because I like to take already-prepared partitions and
install into them). I had a Windows 7 setup where I ended up
with the old MSDOS divisible-by-63 alignment (which was easy
to fix). Windows 7 does 1MB alignment if it makes its own
partitions, but I was installing into a disk that
already had partitions (a WinXP disk recycled for new usage).

The harder one, was when I managed to install Windows 10 onto
a 64KB-per-cluster C: partition (a partition formerly used to
hold backups or something). That was a bitch to fix (and switch
it back to default 4KB). For many Windows Insider upgrades,
it didn't seem to matter. Until one day... it did matter, and
the Insider would no longer accept 64KB clusters. I couldn't
get the next Upgrade to finish. And I was forced to fix it.
Acronis Disk Director failed when I tried to do that, and I
don't remember what actually worked. But I did get it fixed.
Took a while though. I probably spend more than a day on
that one.


Does macrium care about clusters? I thought the default
mode just cared about files. I would have expected to
back it up, change the cluster size, restore.

While there have been some Release versions of Windows 10
where I would have told you to "slap it in and stop worrying",
these days there are a couple things you could/should check.
And since I've recently had problems getting Windows to show
"TRIM" for my SSDs as their optimize option, it's not your
handling that causes the issue, but some bug in Windows.
I still haven't figured out the root cause.


Please publish your findings when you find them.
My motivation is that I've had a SSD sittin' on the shelf for
over a year doin' nothin'...and I was bored.
Maybe I should wait until after the big April update.

Paul

Nice explanation of how macrium works. But there are issues.
When you restore a backup, you also get the boot sector and all
the stuff that's between the boot sector and the start of the
first partition.
When I drag/drop partitions, I don't get all the stuff between
the boot sector and the start of the first partition.
This matters...sometimes ;-)
  #9  
Old March 30th 18, 06:19 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Paul[_32_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 11,873
Default Can I just swap in a SSD and restore a backup?

mike wrote:

Nice explanation of how macrium works. But there are issues.
When you restore a backup, you also get the boot sector and all
the stuff that's between the boot sector and the start of the
first partition.
When I drag/drop partitions, I don't get all the stuff between
the boot sector and the start of the first partition.
This matters...sometimes ;-)


If you had four partitions to clone, you could do in four steps...

MBR+Partition1
Partition2
Partition3
Partition4

and any "missing stuff" is picked up during the first clone.

That's how you can do pretty well all the partition management
you could want.

And if things don't happen to work afterwards, the "boot repair"
on the CD could be used.

When you do

MBR+Partition1+Partition2+Partition3+Partition4
(realign) (realign) (realign) (realign)
(resize) (resize) (resize) (resize)

that doesn't give you an opportunity to move the
origin of partition2,3,4. But I can be pretty well
assured the BCD gets edited properly and there
is no "coupling" between cloned disks.

Paul
  #10  
Old March 30th 18, 06:50 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Percival P. Cassidy
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 151
Default Can I just swap in a SSD and restore a backup?

On 03/29/2018 12:00 AM, mike wrote:

I have an older (thinkpad X200 Tablet) win10 pro laptop with a spinning
hard drive.
Can I just use linux to format the new SSD with
aligned partitions, plug it in and restore the Macrium Reflect backup
from the old drive?
It's a legacy BIOS if that matters.

The question boils down to how windows treats SSD's.
There are some operational parameter changes that
improve the life and performance of SSD's.* Yes? No?
Do those get enabled automagically with the swap?
Do I have to reinstall win10 to make it happen?
Something different?
Anything else I'm missing?


I just replaced the spinning rust in my ThinkPad T430 by an SSD, using
the Free version of MiniTool Partition Wizard, which has a "Migrate OS"
function. Worked fine.

Perce

  #11  
Old March 31st 18, 01:38 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
mike[_10_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,073
Default Can I just swap in a SSD and restore a backup?

On 3/29/2018 10:19 PM, Paul wrote:
mike wrote:

Nice explanation of how macrium works. But there are issues.
When you restore a backup, you also get the boot sector and all
the stuff that's between the boot sector and the start of the
first partition.
When I drag/drop partitions, I don't get all the stuff between
the boot sector and the start of the first partition.
This matters...sometimes ;-)


If you had four partitions to clone, you could do in four steps...

MBR+Partition1


OK, but how do you actually do that?
It's been my observation that "Create an image of the partitions
required to backup and restore windows" also backs up the
boot sector and the hidden sectors.

It's been my observation that cloning partition 1
does not result in a bootable system complete
with boot sector and hidden sectors.

Partition2
Partition3
Partition4

and any "missing stuff" is picked up during the first clone.

That's how you can do pretty well all the partition management
you could want.

And if things don't happen to work afterwards, the "boot repair"
on the CD could be used.

It's been my observation that boot repair does not restore
the functionality of the hidden sectors. It's far easier
to do what works and not worry about why what doesn't work
doesn't work.

When you do

MBR+Partition1+Partition2+Partition3+Partition4
(realign) (realign) (realign) (realign)
(resize) (resize) (resize) (resize)

that doesn't give you an opportunity to move the
origin of partition2,3,4. But I can be pretty well
assured the BCD gets edited properly and there
is no "coupling" between cloned disks.



I had so much confusion that I decided to do things
the easy way and never clone anything.
I backup then restore partition 1 including the MBR and
hidden sectors.

Use linux partition tools, or hirens ported versions thereof,
to create an aligned disk partition first. I'm not sure
that macrium restore doesn't do this anyway, but it's easy to do.

Once you have C: running, windows 10 will happily let
you create aligned partitions for the rest and copy back
data from backup media. bcdedit will help you if any of
the partitions are bootable.

I never backup other partitions. I COPY files
to backup media. Virtually all the files on other partitions
are already compressed and would gain little from cramming
them into one huge backup or clone file.
And directory synchronization programs can update the offline
copies without having to copy the whole thing again.

No, I don't trust incremental backups. It's a throwback
to the old days when restores failed because the 15th
tape was corrupt...and that incremental backups aren't
usually supported in the free versions of backup software.

I'm not saying that a guru can't accomplish what you suggest.
I'm saying that I have methods that don't require me to become
a guru an seem to get the job done.

As interesting as this has been, back to my original question...

I haven't tried it yet, but I'm confident that I can make
the SSD boot. The question was all about whether the OS
can automagically recognize the SSD and do what is necessary
to prevent premature wearout. Your previous post suggests
that windows fixes everything up...except when it doesn't.
The more we discuss, the less excited I am about changing to SSD.
Looks like the hassle exceeds the value of faster boot on a computer
I'll rarely use.

Paul


  #12  
Old April 17th 18, 10:36 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Lucifer Morningstar[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 368
Default Can I just swap in a SSD and restore a backup?

On Thu, 29 Mar 2018 03:55:51 -0400, Paul
wrote:

mike wrote:
I have an older (thinkpad X200 Tablet) win10 pro laptop with a spinning
hard drive.


You should be able to install screws to keep the hard drive still.
  #13  
Old April 19th 18, 11:32 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Arnie Goetchius
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 58
Default Can I just swap in a SSD and restore a backup?

John Doe wrote:
mike wrote:

I have an older (thinkpad X200 Tablet) win10 pro laptop with a
spinning hard drive. Can I just use linux to format the new SSD
with aligned partitions, plug it in and restore the Macrium
Reflect backup from the old drive? It's a legacy BIOS if that
matters.


If you have trouble, Macrium Reflect's "fix boot problems" or
whatever it is called might help.

Macrium Reflect has a "deploy to different hardware" option
available on their $60 version. Too rich for my taste.

It is described he
https://knowledgebase.macrium.com/di...ium+Re Deploy
 




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