I have over 600 GB on my HDD from games, media, and files. I bought a 250GB SSD to boot my OS off of and put some selected programs on. Even after deselecting all my media files, there is still too much on my HDD for the included Samsung clone client to proceed. I just want to use my new SSD as a boot drive for the OS and for several programs while retaining all my other files on my existing HDD.
View 4 RepliesI have a brand new ASUS G750JX running Win 8. The OS is on a 750 GB HDD and I would like to install a 256 GB SSD and move the OS and a few programs to the SSD. Can I clone the drives than use 750 GB HDD for storage? Or is the a better way of moving all the stuff to my SSD?
View 8 Replies View RelatedI recently bought a new laptop and I want to take the SSD from my old laptop and put it in my new one. Normally not a problem but I have a lot on my SSD that I still want to be able to use on the old laptop so I was trying to clone it so I could still use things like Office 2010. I have tried various cloning programmes including Clonezilla but none of them worked. The latest I used was EaseUS and it seems to have cloned the drive and partitions ok. But I put the HDD I used as the destination into my old laptop and it will not boot up. Would this be because of drivers etc associated with the SSD?
My next thought is a clean install of windows 8.1 onto the HDD and then using the recovery image I made recently. But I am a bit worried about that, because if the SSD drivers do cause a problem it wont work and will waste my time.
Which way is better?
1. Remove Hard Drive and install Windows on SSD. Then add HDD and select boot from SSD. Then delete OS from HDD.
2. Delete files from HDD. Then clone HDD to SSD.
Is there a way to only clone Windows from HDD to SDD? Or do I have to clone everything?
I recently purchased 3 identical Gateway laptop computers to set-up and ship to relatives overseas. All three are running Windows 8. I want each one of them to have the same programs and applications without spend hours or days setting this all up. Is it possible to burn an ISO image of one hard drive and use it to clone the other two identical laptops? I guess sort of like the old "ghost" process. If so, would I need to wipe the other drives first?
View 9 Replies View RelatedI'm a heavy OSX user so I don't know a whole lot about this, but my son uses Windows because he likes to play games. I'm trying to upgrade his boot drive from a 1TB HDD to a 512GB SSD.
Last night I used Norton Ghost to try to make this happen, but after it completed, the SSD is not booting. I swapped it back to the regular HDD and it's fine. So, I suspect I did something wrong since I don't know too much about this.
The top photo shows the settings that I chose in Ghost. I can give an explanation to why I picked those if any one needs to know why.
The bottom photo shows the results of the clone. The top drive is the original 1TB source, the bottom one is the SSD. I had expected Ghost to pull the smallest EFI system partition, but it didn't. The SSD does have enough space for the data.
The recovery partitions on the original drive... I do NOT want those on the SSD. I have a flash drive that I will use to make recovery media. I don't want to waste space on the drive for recovery.
The source and destination drives were connected to a second PC and were NOT the boot drives.
Before, my PC was setup like this:
- disk0: windows xp
- disk1: windows 7
Bios boot priority set to disk1.
So no boot loaders, when I (rarely) need xp, I would switch via bios
Now I wanted to try Windows 8, so I've
- download 'Windows 8.1 Enterprise Evaluation' and burnt on a dvd
- bought and connected a new disk (disk2)
- boot from dvd, installed choosing the new disk2
Now, everything works fine, Windows 8 got installed on disk2. But the strange thing is this:
- if, from bios, I choose disk2, it says the disk is not bootable
- choosing disk1, a boot loader shows up, letting me choose between win7 and Windows 8.1
(- choosing disk0, nothing has changed, xp starts like before)
So, I'm confused. I was expecting Windows 8 booting from the new disk2.
- why disk2 doesn't boot?
- would have been better physically disconnecting disk0 and disk1 before installing?
Laptop: ASUS UX31A-DB71, latest BIOS: 218
Originally my laptop came with Windows 7 and when i looked at disk management my disks were formatted with UEFI schema. One of my friend gave me a UEFI bootable USB drive loaded with Windows 8. So, i thought why not give it a try. So, I created a backup of my OEM Windows 7 and saved the iso files in a seperate external HD (created twice just to be sure . Now, i decided to load the Windows 8. Booted into the BIOS and there is an option to select the USB drive along with the UEFI option for that USB drive. I selected the UEFI option but some reason it does not boot into UEFI.
So I decided to select the standard USB install and this option let me install windows 8. In the process of installing i formatted the partitions and made a single partition and installed Windows 8 on it. I am guessing now the drive is not GPT but MBR. I also noticed that his installation USB disk had an option to select either 32bit or 64bit of Windows 8... Would Microsoft create a same iso file with both versions? I am guessing he created the USB from a illegitimate source.
I am planning on purchasing Windows 8 Pro version as an iso but wanted to be confident that it would work with UEFI architecture.
Questions:
1. Why would the system NOT boot from UEFI?
2. If I download the legitimate iso from Microsoft and wanted to install Window8 Pro via UEFI, I am sure i would have to format my SSD to GPT and how would i go about formatting it during installation?
3. How would i create a recoverable USB for my iso image i created for Windows 7 via ASUS AI Recovery. Do I need to follow the same procedure as stated in creating bootable USB disk (i.e. FAT32 system) via diskpart utility?
I just received an Asus Zenbook with 8 preinstalled.
It was configured with static IP and my office configuration, I would like to split the existing partition, create a new primary partition and clone the Win 8 installation in the new one.
Then set up a dual boot configuration, so I can have a clean "office config" and an "home config" with the same licenses and software in which I can mess with the configuration and setup my home stuff (DLNA server, access to home headless server, software to flash android handset, etc).
Any good program that will allow me to clone my system which is a PCI-E storage device (OCZ Revodrive 350) to a hard drive for backup purposes and of course boot from that hard drive if required to reverse the process?
View 9 Replies View RelatedWhile I was messing around with my laptop, I decided to add on a fourth operating system, Arch Linux. I suppose I was pushing my luck a bit . Anyways, during the installation, I accidentally deleted the EFI system partition from my laptop, which contained the Windows Boot Manager and necessary files to boot. Great. I only made things worse by trying to troubleshoot, and broke grub as well.
I have a Windows 8 repair disk I made using the Windows 8 built in utility, but it does not boot: the computer turns on, and just hangs at the Toshiba splash screen.
I also can obviously not access the Toshiba recovery partitions, as they are booted into just like Windows itself.
I found a bootx64.efi file on one of my system's recovery partitions (Toshiba seems to have some really complex system going on) and placed it in EFIootootx64.efi. According to this site, FGA: The EFI boot process., I need to place the bkpbootmgfw.efi (on my system, that was what it was called, but I suspect boot-repair (ubuntu tool) messed something up when I was first setting up grub and the ESP and the bkp stands for backup) back onto the EFI System Partition.
Where to look for in the various Windows Imaging Format .wim and .swm files I have laying around my recovery partition(s) in order to extract the necessary EFI files. Any Windows Repair iso that works.
It always fails to Clone/copy my current hard that has bad sectors, to a new hard disk. My present HDD is a 320GB and its health is really bad. I bought a new 500 hard disk and tried to clone and copy the whole HDD. I tried Paragon HDD Manager, O&O disk image and other two Software. All of them failed to clone or copy my old hard disk to new one.
What is the best solution. Paragon, copied data partially and gave an error at 80%. I tried few times and the same thing happened
i have created a custom install.wim of win 8.1 pro using windows pe usb drive and sysprep generalise option. when i run my new setup and enter key it says "this key doesn't work with this edition of windows. try a different key". But i have tried all edition generic keys but none work. I also tried creating a ei.cfg file, but then it says "setup has failed to validate the product key".
View 4 Replies View RelatedMy Asus laptop does not give me an option to make recovery CD's it only shows USB as the only option. The laptop has no built in CD-DVD but I have external drive..... Can I make recovery CD's.... I did make a recovery USB but would like CD'S also,
View 9 Replies View RelatedI bought a HP notebook with windows 8.1 installed , but no installation DVD . In order to create one I downloaded from Microsoft , ( from windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/create-reset-refresh-media ) the Windows 8.1 Setup ( file OSGS14-WindowsSetupBox-32bitand64bit-English-4141408.exe ) and ran it but always receiving the message : we can't connect right now . I have tried more than 20 times and failed.
View 2 Replies View RelatedI bought a new PC the other day, and it has Windows 8. It advised me to make recovery disks, so I started the Setup Wizard. However, when it tried to actually burn the first disk there was an error, and it didn't complete.
Now, when I try to do the recovery disks again, right after it has prepared the files, the following error comes up: "Unhandled Exception: cannot create a file when that file already exists.".
So i'm a bit stuck. Is there a way to get my recovery disks done?
I tried the sys command which used to work under older operating systems.
View 9 Replies View RelatedOne of the first things I did when I had my new PC last year was to make a set of recovery discs. Now having used the free upgrade to Windows 8.1 I would like to make a set of backup discs for this version, however, my pc say that a set has already been made and I can only make the one set.
If things stay like this, when I want to do a recovery using either the hdd partition or the discs I made, it installs Windows 8 and then I have to install what seems like a million updates before I then have to go back to the store and do the upgrade to 8.1.
Is there a way I can make a recovery dvd's for the 8.1 version ?
I originally had windows 8 prowmc licensed (I have the iso image for that in case I need to reinstall); I upgraded /updated from store free update; now I have a valid licensed 8.1 running; but I don't have an iso; and if I have to re-install, I have to install 8, activate it and again do a 3.5 gb download to update;
I read from DISM that I can make a install.wim image from the existing hdd OS partition; so is it possible to create an image for the existing 8.1 OS?
Having used Windows 8 satisfactorially for a while now on a VM I'm trying to install it on a real PHYSICAL machine.
To save the hassle of burning DVD's I decided I would like to install from a USB drive however when trying to create a bootable USB stick using the usb tool from the tutorial it always fail with "Cannot copy the files".
I've tried on 3 different USB sticks from different manufacturers so it's almost outside the possibility that all 3 USB sticks are defective. I'm trying to run this on W7 X64.
Screenshot enc
Any links to an alternative tool that will do this ...
I know that by using recimg, you can make a custom refresh image. And I hear that you cannot use it to reset Windows to factory state. is that so? if so, how do I do that?
Also, is it possible to store the recovery image in a hidden partition. hidden in the sense, the drive letter is not automatically assigned when you refresh/reset Windows, nor can you do it from Disk Management. only from diskpart. however, if i can still use reset while keeping the recovery image in a hidden folder in C: drive, that is still fine i guess.
The thing is, the recovery partition of my Dell Latitude 10 tablet is destroyed (it's Dell's fault though) and even though i can easily recover Windows as I have an iso image and can use the USB to reinstall windows like we normally do on our desktops, i want to sell the tablet and i want to make it recoverable via the recovery features in Windows 8. without the ability to recover, the value of the tablet will be pretty low. if all else fails, i will have to buy a cheap USB flash drive, make it a recovery drive and give it with the tablet. sucks!
It is fine if i have to update to Windows 8.1, if it makes it possible in Windows 8.1 even though it was not in Windows 8.
I bought my wife a new VAIO Sony laptop. It came with Windows 8 installed. She has been using a Toshiba laptop with Win7. She wants no part of Windows 8. (She is 84 years old) & spends a lot of time on her laptop.
I want to put Win7 on the Sony VAIO. I don't want to save anything on it. I want to make a Clean install by reformatting the HD. However, I know you can not completely reformat the HD because of the "System Reserved" partition. How to do a factory reformat?
Some time ago Installed Windows 7 on one of my Windows 8 computers. But during the install i had to delete all partitions and that was the recovery partition that had he recovery software on it. Well now I want to go back to Windows 8 and I don't really want to send my PC to Samsung for re imaging. But I have the image i made with the software before I installed Windows 8. All I need is to get the recover partition back with the software on it. I have 2 other Samsung computers that have the same software on it but I need to find a way to make a image of the recover partition so i can use my backup image for the computer.
View 2 Replies View RelatedI partitioned my hard disk into a 150GB (C) and 500GB (D) and upgraded from Win7 to Windows 8 (and subsequently Windows 8.1 after the recent updates). The OS is installed onto the C Drive.
Performed a Clean Installation of Windows 8 on my C Drive. Under the Choose What To Keep Option, I selected Nothing.
Technically speaking my C Drive would have been wiped clean but after the Windows 8 installation, my C Drive only has 5GB of space left (145GB is being used). The Windows 8 OS is not detecting any of the old programs in my C Drive and the automated Disk Clean up feature only offers removal of temporary internet files. Which brings me to one possible assumption...
The Clean Installation Failed. Windows 8 simply installed itself again on my C Drive and the remaining disk space (containing my previous Windows 8.1 OS and programs) is locked down somewhere. I suspect this had something to do with changing my HD format 3 years ago when I wiped clean my pre-loaded ASUS laptop Win7 and partitioned it to install my Windows 8.
How to remove my previous OS?
Is it possible not to have the partition "recovery"?
Because if you look at the two tutorials:
- UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 7 with - Windows 7 Forums
- UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 8 with
In the tutorial to install Windows 7 in UEFI, there is not that damn partition recovery, while in the tutorial for Windows 8, we can see it.
When I install Windows 7 (MBR mode), I avoid this partition "recovery" by creating a partition with a name before installation. I install the OS on it and everything is fine, no partition "recovery" But here, since one must delete all partitions, If I create a GPT disk with a partitioning tool before installing, is that it might be appropriate?
I just bought a new Gateway laptop that's come pre-installed with Windows 8.
I've just gone through the initial setup and before I use it, need to make the initial Windows 8 and system backup incase I need to restore the system should something go wrong.
I want to do this BEFORE anything (I've not even installed any anti-virus yet)...
I've had Win 7 Pro on my laptop for over a year. I installed a 2nd hard drive to it recently and today I installed Windows 8 Pro on the 2nd hard drive. It's been a roller coaster of good & bad luck.
The first install went fine, until I tried to install the Windows 8.1 upgrade from the Windows store, then things went bad and I had to go into Windows 7 and eventually delete the Windows 8 volume and change it from MBR to GPT because of UEFI (no secure boot enabled). What a stretch of error messages telling me I can't install Windows 8 on the blank hard drive because it was or wasn't MBR or GPT, or the automagically made partitions weren't in the right order.
After spending over 7 hours twice in a row installing Windows 8, I finally find out that there's no boot option for Windows 7 anymore.
The only clue I have is to use a Windows 7 repair disk and use diskpart.exe and make the Win 7 drive "active" but that's a little foreign to me at this point.
I'm looking in Computer Management / Disk Management from within Windows 8.
Disk 0: SYSTEM D: 438 MB NTFS (lengthened from 199 MB with EaseUS because Acronis 2014 thought it too small while crashing), Healthy (Active, Primary Partition); Win 7 E: 930.98 GB NTFS Healthy (Primary Partition); HP_TOOLS F: 102 MB FAT 32 Healthy (Primary Partition)
Disk 1: 300 MB Healthy (Recovery Partition) {no letter}; 100 MB Healthy (EFI System Partition) {no letter}; C: 931.00 GB NTFS Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)
And several other external disks which don't deserve mention today.
The computer I am using is a Dell Inspiron M5040 laptop.
I got a Samsung 840 Pro Series SSD to replace my HDD, and used the Samsung Software that came with it to image my OS over to the SSD. It had an error at first, so I removed my antivirus program and ran it again, and it worked.
Everything works pretty much the same, except for noticeable differences in search and Internet webpage access.
If I search in Explorer, the searches are fast and prompt. But if I search with the regular search charm ( WIN+S ), searches are more than 7x slower than on the previous HDD. Also, webpages a quick to load on different computers (not the internet speed, in other words). But this computer had slow loads, and now the loading is even slower on the new SSD.
Things I've tried:
Multiple SFC scans - all say there is some files that could not be fixed All windows updates installed enabled Trimm, updated SSD firmware, ran Windows SSD optimization, optimized computer for SSD use Reset Internet Explorer Rebuilt index
I'm thinking of ditching this slower laptop in favor of something... anything nearby. Regretting either imaging to another drive, or using Samsung to do it.
I am attempting to install Windows 8 (I currently have Vista) but Autorun doesn't work and when I attempt to access the disk in the CD ROM I am asked if I want to format the empty disk. I recently had to reformat the hard drive back to its factory settings (Vista O/S) for reasons I won't go into. The problem isn't limited to the installation disk.
View 3 Replies View RelatedFirst, some context: I have a Dell Inspiron 15R SE that came with Windows 8.
I've managed to get a working dual-boot system with Ubuntu 12.10. I can't remember exactly how I done that, but I remember that I had to disable secure boot. I think that the boot configuration those days was:
Secure boot: DisabledLoad legacy option rom: EnabledBoot list option: Legacy
This "configuration" worked perfectly for 6-7 months.
Then, one day (last week, can't remember the exact day), when I was using Windows 8 the computer crashed. I hard-rebooted and got this screen:
After executed boot-repair from a Ubuntu LiveCD dozens of times I've decided to eliminate Ubuntu temporarily and focus to get a system with Windows 8 working nice.
Then I used my recovery DVDs to recover the system. Yup, Windows has booted. But when I restarted first time I got the same error. Then I, digging a solution, pressed F12 after a reboot and got here:
The highlighted option allows me to boot into Windows 8. So I went to boot options (F2) and changed the following configuration:
Load legacy option rom: DisabledBoot list option: UEFI
Now I can boot directly to Windows without need to press F12.
But my objective isn't complete. I want to erase all Ubuntu entries from the seconds image and restore the legacy boot from the first imagem (because they worked before).
I did two things:
I erased all partitions related to Ubuntu (root partition and home partition).I created a Windows recovery disk (not a system recovery disk).
I used the recovery disk to run the automatic recovery procedure (I forgot the exactly name). I've runned it at least 10 times with no success. Then I went to command prompt to try the famous triad: bootrec /fixmbr, bootrec /fixboot and bootrec /rebuildbcd. Still, no solution.
After creating a UEFI bootable USB thumb drive with Rufus (using Windows 8.1 Enterprise ISO x64), for a Dell Optiplex 3010 (configured as UEFI only, no CSM, latest firmware version, Windows 8 installed), I didn't see a USB boot option, so I tried to add one manually. Unfortunately I erased the existing boot option (boot manager) by mistake. Although there were two boot options for PXE booting, the machine will not start anymore, even when there is an active WDS server on the network.
I also see Led's 2 and 3 lighting up, meaning according to the manual 'hardware ok but bios possibly damaged/corrupt'.
I understand I cannot start the machine from a bios boot disk because of GPT partitioning, and the UEFI USB boot disk I made might be corrupt (as it didn't show up as a boot option), however I don't understand why it won't boot from the PXE network card, as these boot options are still there.