SOLVED hdd dying. Can I put saved image on new SSD?

[bj33813]

Second device just got win10 logo in taskbar yesterday, but now windows says my hdd has bad sectors and I cannot access it properly. I have a saved Macrium image I made several days ago. Can I put it onto a new SSD and will my existing valid keys still work so that I can get the upgrade?

Fingers crossed.

 

[Trouble]

Although I'm not a Macrium user (Acronis True Image instead), if you've created a full disk image using your choice of software, I would expect it to work.

That's exactly what I did when I upgraded my Wife's Windows 7 computer.
Made a disk image with Acronis, bought her a new SSD, booted from Acronis Rescue Media with external drive containing the disk image attached (new SSD installed also).
Recovered the image to the new SSD, rebooted and all was good, with her machine.
Set her old hard drive on the shelf (just in case).
Then I performed the upgrade on the new SSD.

 

[bj33813]

Thank you, will try it your way less the acronis of course. 2nd or 3rd time you've been a help.

 

[Trouble]

2nd or 3rd time you've been a help.

Hopefully.


Keep us posted.
One way or the other, I would like to know how Macrium Reflect does. I know a lot of people swear by it.

 

[bj33813]

Let me muddy my question a bit since you're pretty smart:

Can I format that new SSD with GPT instead of MBR before placing the saved image onto it? My motherboard supports UEFI as well as BIOS, and UEFI seems to have advantages. I do have the original dvd install disk, but not looking forward to hours of updates. I do have the instructions for such formatting.

 

[Trouble]

since you're pretty smart:

Obviously you haven't been talking to my wife.

Can I format that new SSD with GTP instead of MBR before placing the saved image onto it?

Interesting question.
You could certainly try.
Typically when a UEFI system boots it defaults to "Windows Boot Manager"
I know that during the recovery steps, when Acronis encounters a pre-partitioned drive it will generally ask you during the process which partitions from the recovery image you wish to place where on the target drive.

To be honest I've never tried it and if I were to attempt anything similar I would likely use acronis to backup only specific partitions.
The one containing the Windows installation and any additional partition that contains my data.
Then after the upgrade I would perform a custom clean install of Windows 10.
Understanding in advance that I would set the BIOS to UEFI and install / boot from media that supported UEFI / GPT using DiskPart (F10 at the pick your language screen) to wipe the drive "clean".
And then examine the existing partitions, resizing if needed, adding if needed to insure they were of the appropriate size
and then use Acronis to recover those partitions and only those partitions to their respective locations.

And along the way make beaucoup disk images so I always had a strong fall back position.

But then that's just me and as my wife often reminds me.... "what do you know!"

 

[bj33813]

I partitioned the SSD as a GPT with cmd prompt as admin
Open the diskpart tool:
diskpart
Identify the drive to reformat:
list disk
Select the drive, and reformat it:
select disk 0
clean
convert gpt
exit
looks ok, shows as gtp in disk mgmt
then I cloned win10 using macrium tho macrium showed the disk as 200 something MB and the rest greyed out, so had to delete the partition to get it to take clone (wanted to use acronis trial version but it did not support cloning)
shut down pc,
unplugged the orig win10hdd in slot 1
Started pc with SSD still in slot 0,
looked at system in ssd and windows shows validated, so far so good.
Ran the aligning procedure in cmd prompt as admin

Diskpart
List disk
Select disk 0
Create partition primary align=1024
Active
Exit
and rebooted.
Started up ok and using it right now.
Did not save as a gpt tho, shows ntfs in disk mgmt I guess since I had to delete the partition for macrium.
I had tried to remove the user folders to get it to a smaller file for copying and to move user files to new partition as Data, but the windows tool in a tutorial I found on 10forums.com didnt work after running it and rebooting. So much for them!

Still like to try the GPT format tho, but not sure how & be able to load win10 onto it.
Thx for your help Trouble

 

[Trouble]

then I cloned win10 using macrium

You cloned and by its' very definition is a bit by bit duplicate of the source drive onto the target drive.
Unlike a Disk Image or Partition Image. Which images "used space" and you can even tell it to ignore bad sectors.