My best buddy gave me a 120GB Samsung SSD for Christmas, I finally finished cleaning out my main OS drive and got it down to 90GB.
Scouring the internet I prepped my Windows install for cloning over to the SSD. I enabled TRIM, I changed my SATA to AHCI in my Bios, I disabled hibernation (but left paging on), I defragged using Defraggler then uninstalled my higher end defrag utility and disabled Windows defrag, I also turned indexing off (this took a while).
I installed the SSD, used Windows Disk Management to format it as NTSF with 1024 blocks and set it to active and assigned drive letter S. I then used EaseUS Todo to clone my 1TB C: drive with my current windows install over to the SSD, I used the option to "Clone Drive" and checked the box for SSD optimization.
I verified all the files made it over to the SSD, powered off my PC, then proceeded to unplug every SATA device except for the SSD.
The SSD would not boot, I used my Windows recovery USB drive to repair windows. This time it booted but took me to the dreaded not-activated Windows screen, nothing would load except the kernel, the shell explorer.exe failed to run, I was stuck on the blue not activated desktop background. Using my technical knowledge I opened the task manager and told windows to run explorer.exe and managed to start up Firefox and get access to Windows Explorer. Turns out my SSD assigned itself the drive leter E: because C: was in use??? I checked the links on my desktop and they all pointed to C:\Program Files\etc... So I plugged my other drives back in and Booted form the SSD once again. Boom everything was running, but it was all running from the wrong drive, everything was pointing back to the C: drive but I had booted up to the E: drive.
Thinking myself smart I used Windows Disk Management to reletter the C: drive to B:. Drive was in use, reboot required. No problem. However once I reboot all the links to C: were gone (as expected since it was now B) and I was back to the Blue background with no explorer.exe running. Try as I might I could not access device manager, disk management, or even command prompt and had no way to re-letter the SSD to C:.
If anyone knows of a way to successfully clone a drive or fix this drive letter issue I'm all ears, I could really use your expert advice.
As of right now I've reinstalled Windows 7 to the SSD but I've spent years getting everything just how I like it including carefully balancing drivers and manually fixing many issues and bugs (such as the Adobe Flash secure mode bug). Hundreds if not thousands of little tweaks.
All in all I'd almost rather do with an SSD than have to start from scratch. I'm considering trying to find a backup and restore solution instead since I now have plenty of extra space to make a full backup of my Working Windows drive but I have no idea which backup solution would bring over all the information I want which includes all the drivers and system registry info.
The SSD is currently setup and working with a fresh Windows 7 install and is identifying itself as C: and Assiged the letter D to the working Win7 drive.
If it's needed here's a DxDiag run from my working Win7 drive: http://pastebin.com/6Na2r3xH
I'm also running an ASUS Crossfire IV motherboard if it's relevant.
Scouring the internet I prepped my Windows install for cloning over to the SSD. I enabled TRIM, I changed my SATA to AHCI in my Bios, I disabled hibernation (but left paging on), I defragged using Defraggler then uninstalled my higher end defrag utility and disabled Windows defrag, I also turned indexing off (this took a while).
I installed the SSD, used Windows Disk Management to format it as NTSF with 1024 blocks and set it to active and assigned drive letter S. I then used EaseUS Todo to clone my 1TB C: drive with my current windows install over to the SSD, I used the option to "Clone Drive" and checked the box for SSD optimization.
I verified all the files made it over to the SSD, powered off my PC, then proceeded to unplug every SATA device except for the SSD.
The SSD would not boot, I used my Windows recovery USB drive to repair windows. This time it booted but took me to the dreaded not-activated Windows screen, nothing would load except the kernel, the shell explorer.exe failed to run, I was stuck on the blue not activated desktop background. Using my technical knowledge I opened the task manager and told windows to run explorer.exe and managed to start up Firefox and get access to Windows Explorer. Turns out my SSD assigned itself the drive leter E: because C: was in use??? I checked the links on my desktop and they all pointed to C:\Program Files\etc... So I plugged my other drives back in and Booted form the SSD once again. Boom everything was running, but it was all running from the wrong drive, everything was pointing back to the C: drive but I had booted up to the E: drive.
Thinking myself smart I used Windows Disk Management to reletter the C: drive to B:. Drive was in use, reboot required. No problem. However once I reboot all the links to C: were gone (as expected since it was now B) and I was back to the Blue background with no explorer.exe running. Try as I might I could not access device manager, disk management, or even command prompt and had no way to re-letter the SSD to C:.
If anyone knows of a way to successfully clone a drive or fix this drive letter issue I'm all ears, I could really use your expert advice.
As of right now I've reinstalled Windows 7 to the SSD but I've spent years getting everything just how I like it including carefully balancing drivers and manually fixing many issues and bugs (such as the Adobe Flash secure mode bug). Hundreds if not thousands of little tweaks.
All in all I'd almost rather do with an SSD than have to start from scratch. I'm considering trying to find a backup and restore solution instead since I now have plenty of extra space to make a full backup of my Working Windows drive but I have no idea which backup solution would bring over all the information I want which includes all the drivers and system registry info.
The SSD is currently setup and working with a fresh Windows 7 install and is identifying itself as C: and Assiged the letter D to the working Win7 drive.
If it's needed here's a DxDiag run from my working Win7 drive: http://pastebin.com/6Na2r3xH
I'm also running an ASUS Crossfire IV motherboard if it's relevant.
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