I have gone down the SSD rabbit hole

Paul Oberman

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I am having an issue with a dell optiplex 745 which I tried to migrate over to a 240 gig ssd.

The original drive was only 80gig, so there were no size mismatches.

The current machine has windows vista on it and I have a new oem window 7 disk to upgrade to.

So first I connected the ssd and used computer management tools to get it coming up on the box.

I then used easeUS todo, to clone the start up disk to the ssd.

I then tried to boot. No go. I then tried to use easyBCD to fix the BCD on the newly cloned ssd.

Now the machine wouldn't boot at all. Just says the bcd isn't valid.

So then I tried to start up from the windows disk, to find that my samsung dvd drive will read any dvd, except the windows install disk. It just spins for a minute, trying to read it, and then turns off.

Apparently this is an issue for more than a few people.

So, now every time I try and start, it says that I it didn't find the SATA drive and that I need to hit f1 to continue of f2 to go into bios. If I hit f1 I have the option to start windows normally and it starts from the old drive.

I can't even get the new SSD to mount anymore, as if it is connected the computer wont start.

My hope was to migrate to the SSD and then upgrade it to windows 7.

I remember now that I had issues with this dvd drive in the past, so I looked at the drive and it was showing up as a cd reader. Went to dell and downloaded the bios updater for the drive and it shows up fine now. Still won't read the windows disk, but everything else works fine.

Going to buy another dvd drive in the morning, to see if I can get the Windows disk to mount.

So now, I need to figure out how to get the SSD back mounted and clone the startup disk to it.

I feel like I am inventing cold fusion here.

Please, if anyone has a clear path to straightening this out I would appreciate it.
 

Paul Oberman

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Not sure which setting that is. I have stock dell bios. The big thing is that I can't even connect the ssd now. Nothing will boot with it connected. I the easybsd app I ran changed the bsd and now Windows says that there isn't a a valid boot partition. I can't even connect the drive, after start up, to wipe it.

 

trekzone

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You can enter BIOS setup by hitting F2 on your keyboard during POST. Then under DRIVES>SATA Operation change NORMAL to LEGACY and then save your settings. Your Windows 7 setup disk may then be able to detect your SATA drive.
 

Paul Oberman

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Even if the system can't see the drive, when it's connected?

I guess the first step is to get a DVD drive that will read the windows disk.

I just wanted to touch clone the installation of Vista, before upgrading. I don't want to have to install all my apps again. I guess if I can get the windows disk to spin up, maybe we I can do the install on the ssd. All my info was already cloned. It is just getting it to boot that isn't working. If I could just fix the boot problem, then upgrading it would be a snap
 

Paul Oberman

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I thought that was what I was doing with easybsd. Was there a different way to do it?

If that's the case, is there a way to get the drive to mount, now that I have mucked it up.?
 

trekzone

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Assuming you have cloned your old HDD correctly to your new drive. You can use Disk Management to make the system partition of the clone drive Active. Right click the system partition of the drive and Mark partition as Active.
 

Paul Oberman

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okay that is something that I didn't do. Obviously I made a mistake. I am curious about how now to get the drive to mount, as I can't seem to get into anything and get it recognize

 

Paul Oberman

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So, it was a convergence of issues.

1. DVD writer, by Samsung, has reputation of not reading windows disks.
2. I did not authorize ssd properly after cloning.
3. Bios was showing the drive, but needed windows disk to fix the boot elements.

Another issue, after getting the ssd to mount, was that I was migrating from a 32bit to a 64bit os. Can't do that.

Everything up now and I have to say that it is night and day. between the added memory, 64bit os, and ssd this computer really is surprisingly fast.

I wonder what will happen if I shove a q6700 processor and a decent video card in it???