How to Set an Already-Cloned Solid State Drive to a Boot Drive

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TyMySh0e32

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Hello, I recently bought a 120gb SSD. I installed it, and cloned all the files I wished from my existing HDD to it, which included windows. My only problem is I cannot boot off of it (I think) because it is not registered as a boot drive. And yes I set it as the boot priority in the BIOS.

Here's what I mean:
http://prntscr.com/aik3zq - My HDD
http://prntscr.com/aik4e8 - My SDD

I have scoured the internet for an answer to this, but I have found only one way to do it, and it requires purchasing a $30 software, which I do not wish to purchase.

Just for some more information, I used EaseUS Todo Backup Workstation 9.1 to clone and backup everything, and the $30 program is EaseUS Partition Master Professional 10.8
 
Solution
drtweak
Ok wait wait wait. You have a EFI style partition scheme going on here and this is why we I needed the screen shot of the disk manager.

EVEN IF you get your data down to 105GB here is the thing, you have 5 total partitions you have to consider.

Luckly for some reason you have 3 Recovery Partitions that are totally empty which i have no idea why.

Now the thing is you CAN NOT just clone the C drive!

You may get away with cloning just the first 3 partitions

(1.22 GB, Recovery, 937 MB EFI, 881GB C Drive)

For EFI drives the drive HAS to be formatted as GPT which requires the EFI System partition.

I would use Macrium and drag down the first 3 partitions, ignore the last 2, and then clone and try again.

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ArtPog

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It's conceivable something went awry with the disk-cloning operation. That's always a possibility.
Your HDD reflects disk capacity (presumably contents) of some 881 GB. Were you able to clone the entire data contents of that disk over to the 120 GB?
Perhaps your HDD was multi-partitioned and your OS was contained in a separate partition so that its contents could "fit" onto the 120 GB SSD? Is that it?
What's the story here?
 
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TyMySh0e32

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Well, I had backed up my original HDD on to an external drive, then I deleted a bunch of documents and other stuff off of the HDD and got it down to about 105 gigs. That's when I cloned it over to the SSD. I have the trial version of EaseUS Partition Master 10.8 and there is this option http://prntscr.com/aimi2r which is what I think I need. But as I mentioned before, this is only the trial version and requires me to purchase the $30 version to use this option.
 
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drtweak

drtweak

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Download Macrium Reflect and try that.

Also can we get a screen shot of Disk Managament?

Click start --> Right click My Computer --> Manage --> Expand Storage IF you don't see Disk Managment below it if you see it just click on it. Give us a screen shot of this window here.
 
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ArtPog

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You really don't need that $30 option to achieve your objective of cloning the approx. 105 GB of data (of course, that includes the OS, right?) over to your 120 GB SSD. The Macrium Reflect Free program should work just fine on what amounts to a straight disk-to-disk clone so try that program. Download from...
http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

The crucial point is that your HDD as it now stands boots & functions without any problems.
 
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TyMySh0e32

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http://prntscr.com/aioo7u
 
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TyMySh0e32

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So you're suggesting I just format my SSD, then re-clone my HDD onto it with the Macrium Reflect Free program?
 
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mjslakeridge

mjslakeridge

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I don't think you need to re-format the SSD. Cloning the HDD to it should overwrite the existing data. Also be aware that you should not get the SSD too "full". I have seen recommendations here on Tom's about keeping the size of the data to about 85% of capacity. Perhaps there are some additional programs you can remove from the HDD before cloning. Keeping in mind that over time Windows updates will write more and more data to it.
 
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TyMySh0e32

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Ok, thanks. I will go clone it again now.
 
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drtweak

drtweak

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Ok wait wait wait. You have a EFI style partition scheme going on here and this is why we I needed the screen shot of the disk manager.

EVEN IF you get your data down to 105GB here is the thing, you have 5 total partitions you have to consider.

Luckly for some reason you have 3 Recovery Partitions that are totally empty which i have no idea why.

Now the thing is you CAN NOT just clone the C drive!

You may get away with cloning just the first 3 partitions

(1.22 GB, Recovery, 937 MB EFI, 881GB C Drive)

For EFI drives the drive HAS to be formatted as GPT which requires the EFI System partition.

I would use Macrium and drag down the first 3 partitions, ignore the last 2, and then clone and try again.

 
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Solution
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TyMySh0e32

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Oh, wow thanks a lot I see now. I have those extra partitions because I've done this before a little while ago, from a laptop's hard drive to my current HDD, and my idiot friend thought he knew what he was doing and split it into a billion partitions. But I will re-clone it with the first three partitions and hopefully it will work!
 
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drtweak

drtweak

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Glad you got it. Yea got to be careful. you need any partitions BEFORE the C drive for any kind of booting to work without doing any fancy editing. you CAN get it to work with only the C drive but not without a repair disk and knowing what you are doing. For cloning it is best to just clone it is. It doesnt use a lot of space.

And i uncheck your solution before so you can pick the right one.
 
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ArtPog

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Well, if someone can explain to me how the OP is currently booting to his 120 GB SSD I would be very interested in knowing how.

He/she is obviously booting to his 1 TB HDD - the drive that assuredly contains his/her OS. (At least if we accept the screenshot of the OP's system as a snapshot of his/her current system).

If the OP desires to create the 120 GB SSD as the boot drive then some serious manipulations of the data contents on one or both of the two installed drives would need to be undertaken.

As the situation apparently now stands the SSD contains about 105 GB of data. It's obviously completely full of data. What this data is we don't know.

The (apparently) current boot drive - the 1 TB HDD - contains about 107 GB of data which, of course, includes the OS. We can ignore the empty four other partitions on that disk.

So in total the OP's system contains about 212 GB of data. So if he/she can prune that down to about 100 GB (including the OS of course), then it would be possible to create a bootable 120 GB SSD and use the 1 TB for storage/backup purposes.
 
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drtweak

drtweak

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He trimmed his 1TB down to 105GB of data and then cloned it once. He cloned it wrong the first time because he ONLY cloned the C Drive and not the uEFI partition that is needed to BOOT. Once I got him to post a screen shot of Disk Management and what partitions to copy over he was then able to boot.

Yes his SSD is pretty much now maxed out with 111GB of space and he will have to find ways to get it down even more BUT now that he has a 1TB drive for DATA he can move whatever he wants there.

When you clone a drive you OVERWRITE EVERYTHING on it so even if it has 107GB of data before it isn't 105+107. Whatever is on the source disk is now what ever the target disk is.
 
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ArtPog

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Thanks for the clarification.
 
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