Need advice on temporary main HDD (whilst waiting for replacement)

[Rakk]

Hi guys,

So, after a 30 min conversation with the PCS guys, I think we've come to the reason why I seem to be getting BSOD's (roughly every two weeks currently), the SSD is having issues, so a nice new one will be on it way to me and I'll have it on Thursday (yay warranty )

So, the advice I need, I want to take the SSD out before last thing on Wednesday (otherwise there will be panic), I have one secondary drive in there currently, so what's the easiest way of getting it working without the SSD (noting that my secondary drive is currently my only backup drive with enough space to hold most of my stuff - yes I know, I need a better backup plan)?

So, Install Win8 onto secondary drive whilst keeping all the data - is that doable?
Try and run Win7 off the secondary drive (it still has a Win7 installation on there - but it was installed in an entirely different machine) ? Not convinced this will work

I don't really want to take out the SSD and then have to wait til I've installed the new drive, and reinstalled everything before using said PC again, since I would like to wait til the weekend to reinstall - gives me more time to sort out what I do and do not want to reinstall and means I'm not trying to do it quickly one evening.

So yeah, any hints and tips would be very much appreciated.

 

[dogbot]

If ever there was a good time to think of a good back up plan .... NOW IS IT. So tell your wife it is your birthday next week and you have always wanted a large external USB drive.

You need to back up a disc image of the SSD. Also back up everything on the secondary drive. A file back up would probably be preferable but it depends what is on the drive. I assume you would not want to keep the W7 OS.

The only way to reinstall the image of the SSD to the secondary drive would be if the W7 OS is in its own partition and you installed the image into that partition, otherwise the whole secondary drive will be wiped during the install. Don't forget that to install the image, you will need to have created a bootable recovery disc using the backup software.

Even when the new drive comes, you would still need to install the disc image or clone from the old SSD to the new one. Either should only take a few minutes if you are prepared for it.

 

[Rakk]

If ever there was a good time to think of a good back up plan .... NOW IS IT. So tell your wife it is your birthday next week and you have always wanted a large external USB drive.

Hehe, well it was my birthday a month ago, but problems with your thoughts: a) I'm single and b) I'd be the wife

I think I might see if work has a spare external hard drive, cos the SSD is being swapped on Thursday, though I think I've got most of my stuff I don't want to lose onto my 160GB external hard drive.

I tried booting off the 2nd drive into Win7, yeah well that lasted all of about a second before it decided it wasn't playing and it rebooted.

I suspect a clean install on the new SSD is what I will do (theres some stuff on the current oen that I should probably remove anyways), it's just how to temporarily use the 2nd drive until I get time on Saturday to properly do the new install on the SSD

 

[ubuysa]

I'm with dogbot's disk image idea. So image the SSD (Macrium Reflect free would be my choice). Then, using Disk Management in Windows, shrink the partition on your backup disk so you have the space to add a new partition into which you can restore the SSD image (the new partition does not have to be exactly the same size, just big enough). You then just have to change the boot order in the BIOS.

When you get the new SSD you can do the reverse (image the HDD partition and restore it to the new SSD). I would then delete the system partition on the HDD (to avoid any boot issues) and expand the data partition back to fill the entire HDD.

I reckon that should work.

 

[Rakk]

I'll have a look at Macrium reflect this evening.
At the moment my 2nd hardrive has an old Win7 installation on it and two partitions - it refused boot off this drive so I don't need the old installation anymore.

So currently I have my SSD (C drive), the system reserved partition on the normal HDD (D drive - I currently just ignore this and pretend it's not there) and the rest of the normal HDD (E drive).
I presume I can remove the D drive partition and then shrink down the current E drive and then create another partition for the disc image (for whatever letter it picks)?
Then restore the disc image to the new partition, and boot from the new partition?

Does it matter where I save the initial image - can it be on the same physical drive (but diff partition) to where I will be restoring it to?

Does that sound correct or I am missing something obvious here?

 

[ubuysa]

So currently I have my SSD (C drive), the system reserved partition on the normal HDD (D drive - I currently just ignore this and pretend it's not there) and the rest of the normal HDD (E drive).
I presume I can remove the D drive partition and then shrink down the current E drive and then create another partition for the disc image (for whatever letter it picks)?

Yes, though you must ensure the partition you restore to is C: (because that's what your SSD was and internally Windows will have lots and lots of pointers to files on C:/Windows , so you cannot change the drive letter of the system partition). The image restore should restore the correct drive letter (C:/).

Then restore the disc image to the new partition, and boot from the new partition?

Yes. To keep things simple I would suggest you use Macrium Reflect to make a recovery CD/DVD (it's easy to do, it uses the WinPE system which makes it a handy recovery disk to have. The WinpE system is downloaded as part of making the recovery disk, it's real easy to do). Then create an image of your SSD, shutdown, remove the SSD, insert the Macrium recovery disk and boot it. You can then do the restore from the Marcrium recovery system.

I'm suggesting that way because at no point will you then have both the original SSD and the restored image of that SSD (on the HDD) active in the system. That will avoid any conflicts etc.

Does it matter where I save the initial image - can it be on the same physical drive (but diff partition) to where I will be restoring it to?

No it doesn't matter, it can be anywhere, as long as it's on a device the Macrium recovery system can see (which means all fixed disks and all externally attached disks).

You can put it in another partition on the same physical disk as the partition you're restoring to.

Does that sound correct or I am missing something obvious here?

I think that's all good. I'd backup everything in the data (E:/) partition on your HDD to somewhere else though first. Just in cases.

BTW. Don't forget you'll also need to ensure the HHD boots before any other disk in the BIOS boot list.

 

[Rakk]

So I've just tried to restore an image, however it tells me there are too many partitions to be able to restore the image: this is what the Macrium Reflect screen showed, so the image that I took had 6 diff partitions - no I don't know why.

I would post the error message but I could only see that when I was on the Windows PE boot and I forgot to screenshot it.


Don't suppose anyone knows how I could get past this?
I am trying to restore to the 'New Volume' on the Local Disk I had selected.

 

[Rakk]

And an update.

Well, I found out why it wouldn't work, multiple reasons in fact, the disks are different formats, one is GPT, one is MBR which I think mean sit wouldn't work anyways.
MBR disks can't have more than 4 partitions and I was trying to add an extra 6 to the one already there, also my partition that I was trying to move it onto wasn't quite big enough, needed to be big enough for the whole drive whether it had anything on it or not - that I prolly could have fixed.

So yeah, given I do not have another hard drive to spare, I can't really get this awesome plan to work
Will have to print off instruction how to restore, take drive out last thing tomorrow, hand over drive on Thurs, get new drive, put image on it when I get home and hope.

 

[dogbot]

Yes, though you must ensure the partition you restore to is C: (because that's what your SSD was and internally Windows will have lots and lots of pointers to files on C:/Windows , so you cannot change the drive letter of the system partition). The image restore should restore the correct drive letter (C:/).

I have to differ Ubuysa, a drive containing an OS can be any drive letter (mine are O and P). It is only when an OS is selected at boot up that the drive becomes C by default.

Rakk, I do not know anything about GPT but even discounting that problem, that SSD is a mess. None of them is a standard reserved partition (100 or 350 MB), ??? the FAT32, Unformatted not required, in fact the only one you want is the 5 Windows partition and possibly 4 Recovery image but only if you do not have a Windows disc. Even if you could install these 2 you would still need to use a Windows install or repair disc to repair the boot sequence to build the boot files which should go in system reserved but can go anywhere.

Personally, my advice would be to wait for the new SSD and do a completely new Windows install. This will ensure the correct SSD offset and creation of the system reserved partition. It will take a bit of work installing drivers etc but, hell, no pain no gain.

There are ways to transfer settings from an old OS to a new one but I have never used one.

 

[ubuysa]

Thanks dogbot, the drive letters are of course assigned by Windows on boot.

The GPT/MBR issue is a total showstopper for this plan. Waiting for the new SSD is your safest option now.

Many modern computers come with complex partition arrangements, especially if they are GPT. It's not a big deal because, apart from Windows and the recovery partition they are tiny. The first NTFS partition is probably boot, not sure what the FAT32 one is for, the third is just unallocated space (possibly for sector alignment on an HDD?), the Recovery and Windows partitions are obvious, but I have no idea what the last NTFS partition is for.

Since you have a (useful) recovery partition and the "wasted" space is less than 4GB I'd leave things as they are if it were mine.

Sorry I couldn't get you sorted!

 

[Rakk]

Thanks for the help anyways guys

The very helpful guy (Matthew possibly - I'm terrible at remembering who I was talking to) who I spoke to at PCS about imaging using Macrium Reflect was the one who pointed out why it wouldn't work
He also said that the multiple partitions was the way their automated system installed Windows - since I asked cos I was curious.
And yeah since the 5 (not useable by me) partitions are all small anyways I was just going to leave as is.

 

[ubuysa]

It was an interesting thought experiment in any case. And it kept dogbot and me amused for a while too.

I hope you don't have to wait too long for your new SSD.

 

[Rakk]

It was an interesting thought experiment in any case. And it kept dogbot and me amused for a while too.

If I had had a spare hard drive lying around I may have been able to sort something else out, however since I don't that stopped that plan.

I hope you don't have to wait too long for your new SSD.

It's an advanced replacement swap tomorrow, so tonight I'll disconnect the SSD, put it in a box, then go to work in the morning with said SSD, wait for the DPD guy to show up, do the swap, then watch the clock til I can go home and then try and restore the image, so presuming no spanners get thrown in the works for the image restore I shouldn't be missing the machine for too long

 

[dogbot]

Best of luck Rakk. When you get to the point when you say "I wish I had ...... ", it wasn't my fault. :smartass:

 

[ubuysa]

Best of luck Rakk. When you get to the point when you say "I wish I had ...... ", it wasn't my fault. :smartass:

Oh yes it was! (It is still pantomime season isn't it?). :arabia:

 

[dogbot]

(It is still pantomime season isn't it?). :arabia:

Why am I always the back end of the horse.

 

[Rakk]

So as a quick update:

Grumble grumble grumble .....
So despite me getting texts and emails from both PCS and DPD yesterday to say it had been dispatched, I got an email this morning saying that DPD didn't actually have it yet, talked to PCS briefly and they're making sure it is properly getting sent out today for delivery tomorrow, but this leaves me with an issue since I formatted the drive last thing last night: I now have no boot drive for my PC for tonight!

So the choices: restore the image back onto the SSD, use PC for this evening, then format the drive again last thing (which involves starting to reinstall Win8 to be able to do that), or don't use the PC tonight at all .......... noting that I was supposed to be meeting up with some friends in the game I play at 7 this evening (with no other way to contact them than in game).

Grumble grumble grumble

 

[dogbot]

Why not go out tonight and join the throngs of people going to the cinema/ dance/ pub/ restaurant and engage in something called 'conversation'. I'm told this can be difficult for gamers so, before you go out, practice moving the jaw and tongue in synchronisation to form 'words'.

However, if the streets are empty, you know everyone is indoors on their computer waiting for you.

 

[ubuysa]

Why not go out tonight and join the throngs of people going to the cinema/ dance/ pub/ restaurant and engage in something called 'conversation'. I'm told this can be difficult for gamers so, before you go out, practice moving the jaw and tongue in synchronisation to form 'words'.

However, if the streets are empty, you know everyone is indoors on their computer waiting for you.

I'm with dogbot, try the real world! There is a bar in the port here in Agios Nikolaos with a sign on the door that reads "No WiFi, talk to each other".

You can do without the PC for a night, can't you?

 

[Rakk]

You can do without the PC for a night, can't you?

Just
Yes, I did indeed survive the night without my PC, I watched films and TV all evening.

And now I have my new SSD (DPD turned up with it a few mins ago) - and its staring at me.