Windows 10: rebuilding win 10 onto a smaller ssd from faulty hdd

Discus and support rebuilding win 10 onto a smaller ssd from faulty hdd in Windows 10 Support to solve the problem; Hi, I would appreciate some advice please. In the past I have been happy cloning previous Windows OS with old style Bios and the coa for reactivating.... Discussion in 'Windows 10 Support' started by robmar0se, May 17, 2017.

  1. robmar0se Win User

    rebuilding win 10 onto a smaller ssd from faulty hdd


    Hi, I would appreciate some advice please. In the past I have been happy cloning previous Windows OS with old style Bios and the coa for reactivating. I am uncomfortable about cloning the system onto a smaller drive, Do the recovery partitions functionality get lost in the process? I would normally backup all personal data first, then restore system to factory settings, then clone over to the new drive, finally restore programs and data.

    I don't have much experience of Using DISM, in the above scenario do I need it? Further, I am concerned about loosing the COA link which I believe is held in EUFI.

    The 18 month old Pavilion 17-g036sa win 10 home failed with ntfs errors - I was able to get it back via use of chkdsk & sfc - CHKdsk reported 12 bad sectors and actually reported that it had run out of spare sectors. SFC also reported that it was unable to recover all files. Subsequently I did manage to reboot the system. But as a precaution we plan to replace the 1tb hdd with a 250gbSSD ( we were only using 100gb on the hdd).

    Would appreciate yr views on the process on Win 10 - not had many occasions yet with WIn 10 to do this.

    thank you.

    :)
     
    robmar0se, May 17, 2017
    #1
  2. slance310 Win User

    hard drive change

    Hi,

    Be advised that the recovery media probably won't install to a smaller drive...

    I ran into this issue with a HP laptop that I switched from a 500GB HDD to a 256GB SSD...

    I had to make an image of the HDD with Acronis TrueImage, and then load the image onto the SSD..
     
    slance310, May 17, 2017
    #2
  3. Installing the Win 10 upgrade on a new hard drive

    Quick note: I found out it is possible to download WIN 10 onto a flash drive, disconnect my hard drive, then install W10 to the smaller SSD.
     
    MetisLight, May 17, 2017
    #3
  4. spunk Win User

    rebuilding win 10 onto a smaller ssd from faulty hdd

    In a UEFI Bios, the product key is held on the Bios ROM chip, so you do not need to retype it in if you change HDD's and or Reinstall Windows.
    Most Cloning programs allow you to clone a larger HDD to a smaller one as long as the Used space does not exceed the smaller drives capacity. However, if the larger HDD has bad sectors, the files that reside on these bad sectors will have corrupted files, and the cloned drive may not boot correctly or have other issues.
    This is a good strategy, but a new HDD or SSD will not have access to the recovery partition to install. It is best to do a clean install of Windows.
    You can download an ISO image of Windows 10 from Microsoft and create a bootable DVD or USB Flash drive. Download Windows 10
     
    spunk, May 17, 2017
    #4
  5. Samuria Win User
    On no account clone the drive if you do it will write the bad blocks to the new drive
     
    Samuria, May 17, 2017
    #5
  6. NavyLCDR New Member
    I would do a clean install from a freshly created Windows 10 installation USB flash drive. Your Windows 10 activation is either from a product key stored in UEFI/BIOS or from a digital license stored on MS activation servers. Re-install the same version of Windows 10 to the same computer (motherboard), and it will re-active itself without needing you to enter a product key.
     
    NavyLCDR, May 17, 2017
    #6
  7. dalchina New Member
    As you're installing a SSD, remember to configure AHCI in the BIOS if not already set so you can get best performance from your SSD.

    You will need to do what you can to extract any data you need from your failing HDD, assuming you don't have backups. (I hope you do).

    If you now install Win 10 afresh, it will be the Creator's Build, a major upgrade I guess you've not yet used. So make sure that's ok on your system before proceeding.


    Download Windows 10 ISO File Windows 10 Installation Upgrade Tutorials
    Create Bootable USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 10 Windows 10 Installation Upgrade Tutorials
    Clean Install Windows 10 Windows 10 Installation Upgrade Tutorials

    Note- a DVD is a really easy way to do this is you have a DVD drive- burn the ISO to a DVD.

    When you have Win 10 running happily, take the time to create your first disk image.

    (E.g. Macrium Reflect (free) + its boot medium + an external drive large enough for, say 2x your imaged data).

    (If you had had a disk image, you could probably have avoided doing a clean install, and you would have had a full backup).

    Here's my write-up on the value of disk imaging.

    Everyone who contributes regularly here uses and recommends disk imaging.

    Creating disk images lets you restore Windows and all your imaged disks and partitions to a previous working state from compressed copies you have created and kept updated on external storage media, quickly and probably without technical help.

    You can recover from:
    - a failed disk drive (restore to a new one)
    - ransomware (which encrypts your disk)
    - user error
    - unrecoverable problems from failed updates to problem programs
    - unbootable PC (hardware faults aside)

    Images also act as a full backup- you can extract files too.

    You can even use images to help you move more easily and quickly to a new PC.
    Can be used with Laplink software to transfer your build automatically to another PC

    Imaging can even help you sleep at night knowing you have a second chance.

    Many here recommend Macrium Reflect (free) as a good robust solution and more reliable than some others. It’s
    - more feature rich
    - more flexible
    - more reliable
    than Windows Backup and Restore system images.

    It's well supported with videos, help and a responsive forum.

    There are other such programs, free/commercial, some with simpler interfaces, but Macrium R is one of the most robust and reliable.

    How long does it take?
    SSD+ USB3 - maybe 15 mins for the first system image, less thereafter
    HDD + USB2 - maybe 40-50 mins
    That’s with little personal data, few programs installed.
    - of course, depends how much you have on C:
    (You can and should image all your partitions and disks)

    Once you've created your first image, keep it updated with e.g. differential imaging- which images just changes from the first image, more quickly, and creates a smaller image file.

    You need a backup medium - say- twice as large as the total amount of data you are imaging to keep a reasonable number of differential images. This will vary dependent on the number of images you keep, so is only a rough practical guide.

    Some comment that system restore isn't always reliable; if it works and solves the problem, great. But sometimes restores won't work or fail. And of course a restore point only covers a limited number of aspects of the system. That’s where disk imaging comes in.

    (There's a tutorial on Macrium in the Tutorials section, and a couple of videos in the user videos section on this forum)
    Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect Windows 10 Backup Restore Tutorials
    Windows 10 instructional videos by Ten Forums members
     
    dalchina, Apr 4, 2018
    #7
Thema:

rebuilding win 10 onto a smaller ssd from faulty hdd

Loading...
  1. rebuilding win 10 onto a smaller ssd from faulty hdd - Similar Threads - rebuilding onto smaller

  2. Can I separate and move the boot partition from an old HDD to a smaller HDD or SSD?

    in Windows 10 Gaming
    Can I separate and move the boot partition from an old HDD to a smaller HDD or SSD?: I have a 3TB HDD that I have been using for many years, and it is starting to slow down. is there any way I can move my boot data onto a smaller HDD or SSD and keep my current HDD as a storage drive? all the guides online are talking about moving from one drive to another of...
  3. Can I separate and move the boot partition from an old HDD to a smaller HDD or SSD?

    in Windows 10 Software and Apps
    Can I separate and move the boot partition from an old HDD to a smaller HDD or SSD?: I have a 3TB HDD that I have been using for many years, and it is starting to slow down. is there any way I can move my boot data onto a smaller HDD or SSD and keep my current HDD as a storage drive? all the guides online are talking about moving from one drive to another of...
  4. Moving OS onto an SSD from HDD

    in Windows 10 Gaming
    Moving OS onto an SSD from HDD: I am wanting to swap my windows 10 from my HDD to my SSD, I was wondering if I choose to reinstall windows will it give me the option of where I install it, or will it automatically go to the disk it was already installed on?...
  5. Moving OS onto an SSD from HDD

    in Windows 10 Software and Apps
    Moving OS onto an SSD from HDD: I am wanting to swap my windows 10 from my HDD to my SSD, I was wondering if I choose to reinstall windows will it give me the option of where I install it, or will it automatically go to the disk it was already installed on?...
  6. Moving OS onto an SSD from HDD

    in Windows 10 Installation and Upgrade
    Moving OS onto an SSD from HDD: I am wanting to swap my windows 10 from my HDD to my SSD, I was wondering if I choose to reinstall windows will it give me the option of where I install it, or will it automatically go to the disk it was already installed on?...
  7. Cloned HDD onto SSD, managed to boot from SSD, formatted HDD, now SSD won't boot

    in Windows 10 BSOD Crashes and Debugging
    Cloned HDD onto SSD, managed to boot from SSD, formatted HDD, now SSD won't boot: Full details - I bought a new Samsung SSD for my laptop, put it into the spare M.2 NVME slot, cloned my OEM installed SSD onto it using Samsung Data Migration, removed the OEM SSD, booted from the new one and it worked like a charm. Now, I tried to do the same thing with my...
  8. Moving Boot from HDD to new SSD in Win 10

    in Windows 10 Installation and Upgrade
    Moving Boot from HDD to new SSD in Win 10: My old computer went "bad" (I suspect that Windows updates became increasingly incompatible with my seven year-old hardware), so I decided to upgrade my motherboard, CPU and add a new SSD NVMe drive. I would like to boot from my SSD and run Adobe Photoshop 6.0 on it, but all...
  9. Transfer Win 10 from SSD - HDD

    in Windows 10 Updates and Activation
    Transfer Win 10 from SSD - HDD: I bought a laptop from a pawn shop ( old one was dying ). The "new" machine has very small SSD ( 110gb ) and I want to replace it with an HDD ( 1TB ) I recently purchased? The following image is the output from a Powershell command I found here on the forums. It's a retail...
  10. Win 10 on both HDD and SSD?

    in Windows 10 Drivers and Hardware
    Win 10 on both HDD and SSD?: I will buy a SSD for my Acer desktop and install Win 10 on it and other programs I have on my computer. If I do a clean install of Win 10 on my SSD, do I have to delte Win 10 on the HDD first? I guess it is not allowed having two Windows 10 on the same computer (both...