Windows 10: SSD upgrade, cloning W10, and recovery partition

I just bought a new SSD, San Disk ultra II 960GB. I want to install it in my Samsung Ativbook. The computer originally came with windows 8 but I did the free upgrade to 10. Ever since I upgraded, the computer is running much slower and takes a lot longer to boot. As a result, I bought a new drive to speed things up. I'm going to do a fresh install. One reason is that I read somewhere that a fresh install could help speed up my machine. The article stated that there was a difference between an upgrade vs. an install. Not sure if there is any truth to that. The second reason, is that I bought the laptop used and there is a file called MPStigstub that is in a strange folder in the C drive. When I do an antivirus scan it comes back with a warning about this file. I was already suspicious of it but with the warning, I now want to play it safe and start fresh. Apparently an Avira warning means the file can't be scanned because it's in use. I know that it's a Microsoft file but.... The third reason is that I accidentally clicked on a site that did a redirect. My computer crashed and now Avira is coming up with like 200 warnings but no detections.....

So my question is: what's the way to setup my new SSD. Is there a way to only clone the recovery part of my old drive? Also, the old recovery drive will just reinstall 8 correct and then I have to do the upgrade to 10 all over again? Is there a way for me to create my own W10 recovery partition and use the old Windows 8 activation code to install the new OS? Thanks in advance for your help.

:)

 

Remove Recovery Partition and Go to Recovery Drive During HDD to SSD Upgrade

I'm upgrading my Acer Aspire One 756-2420 netbook by replacing the 500GB HDD with a 250GB SSD. I love the netbook's form factor, screen, keyboard, etc. but it is slow and has low battery life which I hope to improve with this upgrade. The netbook OS has
gone from W7 to W8 to W10. I notice there is a 16GB recovery partition. The netbook documentation says this recovery partition will take the netbook back to factory settings - W7. I don't want to recover to W7 and I don't want to eat up 16GB of SSD memory with a
recovery partition. My plan is to delete the recovery partition as part of the cloning of the HDD to the SSD. Then, as soon as I get my SSD installed and running, I'll create a recovery drive on a USB flash drive. Is this a good strategy and are there
any tips in doing it? Many thanks for any comments!

 

Remove Recovery Partition and Go to Recovery Drive During HDD to SSD Upgrade

Thank you Sangeeta,

"delete the recovery partition as part of the cloning of the HDD to the SSD" The meaning of this quote is as follows:

The recovery partition on the HDD will NOT be copied onto the SSD. This differs from most other data on the HDD which will be copied over onto the SSD. The word cloning is used because the emphasis is on having a functioning system on the SSD that truly
mimics the system that ran on the HDD. Just as a biological clone is the creation of an identical organism with the same behavior.

The specific SSD I have is a Samsung 850 EVO with 250 GB capacity. It comes with migration software. Further study on my part discovered the following from the migration software user guide "OEM Recovery partition created by the computer manufacturer as
a factory setting will not be cloned". So, Samsung does not carry the recovery partition across to the SSD - just as I wanted.

So, the SSD won't have the 16 GB recovery partition that the HDD had. Incidentally, Acer documentation says that if a new drive is installed, the ability to go back to the "original build factory settings" will be lost. So, they anticipated the loss if
the drive was replaced. And this is fine by me since I do not want to go back to Windows 7.

The bottom line is that the SSD won't have the recovery partition; I need to create a recovery drive once I have upgraded to the SSD. (I think it is best to create the recovery drive after the SSD is installed since there are subtle differences between
the SSD and HDD and the recovery tools should reflect the SSD.)

 

You've already done the upgrade so your PC was registered with MS Server. You need not to re-install 8 and do the upgrade again. Just disconnect the old drive, connect the new drive and do a fresh install of Windows 10. Once installed, Windows should be activated.

If you don't have the Windows 10 installation media. Download the ISO from here and make sure you select the correct edition of Windows 10:
Windows 10 Download - Tech Bench

 

Thanks mate. I'm downloading the W10 64 bit right now. Sounds easy enough.

 

One more thing I forgot to mention. During installation, if it asks you to enter the product key, just click on "Skip this step" or "Do it later"

 

Okay, will do. I downloaded the ISO. I will do the swap when I get home. Now I need to figure out what to do with all of these old 2.5" drives, lol. I already made 3 externals with some old ones.

 

So I went to flash the ISO to a USB drive and it failed twice. The first time I used rufus and it just got stuck halfway through..... I let it sit for over an hour. I ended up having to reboot and format the USB drive. The second time I tried the media create tool. It got to the end and it said it failed, gave me some error. Any thoughts?

 

Double check if your ISO is any good. My ISO has MD5 hash as:

MCT x64: AEA03723A9E4519B3A09B4799DAF9EB7
Techbench x64: A0D4271B7537732A060909FD39D54829

To check yours, download free version of MD5 & SHA Checksum Utility , run it, drag and drop your ISO onto it to see if you get the same result.

What was the error message ?

 

The techbench X64 hash in the same.

When I ran Rufus I ticked the box that said "check device for bad blocks 1 pass". Not sure if that was a factor.

My computer has been doing some pretty strange stuff lately. I'm wondering if I might have malware. Yesterday, I had chrome open, all of a sudden the screen started zooming and unzooming erratically, really quickly, there were all of these blue spots all over the screen. After a minute of that it crashed. Very strange.

 

If you think you have malware I would download and create the USB drive on a different system, maybe a friends.

Jim *Cool

 

Good call. I'll report back.

 

I used UltraISO on my W7 machine and it worked perfectly.

 

That was the fastest install I've ever done. Super smooth. Thanks guys. Night and day between the two drives.