Woes in migrating OS to larger SSD. - Fuck you Partition Wizard, and fuck you AOMEI you Chicom turdware.

[Ginger Piglet]

Hello everyone.

I currently have a 1 TB SSD and recently shelled out for a 2 TB SSD. Both are M.2 but only have one M.2 slot on my motherboard so I also got a USB enclosure for them.

I have done this before when I got my current SSD although the software that came with it (Acronis True Image) was a crock of shit that didn't work and I was probably lucky it didn't shit all over my data. I previously used AOMEI to move everything over.

So, I put the 2 TB SSD in the enclosure, fire up AOMEI, and ask it to migrate everything onto it so I can then replace it in the motherboard's M.2 slot. It won't. It tells me "The operation is abort! Error 11" after the restart.

Chicom rubbish, think I, and bin AOMEI and download something different. Partition Wizard, it's called.

I do the same thing. It restarts to carry out the operation but then tells me "Partition Wizard detected your disk configuration has changed." and doesn't work. There is an FAQ but its solution: "Please disconnect all USB storage devices, then restart computer, connect the target USB disk to the computer, and run MiniTool Partition Wizard to copy disk again" makes no sense because that's exactly what I've been doing. And getting the same cunting error.

How do I fix this and make it actually migrate my OS and all the data to the new drive? I know it's possible because I did it before without all this old bollox when I upgraded from a spinny hard disk in 2017.

I have no other USB storage devices attached and I have tried restarting without the new drive connected. None of this works.

As it is, the only solution I can see is to waste days of my time reinstalling everything manually to the new drive having made a Windows 10 USB installation media or some other bollox (I also can't remember my Windows product key and I've lost the sticker with it on.) Which I have neither the time nor the patience for. I have my setup just how I like it and I'm not fucking about in this manner.

 

[Beavis]

I used this to migrate from a 2TB mechanical hard drive to a 1TB SSD and it worked wonderfully. Also used it on a few computers at work after trying other programs that would throw errors. Just use the cloning option and it should do everything for you.

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[Ginger Piglet]

I used this to migrate from a 2TB mechanical hard drive to a 1TB SSD and it worked wonderfully. Also used it on a few computers at work after trying other programs that would throw errors. Just use the cloning option and it should do everything for you.

Best free backup software for Windows 10/8.1/8/7/vista - EaseUS® Todo Backup Free

EaseUS Todo Backup Free is an award-winning and easy-to-use free data backup software to back up photos, music, videos, documents, system, etc. for PC users.

www.easeus.com

Hmmm. But the "system clone" option is locked. If I use normal clone, will I be able to boot from the new drive as well?

 

[WeWuzFinns]

I just booted to USB linux and used the dd command. You might want to boot into some OS with GUI tools to do the cloning. If I remember correctly I broke the master boot record and had to restore it in order to boot.

 

[Beavis]

Hmmm. But the "system clone" option is locked. If I use normal clone, will I be able to boot from the new drive as well?

Yes just use the regular clone above system clone. That's what I used.

 

[Coffee Shits]

I'll second the dd command if you are comfortable enough to use live Linux and the command line. They don't call it "disk destroyer" for nothing.

Recently I had to fix the MBR as a result of toying with the size of a Windows 7 partition. Be forewarned that if you go the dd route, you should have a Windows installation disk handy to boot into it and gain access to bootrec.exe. Microsoft Support has documentation on how to use it.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

I'll second the dd command if you are comfortable enough to use live Linux and the command line. They don't call it "disk destroyer" for nothing.

Recently I had to fix the MBR as a result of toying with the size of a Windows 7 partition. Be forewarned that if you go the dd route, you should have a Windows installation disk handy to boot into it and gain access to bootrec.exe. Microsoft Support has documentation on how to use it.

Yeah, I think I'll be giving that a miss. I have long since mislaid my original Windows disk.

 

[Ex Cummunicated Sasser HD]

Clonezilla has a GUI, and also a live boot CD/USB... might be outdated though. Has worked for me in the past with Windows 10. Also with Windows 10 you shouldn't have to worry about a product key once it has been installed and verified on that specific hardware once AFAIK.

dd is exactly the same thing, and will create a complete perfect copy, but without the safety net, and if you don't know exactly what you are doing you could have a VERY bad time...

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

I have done similar things a couple of times in the past but my memory is hazy. I understand that you have two NVME drives but only one slot, so you need to clone the disk AND save the MBR from it to a different drive, then pull the old drive, put in the new one and use those two, the image and the MBR, to build a new drive all done from Linux running on an USB drive, when that is done you extend the partition from 1TB to 2TB.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

Okay, so, I tried the business with EaseUS's Clone function. Drive copied across okay but when I fit it in and boot from it, it bluescreens immediately on startup saying it can't find Winload.exe and that an external disk or USB key is needed to fix this. Since I have long since lost my original Windows disk, and my compy doesn't have an internal optical drive, I have to put it all back together. And just to add to the fun, the M.2 slot on my motherboard is on the reverse side, so it's a case of doing what can only be described as an open aneurysm graft but for electronics.

Which takes me longer than it should because I'm a fumble-fingered autist. I recently have been reading Dr David Nott's memoirs "War Doctor" about being a surgeon in war zones around the world. There's one incident in 2014 when he's in Aleppo, Syria, working on someone who's been brought in to his hospital with enormous internal haemorrhaging and while he's trying to stop the bleeding, a bunch of chaps with AK-47s burst into the theatre and say that this man is their brother. Turns out they're not just ISIS but Chechen ISIS who are brutal and vindictive to the point where even "normal" ISIS guys think they're a bit excessive, and they make it very clear to him that if their brother dies, they'll shoot up the hospital at best and take the good doctor to Jihadi John's rape basement at worst. Despite this, the man holds it together enough to do an operation he'd find difficult even in a proper Western hospital with all their gear and resources, let alone a ramshackled humanitarian project in a war zone, and save the man's life.

I can only wish I had anything approaching that level of sangfroid and manual dexterity.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

it bluescreens immediately on startup saying it can't find Winload.exe and that an external disk or USB key is needed to fix this. Since I have long since lost my original Windows disk, and my compy doesn't have an internal optical drive

Download the ISO from Microsoft/MSDN.

Download Windows 10

 

[Dreamland]

If you don't like dealing with the the dodgy partition managers you can also just image the old drive using the "make back-up (windows 7)" tool, it's still included in and works for windows 10.

The windows install disk's recovery environment has a tool to return these partitions to whatever drive you desire.
As for backup targets it can be any harddrive, USB stick or even SMB share that can hold a .vhdx file, just remember that mounting network drives works a little different in windows installer's MinWin than in Windows Explorer.