How to move OS between hard drives?

[RainDreamer]

So I got a new SSD reccently, and I am thinking of moving win10 over to it. I have been following instructions on lifehacker, but apparently there is something wrong with the tool it recommends, and after I finished cloning, I can't boot using the newly cloned drive.

Anyone got an idea how I can do this properly, and what other tools I can use?

Edited December 20, 2015 by RainDreamer

[Stone Blue]

Well, Good Luck.... I've always found with Windows, its better just to back up data, and do a fresh install... Much simpler, easier, and less time consuming... Having to reinstall Windows once, twice, or even three times a year, I only keep system and program files on my C:... Any other data or files goes on a separate partition so its safe when I have to unexpectedly wipe Windows from the C: and do a fresh OS install...

Soory I wasnt much help... I'm kind of surprised EasUS didnt work for you... I use their Partition Manager all the time, for the past dozen years or more... But then again, with Windows, IMHO, Fresh is Best... I've NEVER been able to get a OS clone to work properly, even after several tries and wasted time... Trying to repair a Windows install is an even bigger futile waste...

But then again, with MS's latest hijinx with Win 8 & now Win 10, they dont want to make it easy to wipe a computer and do fresh installs...

Edited December 20, 2015 by Stone Blue

[steve_v]

2 hours ago, RainDreamer said:

Anyone got an idea how I can do this properly, and what other tools I can use?

Windows is a right pig about moving installations around, but if the only change is the primary disk, it usualy goes something like:

Defrag Windows drive.
Make disk image backup, this will likely go wrong.
Resize partition / filesystem to fit on new disk with e.g. gparted.
Make sure windows still boots.
Exact copy disk -> disk, with anything that can e.g. dd
Fix / resize partitions / FS (again gparted).
Cross fingers, run Windows boot recovery tool, e.g. Install disk "Repair" option, bootmgr from recovery console or Boot Repar LiveCD.

Initial defrag/resize  may be omitted if destination disk is larger than source.

Edited December 20, 2015 by steve_v

[RainDreamer]

That sounds like I would be better with a clean installation on the new drive and move over personal files...

[steve_v]

18 minutes ago, RainDreamer said:

That sounds like I would be better with a clean installation on the new drive and move over personal files...

Yeah, and I should probably add: You should disable "Secure Boot" in the BIOS (if it's enabled) during this process, otherwise: .

[Camacha]

6 hours ago, RainDreamer said:

That sounds like I would be better with a clean installation on the new drive and move over personal files...

Yes, this is pretty much always the case. That way you are sure old unnoticed problem do not mess you up. Be sure to set your SDD drive to AHCI mode in the BIOS/EUFI prior to installing Windows. That will help performance a bunch.

[Whizzkid]

I have had this exact problem, the way I fixed it was to use paragon migrate os to ssd, it is $19.95, but it worked first time

 

Edited December 20, 2015 by Whizzkid

[Maxwell Comp]

I've done this a few times, though only with Windows 8 and XP (xp didn't know what hit it, lol).

I believe I used Acronis and their free trial to do it, as I couldn't get EaseUS to work quite right either. http://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/computer-backup/

 

As a rule, of course, keep the prior drive for a while in case something goes haywire. Sometimes a problem might emerge a week or two later after an automatic Windows update. Make sure that you get the drivers for the SSD too; I recently had some problems with that caused by a Windows update.

[Xorth Tanovar]

I had reasonably good results using Macrium Reflect when moving from HDD to SSD on my laptop, though I've only used it in a Win7 environment. Haven't had the urge to move up to Win10 yet.

[robopilot99]

Is the new disk bigger or smaller then your current one? I would do something along the lines of using an Ubuntu live CD to image the current drive and restoring it onto your new drive.

[Camacha]

There really is no reason to migrate an OS, rather than to do a fresh install, except for being a lazy bum Windows can use a fresh install one in a while anyway, so you are likely only hurting yourself. You will get fresh drivers with a new installation, you will ditch unused programs and - more importantly - libraries that tend to add up. All that will save you a bunch of space, which is nice if you run a SSD. You will also leave any and all old problems in the past, including the ones you do not know about but inevitably get after a while. If problems do arise, at least you know they are not some weird complication from the migration. A migrated copy is never all that Windows can be, even if it came from a freshly installed clean copy.

Besides, installing a fresh copy of Windows has become ridiculously easy since Windows 8.

[robopilot99]

Despite my previous reply, I do mostly agree with this perspective. This is a great excuse to do a full reinstall which is good to do every few years anyway.

[Frybert]

49 minutes ago, robopilot99 said:

Despite my previous reply, I do mostly agree with this perspective. This is a great excuse to do a full reinstall which is good to do every few years anyway.

Oh the good old days of the yearly reformat...

 

 

 

 

Then I got a 2TB HD and decided thats way too much stuff to have to redownload...

[RainDreamer]

I am not sure if reformatting and defragging are good for SSD...

[luizopiloto]

if the OS partition can fit inside the new drive... you can use dd to clone, use gparted to adjust partition size and set it to be boot enabled, then you use windows repair to fix the boot section to make it work...

Edited December 25, 2015 by luizopiloto

[robopilot99]

It's not, particularly defragmenting but if you're moving to a smaller drive you must move all the data "to the left" so that you can shrink the partition. As long as it isn't done often it shouldn't be an issue.

[Stone Blue]

On 12/25/2015 at 9:59 PM, Camacha said:

Besides, installing a fresh copy of Windows has become ridiculously easy since Windows 8.

HAh!!... I dont know about THAT!.....

But I totally agree with everything else you said...

EDIT: OK, I'll give you easy...it IS easy.... But its NOT a FRESH install... As long as you jump thru MS's hoops, blatant data-mining practices, attempts to suck every nickel out of their "customers", and their pyscho-socio-pathic tendencies to spy on everyone...Then yeah, its easy to download a 3GB-4GB OS, and give up email addresses, phone numbers, and all sorts of other personal info you dont even know you are handing over,  any time you want to feel like you're getting a "fresh" install....

And just because I am paranoid, doesnt mean they arent out to get everybody...

Edited December 26, 2015 by Stone Blue

[robopilot99]

If you think installing Windows if easy you should take a look at the Ubuntu installer.

[Camacha]

On 26/12/2015 at 1:39 AM, Stone Blue said:

EDIT: OK, I'll give you easy...it IS easy.... But its NOT a FRESH install... As long as you jump thru MS's hoops, blatant data-mining practices, attempts to suck every nickel out of their "customers", and their pyscho-socio-pathic tendencies to spy on everyone...Then yeah, its easy to download a 3GB-4GB OS, and give up email addresses, phone numbers, and all sorts of other personal info you dont even know you are handing over,  any time you want to feel like you're getting a "fresh" install....

I make a point out of not using any account for Windows, and turning off anything privacy related during installation. Granted, the process becomes a couple of screens longer, but if you refrain from simply clicking on the shiniest button, all should be well. The process still is streamlined and very easy.

And yes, it is a fresh install.
 

On 26/12/2015 at 1:44 AM, robopilot99 said:

If you think installing Windows if easy you should take a look at the Ubuntu installer.

I know both well, both can be considered very easy and straightforward. If you consider either hard or complicated, you might better be off not using any computer at all.

Edited December 27, 2015 by Camacha

[steve_v]

On 25/12/2015 at 3:59 PM, Camacha said:

A migrated copy is never all that Windows can be, even if it came from a freshly installed clean copy.

Eh? It's all just bits on a storage medium, I don't see how moving it to a new drive makes any difference.
Unless of course you are implying that Windows becomes more broken as time installed increases... This I do remember from Win9x.

OTOH, I have 2 Debian installs that are at least 7 years old without a reinstall, only dist-upgrades. One has moved disk at least 4 times, including a move from a single drive to RAID, as well as a switch from ext3 to reiserfs, then to ext4.

SOP: Partition/format, rsync data, update fstab & bootloader, boot new disk.
No issues to report.

I find this to be considerably less time-consuming than the standard bitwise copy + partition resize, and far less hassle than a reinstall. Yet to see a way to do it with Widows though.

[Camacha]

14 hours ago, steve_v said:

Eh? It's all just bits on a storage medium, I don't see how moving it to a new drive makes any difference.

Calling it just a bunch of bits is oversimplifying things rather a lot Many things can cause trouble, including but not limited to: alignment, drivers, corruption (due to increased disk sizes) and more. You will often need to make adjustments, just a plain old bit for bit copy will not do. Saying it is just a

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Unless of course you are implying that Windows becomes more broken as time installed increases... This I do remember from Win9x.

Old issues formed over time might cause trouble. We already discussed Windows can use a fresh start every year or so. A fresh copy will have any and all of those old issues eliminated. It is little different than a new car being more reliable than one that has been driver around for years. It is just a sensible precaution.

 

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OTOH, I have 2 Debian installs that are at least 7 years old without a reinstall, only dist-upgrades. One has moved disk at least 4 times, including a move from a single drive to RAID, as well as a switch from ext3 to reiserfs, then to ext4.

This is not a Windows versus Linux discussion. RainDreamer is not migrating a Linux distro, so discussing it is no use.

[steve_v]

4 hours ago, Camacha said:

Calling it just a bunch of bits is oversimplifying things rather a lot

Well, yes and no. As far as what's on the disk platters, a "bunch of bits" is exactly what it is. The OS doesn't need to interact with anything below the filesystem layer, except at boot time.
ATA disks need no drivers (assuming it's the only thing changed), and while partition table alignment or filesystem blocksize could conceivably cause performance issues, the former is easily detected/corrected, and the latter extremely unlikely unless you've fiddled with it - is there even a knob for this on windows?.
"Corruption (due to increased disk sizes)"? I'm really not grokking that one, how is this going to happen?

4 hours ago, Camacha said:

This is not a Windows versus Linux discussion.

Never intended it to be, more an "I can do it this easy way in OS A, why not something similar with OS B?" I don't know of a way to get windows to boot after simply copying the disk contents - but it should be possible, as it is for other operating systems.
Is there a way to update the windows bootloader and disk layouts to a new disk ID without a reinstall?
The 'bitwise' exact copy method should work as it preserves the disk/partition UUIDs, but it would be more elegant to just update Windows with the new ones, no?
You could do this in XP by killing the "MountedDevices" registry key, and updating BOOT.INI, but it's all changed somewhat since I last tried that... not that I ever had a >50% success rate with this anyway - IIRC there was a nasty hexediting the partition table bit involved too.

Also, this:

4 hours ago, Camacha said:

Windows can use a fresh start every year or so.

Would drive me insane, and quickly.

On the car analogy: an old, well maintained vehicle with parts replaced as they wear is not inherently less reliable than a new one. And software is not a car: it has no wearing parts, so age does not factor into it's reliability - unless you're talking bit-rot, in which case you should probably be looking for a better filesystem or less-flaky storage media.

Edited December 27, 2015 by steve_v

[Camacha]

1 hour ago, steve_v said:

Well, yes and no. As far as what's on the disk platters, a "bunch of bits" is exactly what it is.

Point remains, that these bits behave differently depending on the environment they are in. If I take a HDD and shove it into a very similar, but slightly different computer, more often than not things will misbehave in various ways. Syphoning a huge pile of bits into another system and hoping it will work might be slightly naive.

Besides, saying they are just bits is like saying a dog is just a bunch of atoms What they do in which context is very much relevant.

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ATA disks need no drivers (assuming it's the only thing changed)

Installing an SDD in the wrong mode or with the wrong drivers can seriously cripple its performance. Transferring your data bit for bit is a decent way of having things set up wrong for the SSD. We should also not forget that Windows detects an SDD being present at various stages of installation and use, and makes appropriate adjustments to the system.

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And software is not a car: it has no wearing parts, so age does not factor into it's reliability

It is a continuously changing set of data, subjected to ever changing set of circumstances. If you are not calling that wear, it is similar for all intents and purposes. So yes, age (or rather mileage) very much factors into reliability. There is a reason server hardware and software is different from consumer desktop gear.

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- unless you're talking bit-rot, in which case you should probably be looking for a better filesystem or less-flaky storage media.

ReFS is not bootable as of yet, NTFS and FAT are inherently problematic with ever larger drives. Thing is, we used to have relatively small collections of data. That made the likelihood of bits going awry and causing chaos small. With every increasing piles of data, the changes are ever increasing too. 'Self healing' file systems are designed to combat these issues, as well as other strategies, but until those are all implemented, copying large sets of data back and forth will cause trouble sooner or later.

Yes, I know ZFS is a little bit further ahead.

Edited December 27, 2015 by Camacha

[steve_v]

9 hours ago, Camacha said:

Installing an SDD in the wrong mode or with the wrong drivers can seriously cripple its performance. Transferring your data bit for bit is a decent way of having things set up wrong for the SSD. We should also not forget that Windows detects an SDD being present at various stages of installation and use, and makes appropriate adjustments to the system.

Again, ATA drives (including SSDS) require no special drivers, that's kinda the point of having all the controller logic on the drive and presenting a standard interface. The motherboard/HBA chipset is a different story, but in this case that isn't changing.
Modes? The only "modes" any of my SSDs have are "plugged in" and "not plugged in". They don't even have 'feature' jumpers to muck with any more.
Using the wrong (512 vs 4k) sector alignment on partition boundaries can cause performance issues, but all modern drives do translation in the firmware (and many lie about it) - at most you'll take a ~10% performance hit on random I/O. Not nice, but hardly "crippling".
Not enabling TRIM/DISCARD may interfere with wear-levelling features, but that's a filesystem option that can, AFAIK, be set at any time.
Perhaps Windows does some other mystery magic at "various stages of installation and use", if so I'd love to know exactly what that is.

[Camacha]

3 hours ago, steve_v said:

Again, ATA drives (including SSDS) require no special drivers, that's kinda the point of having all the controller logic on the drive and presenting a standard interface. The motherboard/HBA chipset is a different story, but in this case that isn't changing.
Modes? The only "modes" any of my SSDs have are "plugged in" and "not plugged in". They don't even have 'feature' jumpers to muck with any more.

As indicated before, whether a drive operates in IDE or AHCI mode has considerable impact on performance. This is also governed by the drivers, which can also impact performance and operation. A program like AS SSD even neatly shows which drivers are in operation.

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Perhaps Windows does some other mystery magic at "various stages of installation and use", if so I'd love to know exactly what that is.

One notable thing Windows does is to disable the defragmentation service for flash drives. The rest, I am sure, is well documented on the wide web

Edited December 28, 2015 by Camacha