Replacing a laptop hard drive with a SSD

gordon99 said:

Hello Bree and others,
I replaced my laptop hard drive with a SSD successfully. I used my external drive and Macrium Reflect to make a system image of the laptop hard drive as suggested and transferred the image to the new SSD using my Macrium Boot Recovery flash drive. The only hiccup occurred when I came to move the four partitions onto the SSD. It seems one has to do this by moving the "C" partition last. If you try to do it before moving the the other three partitions the "C" partition grabs all the available space.

Not sure what you did but I've never seen this in the hundreds of times I've used Macrium to restore an image. You did restore the entire drive and not partition by partition, right? If not that was the problem.

move the four partitions onto the SSD. It seems one has to do this by moving the "C" partition last.

You should have cloned of the whole HDD not just the partitions. That way each partition will be included and not take up all of the space and the partition with the Boot file on it will also be included and be in the right space.

I have one little Netbook, that has its HD buried down inside, somewhere. So pulling out the drive to work on it, like making a clone, is maybe not beyond my expertise, but way beyond my patience.
So when I wanted to try a different OS, here's what I did....

First I set up a spare SATA HD with a SATA to USB adapter, so the drive could be accessed from within the little PC.
Then, since there is NO CD drive on the PC, I had to make sure I had my Ghost Backup program on a bootable Flash Drive. And, I double checked to make sure that I could boot up the PC to my Ghost backup program. (the little Netbook came with Windows XP on it). It works great.
Then I used my Ghost backup program to do a Disk to Image backup of the HD in the PC to the external HD. I could have just as easily done a Disk to Disk (clone).
Then I booted up the little PC with a Flash Drive with Windows 7 on it. The install to Win-7 went off without a hitch, but, the installer did not have the proper Video driver for the little Netbook, and the screen looked really sick.*

*Win-7 is a pretty good OK, but it does not come with a really GREAT driver pack. (Win-8.1 or Win-10 comes with a much better Driver Pack)

So, since Win-7 was not going to work on the Netbook, I just did a restore of the Disk image that I saved earlier, and everything was back to Factory. I won't be doing that again.

Good Luck Mates,
TechnoMage

What is the make and model # of your Netbook?
Drivers for your Netbook will be available from the Manufacturers Support/Download Drivers site. You can download a driver for XP and make it compatible with Windows 7, by right clicking the Setup.exe file, choosing Properties/Compatibility.
A netbook may not have a traditional HDD or SSD like a laptop; it may just have a small chip (ie) 32GB or so, on the motherboard and it cannot be replaced. If you are lucky, you have room for a thin SATA drive.that you can add to it.
As you found out, making a Disk Image is a great way to keep a backup of the drive to restore at a later date. Unfortunately, Norton Ghost was the best cloning software out there back in the day. Norton hasn't updated Ghost in years and has abandoned it. Acronis, EaseUs and Macrium Reflect are what we use now.
You can try Windows 10 on the Netbook, you can download it for free and use the Media Creation tool to burn the installer to a USB Flash Drive. If you need drivers, go to the manufacturers site.

I have a Dell Inspiron 11 3000 [11.3"] Notebook with 32GB storage that wouldn't allow Win10 Upgrade from Version 1903 to Version 1909, new space requirements screwed it up. [Happened to be in Wal*Mart one day couple of years ago when they had an unadvertised special of $139, about half price and couldn't resist it.]

I booted to a Linux 19.1 USB Thumb drive, ran everything so I installed it, works fine. It comes with Firefox and LibreOffice, can get VLC for videos. So far it has Upgraded to Version 19.2, going to try 19.3 this evening. If leery of using command prompts in Linux, most things needed when traveling have icons to open them, not too unlike of Windows. And there's lots of OpenSource programs such as games.
I have a Linux Mint Desktop and used the Image Writer app to create the
Thumb drive, only needed the downloaded .iso file on the HDD for the Source.
Main Page - Linux Mint
There's lots of other 'flavors' listed at DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD..

Addendum 2023:

I found a U-Tube video that showed me how to crack open my little Acer One Netbook, so I could remove the HD and replace it with a Crucial 120 GB SSD, with Windows 8.1/Pro/32 on it.
That SSD was actually a clone of my Main desktop PC. It settled in, made itself at home and is now running great in the little netbook.
Now the little Netbook is running just great under Windows 8.1. Much better than the XP it came with.
That will be the last upgrade to that little PC.

Cheers mates!

TechnoMage said:

Addendum 2023:
I found a U-Tube video that showed me how to crack open my little Acer One Netbook, so I could remove the HD and replace it with a Crucial 120 GB SSD, with Windows 8.1/Pro/32 on it.....That will be the last upgrade to that little PC.

I hope you upgraded the Ram while you were in there. If that the same as my slightly later Acer Aspire One AOD270, then the instructions start with 'first remove the keyboard...'

@SIW2 has very helpfully let me know that despite my Acer Aspire One AOD270 only officially being said to support 2GB, its Intel Atom processor can actually support 3GB for the OS to use. Not only that, but with 4GB RAM the remaining 1GB won't be wasted, it can be used by the graphics.
Rather less helpful is the Acer manual. To get to the RAM, first remove the keyboard. Only then can you access the 14 screws that hold the back plate on. Seems rather excessive over-engineering for a 10" netbook !!!

Let's install Windows 11 on incompatible hardware | Page 53 | Windows 11 Forum

hsehestedt said:

What? No Windows 11?

Wipe that smiley off your face! If you thought you were teasing, then think again

Well that went rather well I thought. Only took an hour and a half to fit the 4GB RAM and the SSD - I had feared it would be longer

....I can't say it's fast now, but it's certainly not slow any more. It's certainly up to running a native boot .vhdx of Windows 11 now, which before was no more than a painfully slow 'proof of concept'. Now it's quite useable, in fact I posted this from it.

Let's install Windows 11 on incompatible hardware | Page 54 | Windows 11 Forum