Moving laptop drive to SSD - including backup and driver questions

alexncfc · 10 Nov 2016

Hello all,

I have an Acer laptop, Aspire V5-571. It has a 750GB standard SATA hard disk drive and I have just purchased a new 960GB SSD to replace it with.

I initially planned to clone the used data (320GB of the 750GB) to the new drive, but now I am thinking about doing a clean install of Windows 10. This laptop has never had a clean install in the 3 years I have had it - it shipped with Windows 8 and has been updated to 8.1 and then 10. So I am thinking a clean install is probably overdue, and probably best for the new SSD drive to get maximum performance. However, I had some questions:

Do I need to do anything special with installing the new copy of Windows 10 with regards to UEFI or will the installer take care of that? I've never installed a new installation Windows on a UEFI machine before. I have the latest Windows 10 files on a bootable USB drive ready to install.
I plan to just copy across my folders in my Home folder (C:\Users\Alex) to the new users folder on the new drive once Windows 10 is set up - but is there anything I need to consider backing up outside of these folders? Obviously C:\Windows\ and C:\Program Files are pretty pointless to back up, but is there anything else I need to consider? Is there a program I can run on the laptop in its current state to gather a list of information and installed programs that I can refer to once I have the new drive installed?
Because I have never done a clean install on this laptop, and Windows has always just been updated over itself, what do I need to do with regards to drivers? Because this laptop model is not "officially supported" by Acer for Windows 10, so there are no drivers, but are things likely to work "out of the box"? Because it is running fine now. Is there any way I can save copies of all the currently installed drivers to my OneDrive just incase?

I think that I am doing the best option in doing a clean install and just copying my Documents, Music, Videos etc folders across, but if anyone can recommend any advantages in doing an image clone of the current drive, then do please let me know. I plan to keep the current 750GB drive "as is" rather than wipe it, it will be a handy (if out of date) backup to slot back into the laptop if ever I need to.

I appreciate any advice before I start this procedure :)

Many thanks

Samuria · 10 Nov 2016

You will have problems copying user files after install as they will all be owned by the Sid of the old user so you won't have access to them get around that by copying them to one drive or Google drive now so it will remove that problem. You can get software to backup drivers but they can be dodgy as long as you have old drive I would see if windows sorts it on its own. You just boot the install and let Windows create partition

NavyLCDR · 10 Nov 2016

As long as your Windows 10 USB flash drive is formatted as FAT32 and not NTFS, it should install as UEFI no problem. Select the custom install option, make sure there no partitions on the SSD, do not create any partitions, just install to the unallocated space.

IMPORTANT: have only the SSD connected when you do the install. Do not leave the old hard drive connected. After the install is finished, you can reconnect the old hard drive.

As long as your new account created is an administrator account you won't have any problems copying your old user files over, you will just have to grant administrator permission to access them.

To export the drivers from your existing Windows setup, before removing the old hard drive, right click start icon, select command prompt admin, and run:

dism /online /export-driver /destination:F:\Drivers

Change the path in red to a folder on an external storage device you create to hold the exported drivers. I would plan on at least 4 GB free space being required for the drivers.

I would suggest putting the old hard drive in a USB enclosure to use it as an external drive.

alexncfc · 11 Nov 2016

Thank you so much both for the replies. Very very handy :)

I have taken the old drive out of the laptop and put in the SSD and installed Windows 10 from scratch. It has gone without a hitch and is very speedy - but I did notice one thing which is bugging me and I would like to know how to overcome it.

On my old install I had my Home folder as C:\Users\Alex Sutton but now I notice that it has set it up as C:\Users\alexs - and it looks naff as I like to set up user accounts in the full name. I entered my Microsoft/Hotmail Account during set up and it has set it up like this. Is there any way I can get around this? I don't mind re-installing Windows 10 if it's needed as I haven't installed any apps or transferred my data back yet so I would be happy to wipe it again if required.

I know it may sound a bit petty but I really would prefer it to look better than that and can't understand why Windows 10 would shorten my full name to "alexs" for the user folder name? It didn't do this when I set up the laptop from new when it had Windows 8.

Thanks for any help.

NavyLCDR · 11 Nov 2016

You have to create a local account first with the username exactly like you want the folder to be under Users and then convert the local account to a Microsoft account. If you login with a Microsoft account without creating the local account first, then the folder under users just gets the first few letters of the Microsoft account user name.

You can create a new local account with the user name you want to appear under the users folder, make sure to make it an administrator. Delete the old account. Then convert the new local account to the same Microsoft account the old deleted account was attached to.

alexncfc · 11 Nov 2016

Thank you ever so much, @NavyLCDR. I will give this a go shortly.

There is one other issue I wondered if you or somebody could give some advice on.

Previously in Device Manger, I was using an Intel SATA AHCI Series 7 Controller as the hard disk controller. Since doing a clean install, Windows 10 has insisted on using a "Standard SATA AHCI Controller" which is clearly a generic driver. Obviously I did the DISM driver backup as you suggested earlier, but to get the best performance out of the new SSD drive, would you recommend changing the driver to the Intel AHCI driver, or would you say just leave it alone? I am concerned that I am not getting the best out of the drive on a generic Windows "standard" driver.

I did download the Acer V5-571 Windows 8.1 x64 chipset drivers from Acer's website, but when I go to install them it tells me that "the computer currently contains version 10.1.1.14, which is newer than the version about to be installed". But these are probably better than generic drivers perhaps??

Thank you for any help.

NavyLCDR · 11 Nov 2016

Search for Intel Rapid Storage. In the Intel Rapid Storage webpage is the driver for Intel AHCI controller.

alexncfc · 11 Nov 2016

NavyLCDR said:

Search for Intel Rapid Storage. In the Intel Rapid Storage webpage is the driver for Intel AHCI controller.

Thanks for the reply, I have found the latest version here:

Downloads for IntelÂ® Rapid Storage Technology (IntelÂ® RST) (15.2.0.1020)

But it won't start the setup, says platform is not supported, which seems a bit odd.

Another reason I am concerned is because there are a number of errors in the Event Viewer, such as:

The IO operation at logical block address 0x212990 for Disk 0 (PDO name: \Device\0000002c) was retried.

---

Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort0, was issued.

---

A TCG Command has returned an error.
Desc: AuthenticateSession
Param1: 0x1
Param2: 0x60000001C
Param3: 0x900000006
Param4: 0x0
Status: 0x12

So I am wondering if it is a driver issue.

NavyLCDR · 11 Nov 2016

This is what mine looks like:

Moving laptop drive to SSD - including backup and driver questions-capture.jpg

Did you download the f6flpy-x64.zip file from Intel's IRST download website? That zip file should have the driver in it and you have to update manually from device manager.

alexncfc · 11 Nov 2016

NavyLCDR said:

This is what mine looks like:

Did you download the f6flpy-x64.zip file from Intel's IRST download website? That zip file should have the driver in it and you have to update manually from device manager.

Thanks for your very fast replies!

I did try doing it manually through Device Manager, but the list that comes up when I use "have disk" doesn't show a Series 7 SATA Controller, but 6, 8 and 9 are all there!

I find it a bit odd because when I first started Windows and did the first Windows Update check, loads of driver-type items appeared on the list - there was Bluetooth driver and also an Intel driver, as well as the Intel HD 3000 VGA drivers, but they all failed. And they never re-appeared on the list when I clicked retry. All very confusing, I am starting to think this undertaking of moving to an SSD has proved a lot more trouble than I thought.