Windows 7 SSD Install Problem

Jerald7

Senior Member
I have an SSD installation question. I am installing a new SSD in an HP Pavilion Dv3-2157cl laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium currently installed on the hard drive. I put the SSD in a HDD Dock (USB), then used EseUS "Partition Clone" and cloned the main partition of drive C to the SSD (I didn't use "Disk Clone" because I didn't want to put the "Restore" partition on the SSD). All worked well, the SSD is designated as drive "F." I removed the hard drive, put in the SSD, but the computer doesn't recognize it. I guess it is due to the SSD being drive "F" - so how do I change the SSD to drive "C" so the computer will recognize it?

I went into the BIOS, but didn't find any way to change the drive letter for the boot disk. The only option I see in this HP BIOS version F.11 (9/4/2009) is just to boot from the hard drive, CD, etc.


Please Help!

Thank You...
 
Best suggestion here is to try again. Clone the entire drive (including partitions you will want to delete later). Work on getting Windows up and running. Remember, from conventional hard drives to SSDs you are also dealing with differing technology. This can include problems with the restore process on some SSDs. They may act choppy and behave in a manner less efficient than expected.

Nonetheless, it can be done. However, your goal in changing the drive partition structure by using the restore as the mechanism is the primary reason for this problem. The partition configuration, Windows installation and its relation to being bootable, are all inter-related to the multi-partition structure you have on the original drive. (In English, I am saying you should just backup everything and restore everything if possible).

Once you have completed the restore process of all partitions, I then recommend you use a secondary utility, after booting into Windows, to remove the partitions you want to exclude. You will have a problem freeing up disk space if the partition you are trying to delete comes before the Windows partition, but this will get you up and running.

You should not try to delete the 100MB System Reserve partition, as this would create problems with the Windows installation on boot-up from recovery. If you find yourself absolutely needing to do this, concern yourself with this and all other partition modifications after the restore process is completed successfully.

You can go step by step in that process later on by first launching diskmgmt.msc in Windows and seeing what changes you can make there. Following that, if you determine more enhanced tools are necessary to delete partitions and re-arrange the drive, you can use dedicated partition management software or additional freeware utilities. Keep the backup and restore software to its primary function and then determine if you can get Windows to load. Remember that this is your primary objective for this task, and anything else should be prioritized as a secondary goal wherever possible.

This is because changing the partition structure while performing a restore will usually corrupt a bootable Windows installation beyond repair due to the number of changes that are made both sector-by-sector and to the partition structures themselves.
 
Thanks Mike for your answer. I had two reasons for not wanting to copy the recovery partition to the SSD, (1) is because this original HP recovery partition is Vista (as the PC came), but I upgraded to Windows 7 a year ago. I figured this is old Vista stuff. (2) The new 120 GIG SSD is much smaller than the hard drive I'm replacing, so I hated to waste 14.04 GIG on the SSD for this recovery partition.
I do have the PC running now. I removed the SSD and reinstalled the hard drive. I now have the SSD in an external HDD Dock. The PC reads it fine, with it in the external Dock, as drive "F".
So, you think I need to clone the entire hard drive, including the recovery partition, as in your post?
 
Well being able to boot the drive changes everything. I'm not sure what the deal is here - but try changing the drive letter to C using Disk Management in Windows. Change the primary drive letter of your old drive to something else first. (Do all of this while both are running and on)

What a weird problem that is. When you boot your system its not necessarily looking for a drive letter offhand, so this is very peculiar.

My thought is you can just erase the recovery partition later - after you can confirm Windows boots. You may still want to try that if you can't fix this problem.
 
I went into "Computer Management" then "Disk Management" - right clicked on drive C, selected "Change Drive Letter and Paths" - told it to change to "G", but got an error from "Virtual Disk Manager" saying the parameter is incorrect. I have never tried to change drive C to something else, didn't know if you could, while booted up in it. Am I doing this correctly? I thought I would probably have to first change drive C to something else, before changing the SSD to drive C, since you can't have two drives with the same letter.

Another thing, the SSD's status is "Active, Primary Partition" while the boot disk C status is "System, Boot, Page File, Active." Will this status designation change when the SSD becomes drive C?
 
PROBLEM SOLVED. I downloaded "Magic Partition" - Bootable CD, done a MBR
Rebuild
, rebooted the PC, and she booted up beautifully. Much thanks to
everyone for your time and advice on this.
 
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