Problem Migrating to a SSD as C: drive

pueo

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I have a new HP Envy 17 that came with a 1 TB hard disk and wanted to install a SSD as the boot disk. It has Windows 8.1 Professional installed on it.

The HP has 2 disk bays with 2 motherboard sata connectors, one for disk 0 and one for disk 1.

I installed the SSD in the 2nd drive bay and connected it to the disk 1 connector. Booted up and ran AOMEI Backupper Standard v2.0.2. Using the Clone function I cloned disk 0 onto disk 1 (the SSD). As AOMEI compacted some of the partitions, the RECOVERY partition, for example, I ran MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition v8.11 to increase those partitions on the SSD to be the same size as on the original hard disk. This was just in case HP wanted to rewrite them there would be expansion room equal or greater than what was allocated on the original HP disk. Not likely I know!

The disks were then exchanged in the drive bays. The SSD connected to the sata connector for disk 0 and the original hard disk moved to the disk 1 connector.

I then rebooted. My recollection is that I ran Disk Management and things looked OK.

Subsequently I started loading software, MS Office, etc. and now, after feeling something is not right I looked at my drives with Disk Management again and I noticed the Windows (C:) drive is assigned to the original hard disk, NOT the new SSD. A copy of the Disk Managment screen is attached.

When I looked at the partitions using MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition v8.11 I realize the problem is that the Windows partition on Disk 0 is not active and bootable. Now it appears that if I can make it active and bootable I may be able to boot the SSD windows.

Question 1: Is this analysis correct?

Question 2: How to make a partition active and bootable?

Question 3: Any pitfalls with cloning the Windows (C:) partition, (Disk 1), over the Windows (J:), (Disk 0), partition?

Question 4: Anything else?

DiskManagement.JPG
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    windows 8.1
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    HP Envy 17
    CPU
    I7
    Motherboard
    HP
    Memory
    16GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Nvida
    Browser
    IE
I noticed the Windows (C drive is assigned to the original hard disk, NOT the new SSD.

You are right.

How to make a partition active and bootable?

UEFI boot mode and GPT partition table on the SSD/HDD do not use boot sectors and do not require active partition to be set. UEFI firmware (BIOS) scan the drive for existence of the "EFI System Partition", then run "\efi\boot\bootx64.efi".

Remove the HDD from your computer.

If Windows does not start.

- Boot the computer using the Windows 7/8 installation media.
- On the first screen, press SHIFT+F10 to bring up command prompt.
OR
- Boot the computer using the Windows 8 recovery USB flash drive.
- select Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Command Prompt.

- Run the following command at the command prompt.

bcdboot c:\windows

BCDBoot copies the boot files from the Windows partition to the EFI System partition and creates the BCD store in the same partition.

BCDboot Command-Line Options

edit: The ID for the recovery image partition type is incorrect, so do not wipe your HDD clean, until it has been corrected.
 
Last edited:

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 10
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Lenovo G580
    CPU
    Intel Core i5-3230M
    Memory
    8 GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Intel HD Graphics 4000
    Browser
    Microsoft Edge
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender, standard user account
    Other Info
    UEFI firmware (BIOS) embedded Windows 8 product key.
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