Solved Identifying partitions on HP Pavilion 15 HDD for SSD image

[KYHI]

KYHI: those two files are correct for your current setup with the SSD

I have made the other adjustment that you originally suggested

There was no need for that.. But will not Hurt anything...

 

[Damaha]

Ah did I miss something - this was a few posts back -- posts 70 and 71 - I made that fix yesterday and you said it was 'good to go'? Does this mean it needs to change back or doesnt matter either way>

 

[KYHI]

what the 25000 to 65536 ??

I seen 25000 and said you where good to go..

 

[Damaha]

Ah ok bit of confusion here --
Which number should be inserted there?
I'll make sure it is now.

 

[KYHI]

what did you change

resetconfig or PBR_resetconfig ??

 

[Damaha]

It was 'resetconfig.xml' - I may have misunderstood your instructions as per below?

once you create that media / in the sources folder / will be *resetconfig.xml / you need to open with notepad and edit

<MinSize>65536</MinSize>

as your number will be the size of your present HDD - so you need to lower the minimum Drive size to fit your SSD

65536 represents a 64GB drive size minimum, which means it will now restore to your 120GB SSD

Sorry if I'm being slow, but is the correct number 65536 or 25000? Just to double check.

Do let me know what the figure should be and I'll stick it in, won't take a second and then case closed! Thanks again.

 

[Damaha]

Ok, I re-read Bart's last comment and get the idea it's a moot point either way, also as far as I gather from KYHI, it doesn't matter, so I have changed it back to the original figure 25000. That's the end of the road for me I think - but let me know if I've missed anything or in danger of meltdown! I don't think so.
Thanks very much - it was fun doing it - a real education in opening the case up and moving wires etc. I managed to replace the HDD in a caddy inside instead of the optical drive (I've hardly used CDs/DVDs recently, but the one I took out is working just fine as an external drive in caddy for films/music and installing things) and slipped in a spare 1GB of RAM, taking it up to 9, while I had the case open, so great to see it boot up and everything work. Don't think I need/want to do much more - I've been told by HP I cannot make further upgrades on graphics (graded 5 on WEI - everything else is 7-8.1),- but that's a respectable score, I'm told. The CPU is a big boost for me from earlier machines -- an AMD A10 5745 - I wouldn't want to mess with that, though the I7s sound like the top end - guess what I need to continue playing around with this kind of a thing is a desktop so I can experiment more freely.
Many thanks for your patience while I was trying to keep up with everything - very much appreciated.

 

[Slartybart]

You're most welcome!

Neat trick on replacing the optical drive with a caddy and your spinner. I've seen it before and thought about doing it, but I do use my OD. It would be nice to have an extra HDD in the machine. I'll look into it again, maybe I can figure out a way to make it swappable - thanks for the reminder.

RAM - make sure the speeds match or RAM will run at the lowest speed. More importantly, make sure the voltages match - a mismatch might cause BSODs, then again, it might not. Just a heads up on where to look first if your do get a BSOD.

Yeah, you're limited on a laptop - WEI 5 is not bad.

The Motherboard might not support an i7, so don't bother messing with that.

You did great 'keeping up', it's hard when it's all new to you and it's not commonly used in day-to-day computing.

Your machine seems to be in the best shape as far as you can get it. You might get a small WEI improvement by tuning Performance Options Computer properties (or Control Panel -> System): Advanced system settings -> Performance [ Settings... ] button -> Visual Effects tab Tip: If you select Adjust for best performance - all options are unselected, then you can pick the options you want without having to clear the others. I keep these to a minimum and got 1 point on WEI, but my machine is far less powerful than yours. I'm not sure that you'll notice any improvement since you have more RAM and running off of an SSD. Tip: if you Alt+PrtScrn, and paste it into Paint and save the image, you'll have a record of the settings before you change them. The image to the right shows the settings I chose for 'minimal' visual effects. None of the more GPU intensive options (animate, fade, slide) are selected.

Now, one more task .... please mark your thread as solved.

Thanks,

Bill
.

 

[Damaha]

That's excellent -thanks a million Bart and KYHI for all your help! There were two angles of approach there both of which were invaluable. The thread is now marked SOLVED - at least I clicked it - hope that shows up at your end - let me know if not.

Without my confusions and dead-ends, what I did was pretty much:
1. Remove hard-drive, insert SSD (at this point added extra RAM)
2. Download Windows 8.1 ISO onto USB
3. Fresh install Windows 8.1 on SSD
4. Remove optical drive, replace with HDD in internal caddy -- put optical drive into external caddy
5. Wipe HDD main partition (formerly C) and format for storage use
6. Link cloud accounts (Dropbox, Googe Drive, Onedrive) to HDD main partition for storage.
7. Use HDD Recovery partition (D) to create Windows Recovery USB
8. Select 'Remove recovery partition' once this is done. The entire HDD is now available for storage.
9. Save Recovery USB contents on Dropbox/HDD so available to put back onto a USB later.

Obviously advisable, as I discovered, to create the Windows Recovery USB at the very beginning, useable as alternative to the fresh W8 install to put OS on SSD, having edited some source files to fit the SSD - though both methods seem viable.
Thanks a million and catch you around, perhaps for future dabbling in this field - meanwhile, I admire your expertise : )