Moving pre-installed Windows 8 from HDD to SSD

Why not do it the EASY WAY.

I tried that already. I made the recovery USB drive, not DVD, following the instructions found here. However it stated at the top that that cannot be used to install Windows 8. Indeed, the link that you originally posted also explicitly states this: "A recovery USB flash drive cannot be used to install Windows 8." I tried it anyway, and when I tried to boot from the USB with the SSD inside it wouldn't work. This whole trial and error process is detailed in my initial post. I see no other options that would allow me to accomplish what I want.

Frankly, the EASY WAY would have been to include installation discs for Windows 8 with the laptop. I have done fresh OS installs on my old laptop (that is, the one I am replacing) and it was painless and simple with the discs. Put the DVD in. Shut down the computer. Turn the computer on. Boom, the rest is automated. I do not consider myself computer illiterate, but I am also not a CS geek who likes to tinker with OS and have top of the line computers (that's not intended to be derogatory, although now that I reread it, it sounds like it could be taken that way.) I can figure things out if they are presented in a clear, intelligible way. Right now, from my vantage point, Microsoft purposefully made this process as difficult as possible.




 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
    CPU
    i5 3210
    Memory
    6GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    GeForce GT 635m
    Hard Drives
    500 GB HDD, 256GB Samsung 830 SSD
Take a good look at your manual:

LENOVO said:
When the hard disk drive or solid state drive is replaced
because of a failure, no
product recovery program is on the new drive. In this case, you must use the
Recovery Disc Set for the computer.

Order the Recovery Disc Set
and the drive at
the same time so that you can recover the new drive with the pre-installed
software when they arrive.
The Recovery Disc Set consists of the following set of DVDs to restore the
computer to the original factory configuration.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    ME, XP,Vista,Win7,Win8,Win8.1
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    Other Info
    Notebooks x 3

    Desktops x 5

    Towers x 4
1) is there a reason you cant make the dvd set to use in this process that i have missed ?
2) go back to disk management and select your ssd drive and delete volume and then create the volume and let your clone program create every thing itself when
you start the cloning process
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    xp32 home /xp32 pro /vista64 /win7 64 /win8 64
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home Build
    CPU
    PHENOM II X4 Quad Core 965 Black Edition CPU, 3.40 GHz
    Motherboard
    GA-MA790FXT-UD5P
    Memory
    G.Skill 8GB (4x XMS3 2GB) PC-12800 (1600MHz
    Graphics Card(s)
    nvidia 9500 gt
    Sound Card
    onboard
    Monitor(s) Displays
    T231H / X243H ACER
    Screen Resolution
    1980/1080
    Hard Drives
    Hitachi 500 samsung1terabyte wd 750
    PSU
    550 watt
    Case
    cooler master
    Cooling
    standard
    Keyboard
    microsoft
    Mouse
    logitech
    Internet Speed
    20000 ul 1020 dl
    Other Info
    2x dual pci-e digital tv tuners
    1xusb2 digital tv tuner
1) is there a reason you cant make the dvd set to use in this process that i have missed ?
2) go back to disk management and select your ssd drive and delete volume and then create the volume and let your clone program create every thing itself when
you start the cloning process

1) When you say the words "dvd set" what are you actually referring to? I have been consistently using the vocabulary "installation discs" to refer to a DVD (or a set of DVDs) from which you can install an OS onto a blank hard drive. That is, you can install from the DVDs without needing to have an operating OS. These "installation discs" did not come with the laptop. In addition, I am not currently aware of a process that can be done with Windows 8 that can create such "installation discs." User theog originally responded with 3 links. The first describes how to create a system image. The second describes how to create a "recovery drive," which cannot be used to install Windows 8, and thus are not equivalent to "installation discs." The third describes how to create a "system repair disc," which to me seems like a weaker version of the "recovery drive." It also cannot be used to install Windows 8.


I currently have a 20 GB backup on a USB flash drive. It contains a .wsi backup file and a bunch of numbered files. I made this via the OneKey recovery process. From my initial post: "After that, I tried to use that image on my USB to reinstall Windows 8 from the "Advanced Setup" screen, but I couldn't figure out how to do it. You can get to a section that asks for an image somewhere, but it wants one from the HDD, not from the USB." I just now found a link that might help me with the step that I was stuck at, and that is this link here.
There could be a problem with this image process in general though. This link states that the new drive must be larger than the old drive. My new drive is half the size of the old drive.

2) I did the SSD cloning process correctly. Everything went automatically after I chose the partition sizes. I tried to boot from the SSD clone, still in the enclosure, and it could not get to the desktop/Start screen. It also failed to use the recovery partition on the SSD to reinstall Windows on the SSD.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
    CPU
    i5 3210
    Memory
    6GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    GeForce GT 635m
    Hard Drives
    500 GB HDD, 256GB Samsung 830 SSD
During creation of the Recovery drive, you have the option to copy the contents of the oem recovery partition onto it as well.

The idea is you should be able to use that to restore your os to out of the box condition.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    7/8/ubuntu/Linux Deepin
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
Take a good look at your manual:

LENOVO said:
When the hard disk drive or solid state drive is replaced
because of a failure, no
product recovery program is on the new drive. In this case, you must use the
Recovery Disc Set for the computer.

Order the Recovery Disc Set
and the drive at
the same time so that you can recover the new drive with the pre-installed
software when they arrive.
The Recovery Disc Set consists of the following set of DVDs to restore the
computer to the original factory configuration.

All you need to know is in your manual, Which parts of I have copy & paste over.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    ME, XP,Vista,Win7,Win8,Win8.1
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    Other Info
    Notebooks x 3

    Desktops x 5

    Towers x 4
During creation of the Recovery drive, you have the option to copy the contents of the oem recovery partition onto it as well.

The idea is you should be able to use that to restore your os to out of the box condition.

This is the first thing that I tried. I made a Recovery drive with the option checked to copy the recovery partition. It was 29 GB total. Is there a guide to use that "recovery partition drive" to install on a DIFFERENT hard drive (in my case, my SSD) that does NOT HAVE an operating system on it? Or should that process be straight forward and I just somehow messed up a step before when I tried it (the step may have been having an unformatted SSD, however with the way it was acting before I don't know if that would help anyway)?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
    CPU
    i5 3210
    Memory
    6GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    GeForce GT 635m
    Hard Drives
    500 GB HDD, 256GB Samsung 830 SSD
Take a good look at your manual:

LENOVO said:
When the hard disk drive or solid state drive is replaced
because of a failure, no
product recovery program is on the new drive. In this case, you must use the
Recovery Disc Set for the computer.

Order the Recovery Disc Set
and the drive at
the same time so that you can recover the new drive with the pre-installed
software when they arrive.
The Recovery Disc Set consists of the following set of DVDs to restore the
computer to the original factory configuration.

All you need to know is in your manual, Which parts of I have copy & paste over.

In reality, the option of ordering a recovery disc set is currently not available for me. I am on break from grad school, and thus am at my permanent home. Before I came back I was reassigned housing, so I actually don't have an address to send the discs to at school AND, assuming it will take longer than 9 days, I can't send them to the permanent address either because I am leaving in 9 days to drive back.

So I CAN do this option once my new address is available to me. However, by that point, I will have had my new laptop for over 5 weeks without it being my main laptop. I may just give up because this is ridiculously frustrating. I have put this process off for too long and I was determined to make the switch before I went back.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
    CPU
    i5 3210
    Memory
    6GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    GeForce GT 635m
    Hard Drives
    500 GB HDD, 256GB Samsung 830 SSD
hi have you tried to put the ssd in to the laptop and remove the other drive and then boot from it
i would think you wont get it to boot while it is in the enclosure
 
Last edited:

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    xp32 home /xp32 pro /vista64 /win7 64 /win8 64
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home Build
    CPU
    PHENOM II X4 Quad Core 965 Black Edition CPU, 3.40 GHz
    Motherboard
    GA-MA790FXT-UD5P
    Memory
    G.Skill 8GB (4x XMS3 2GB) PC-12800 (1600MHz
    Graphics Card(s)
    nvidia 9500 gt
    Sound Card
    onboard
    Monitor(s) Displays
    T231H / X243H ACER
    Screen Resolution
    1980/1080
    Hard Drives
    Hitachi 500 samsung1terabyte wd 750
    PSU
    550 watt
    Case
    cooler master
    Cooling
    standard
    Keyboard
    microsoft
    Mouse
    logitech
    Internet Speed
    20000 ul 1020 dl
    Other Info
    2x dual pci-e digital tv tuners
    1xusb2 digital tv tuner

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    ME, XP,Vista,Win7,Win8,Win8.1
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    Other Info
    Notebooks x 3

    Desktops x 5

    Towers x 4
hi have you tried to put the ssd in to the laptop and remove the other drive and then boot from it
i would think you wont get it to boot while it is in the enclosure

I just now swapped the hard drive for the SSD and it encountered immediately the same error screen as when I tried to boot from the enclosure. I then turned the computer on using the Novo button, and all options to boot from the Novo button got me to the same error screen EXCEPT the system recovery option. This option loaded for a bit, and then it gave me a different error box that said that the OneKey recovery partition was damaged and to not run it. Then it took me back to the error screen described before.

Okay so I have one more idea to try and then I will probably be done.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
    CPU
    i5 3210
    Memory
    6GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    GeForce GT 635m
    Hard Drives
    500 GB HDD, 256GB Samsung 830 SSD
This is complete BS. All the lenovo win 8 preinstalled systems are like this. I have the system repair disc burned, a system image burned, a usb recovery drive created and none of it can recover to my SSD. I've been keeping an eye on this thread but it seems no one understands there is no way to upgrade our drive. God forbid an original drive fails on a win 8 lenovo. I refuse to turn to migration software for the errors it creates. I'm thoroughly disgusted with this complete failure on windows 8 and lenovo to provide some kind of solution to this. My hard drive lowers my system score in windows 8 by a full point. It should not be a fricken surprise the customers would upgrade their drives. Then again maybe it isn't a surprise. Lenovo will ship the official recovery discs for 69.99. Maybe thats why they axed the ability to burn the recovery disc in Lenovo One key recovery. I don't know what anyone here can do but we're screwed by Lenovo and windows 8.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 OEM
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Lenovo y580
This is complete BS. All the lenovo win 8 preinstalled systems are like this. I have the system repair disc burned, a system image burned, a usb recovery drive created and none of it can recover to my SSD. I've been keeping an eye on this thread but it seems no one understands there is no way to upgrade our drive. God forbid an original drive fails on a win 8 lenovo. I refuse to turn to migration software for the errors it creates. I'm thoroughly disgusted with this complete failure on windows 8 and lenovo to provide some kind of solution to this. My hard drive lowers my system score in windows 8 by a full point. It should not be a fricken surprise the customers would upgrade their drives. Then again maybe it isn't a surprise. Lenovo will ship the official recovery discs for 69.99. Maybe thats why they axed the ability to burn the recovery disc in Lenovo One key recovery. I don't know what anyone here can do but we're screwed by Lenovo and windows 8.

If I have to pay money for the recovery disks I am just gonna find and use a Windows 7 iso. And shouldn't you be able to upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for less than that? Shouldn't THAT come with disks? Or are they making that download only?

My idea, which I haven't done yet, is to burn an image of the disk onto a USB and follow this guide. Notice it explicitly states that you can not move an image onto a smaller drive. So my idea was to partition my current hard drive to make it LOOK like it is smaller than 256 GB, so that an image file of the disk would think that it is smaller than 256 GB, so it is moving to a "bigger" drive. However, given that I don't know if this is possible, if it IS possible, it involves messing directly with the original hard drive, which I am, at this point, very wary of doing.

Like you pointed out, to me switching to an SSD seems like a very OBVIOUS thing to do for people who don't care too much about large amounts of storage, and will become only more prevalent in the future as SSD prices come down more.

The thing that is ridiculous is that I was very hesitant to buy a Windows 8 laptop because of the whole "new OS" stigma, and it turns out I can't even fully utilize my computer setup.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
    CPU
    i5 3210
    Memory
    6GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    GeForce GT 635m
    Hard Drives
    500 GB HDD, 256GB Samsung 830 SSD
I tried but I'm getting the same error whether you shrink the orginal drives partition or not. I'm very frustrated at this point. In desperation I'm filing a desperate complaint to the BBB. My argument is that Lenovo is extorting people to buy their premium technical support by removing the recovery disk creator that was present in windows 7 version of our laptops. I'm not sure this is 100% true but it very well may be. The oversight is humongous if true. Lenovo support says they don't cover software in their warranty and they quoted me $89. Even higher then what someone said they were charged for a recovery disk. I'm setting up another brand of laptop preconfigured with win 8 soon. I sure hope they don't **** me up the *** too.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 OEM
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Lenovo y580
tmsmith616 said:
Lenovo will ship the official recovery discs for 69.99.


Most OEM's will ship Recovery DVD's for FREE, within the first 12 months, (may be a postage fee)
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    ME, XP,Vista,Win7,Win8,Win8.1
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    Other Info
    Notebooks x 3

    Desktops x 5

    Towers x 4
Just got off with Lenovo support again. They offered to ship the recovery discs for $59. BS.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 OEM
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Lenovo y580
Epoch I to bought a new computer with Windows 8 and wanted to move it from HDD to SSD. My system is GPT/UEFI.

I found this 3rd party software and it worked like a charm. You can get the trial and use it without a hitch. DriveClone 9 by Farstone. It supports Win 8 and GPT/UEFI. Hard Drive to Hard Drive Clone, Disk to Disk Clone, Hard Drive Copy, DiskClone, DriveCopy, Solid State Drive Clone, SSD Copy, PC Upgrade - DriveClone

All I did was install it on the Win 8 HDD then ran it to do a clone to SSD. I had the SSD connected with the USB to SATA cable. After it completed the clone I moved the SSD into the laptop and it boot right up no problem. I to was thinking since I got the HDD with the full package I would delete the recovery partition on the SSD. I have yet to do it though.

Again the whole process went smooth. Hope it helps give it a try.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
Epoch I to bought a new computer with Windows 8 and wanted to move it from HDD to SSD. My system is GPT/UEFI.

I found this 3rd party software and it worked like a charm. You can get the trial and use it without a hitch. DriveClone 9 by Farstone. It supports Win 8 and GPT/UEFI. Hard Drive to Hard Drive Clone, Disk to Disk Clone, Hard Drive Copy, DiskClone, DriveCopy, Solid State Drive Clone, SSD Copy, PC Upgrade - DriveClone

All I did was install it on the Win 8 HDD then ran it to do a clone to SSD. I had the SSD connected with the USB to SATA cable. After it completed the clone I moved the SSD into the laptop and it boot right up no problem. I to was thinking since I got the HDD with the full package I would delete the recovery partition on the SSD. I have yet to do it though.

Again the whole process went smooth. Hope it helps give it a try.

I downloaded this program, trial version, and used "Clone disk" option, let the program automatically set the partition sizes. It took over an hour to clone the disk and I checked to make sure the partitions were there on the SSD. They were. I moved the SSD into the laptop and I power it on. It goes to a black screen for around 15 seconds and then brings up the Boot Menu that gives you the options of the places from which you may boot. Samsung 830 SSD is an option. I click enter on that option. The screen goes black for another 15 seconds and it brings that menu back up. It didnt work.

Edit:
TMsmith did you try this? Or are you not using cloning software?
Also before the cloning software did its thing it tells you to make sure you can boot from USB device. I had my computer enabled to do this.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
    CPU
    i5 3210
    Memory
    6GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    GeForce GT 635m
    Hard Drives
    500 GB HDD, 256GB Samsung 830 SSD
I don't like drive cloning. To be honest I haven't bothered trying. I really don't trust the process. Between fixing alignment and dealing with configuration differences between HDD and SSD. And add on top that I'm using an msata SSD, I'd really prefer to start with an uninitialized OS. (If I didn't make it clear I'm on a different lenovo I apologize. Y580 here.)
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 OEM
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Lenovo y580
I feel your pain Epoch. I have a brand new Asus N76 and if I had the b install OS disk {like I did on my old HP laptop) I would have simply done a clean install. Not possible due to their deal with MS - what massive pain this causes us users - literally DAYS wasted on a workaround for a simple task and costs on 3d party apps.

So I coincidentally bought the Disk Clone 9 (as Norton Ghost 15 that Samsung supplied with the 830 disk doesnt f work with Win 8 - arghhh) and it seemed to do a great job - all 4 C: partitions there. But it wont boot "insert proper boot disk".

On the diskclone site is this though DriveClone - How to Set bootable hard drive for UEFI computer that I have been trying to download for 4 hours (it crashes with a network error) to create a DVD boot disk that will allow me to brand the SSD as a boot device (the missing link????). I guess I will need something like Roxio to burn the ISO to a DVD and make it readable - more cost and hassle!!!! So annoyed so will sign off - but lets help each other!!!!!
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    win8
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Asus NV56VZ laptop & Asus P8P67 i7 rig@ 4.5GHZ
    Graphics Card(s)
    Nvidia Quadro 3800
    Monitor(s) Displays
    2 x Dell IPS 22"
    Hard Drives
    Desktop: OCZ 120 Gb SSD + 5 x 1Tb RAID 5
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