[OZDOUG]

Morning SD,

 

No Windows disk.....lost it in the move although I dont think I ever saw one when I bought the machine!  All I have now is the external USB-HDD that I used to clone the machine. I then installed the SDD & cloned back over to the SSD from the USB-HDD.

 

I tried to use the tbh-trial & set it up on the USB-HDD but halfway through it stopped the installation & told me I had to change the USB-HDD from NTFS to Fat32. Couldn't do that with my laptop using the 'Properties, Format, File System' method (only exFAT available) so ended up using EaseUS Partition Master. That did the job but by then it was the next day (looking after elderly relative). Then the EaseUS tbh-trial wouldn't run.....error message below:

 

Uninstalled & reinstalled tbh-trial & even contacted the EaseUS 'chat line' for help but then they shut for the weekend.....'contact us on Monday!'

 

While on the EaseUS site I then downloaded 'tb-free' & that installed Todo Backup & ran up just fine. Screen grab below:

 

Using Todo Backup I then cloned the 'C' drive to the USB-HDD, shut down the machine, opened it & installed the SSD, then rebooted. Then using Todo Backup I then cloned the USB-HDD over to the SSD. All seemed to go well so I rebooted & reset the BIOS to have SSD next after Windows Boot Manager.

 

I didn't go the option of creating WinPE as I confess I probably misunderstood your comment on one post:

"I'm not familiarized with that situation! I think you should try to to the clone and then change the boot order to HDD1......"

So from that I just went straight to the menu selection of 'Clone' & continued from there.......

Here is the start page from Todo Backup & creating a WinPE was not an option.....although it probably was on the tbh-Trial version!

Edited by OZDOUG, 22 April 2018 - 10:33 PM.

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Hi,

 

I think you need to clone from the eMMC to the SSD again using the WinPE disk, you can find the option to create the WinPE disk inside the menu Tools.

 

Make sure you have copies of every new data added after the clone.

 

The problem with the drive letters is something that happens when Windows see both drivers at the same time, I always remove the cloned drive but in your case I suppose it's not easy/possible to disconnect the eMMC, that's way I post this is a new situation for me.

 

I did try to recreate your situation and the drive letters switched correctly, what I did:

- Bios set to boot from the eMMC

- boot using the Todo Backup WinPE disk

- clone the eMMC to the SSD

- shutdown the machine

- access the BIOS and change the Boot order to the SSD

- let the machine boot from the SSD and confirm that the C: drive is now the SSD

[SleepyDude]

Hi,

 

I think you need to clone from the eMMC to the SSD again using the WinPE disk, you can find the option to create the WinPE disk inside the menu Tools.

 

Make sure you have copies of every new data added after the clone.

 

The problem with the drive letters is something that happens when Windows see both drivers at the same time, I always remove the cloned drive but in your case I suppose it's not easy/possible to disconnect the eMMC, that's way I post this is a new situation for me.

 

I did try to recreate your situation and the drive letters switched correctly, what I did:

- Bios set to boot from the eMMC

- boot using the Todo Backup WinPE disk

- clone the eMMC to the SSD

- shutdown the machine

- access the BIOS and change the Boot order to the SSD

- let the machine boot from the SSD and confirm that the C: drive is now the SSD

[OZDOUG]

Morning SD,

 

Got it working but not the same way.....basically I got stuck in the house looking after the relative so had all afternoon to chew on this!

 

Created the WinPE from the menu selection, 'Create Emergency Disk'.

 

That gave me a small file Emergencydisk, disc image file.  

 

At this point I was stumped & then started carefully playing with the other cloning options.

I kept a copy of the 'Emergencydisk' file on a USB first, then I reformatted the SSD. 

I tried to do the 'System Clone' option to clone the 'C' drive to the SSD, but I kept getting an error message saying I had insufficient unallocated space on the SSD. I played with that partition, making it larger or smaller until I gave up. Reformatted the SSD again.

 

Then I did the straight 'Clone' option & got the same results as earlier attempt where I did get a cloned copy of the 'C' drive on to the SSD. However again despite playing with the BIOS setting every which way I still couldn't get the machine to boot from the SSD.

 

So I started reading everything I could on the Windows Boot Manager (WBM) file. In there under the section Windows Boot loader' were two lines, 'device' & 'osdevice' which were always set to 'partition=c:'. Everything I could find out told me that that was where the machine boots from. I decided I had two choices....rename the SSD & 'C' drives to make the SSD drive letter 'C'....but that made me nervous to change something on the machine while it was running, so I changed the WBM settings to read, 'partition=d:', which was the SSD drive letter.

*** At that time the BIOS was set with WBM 1st, SSD 2nd & the eMMC flash drive 3rd.

I rebooted & the machine rebooted from the SSD, & the little Windows icon showed against the SSD drive but had renamed it to 'C' & the original C-drive to 'D'!

 

Now the other weird part is that I checked the WBM file & it has reverted to 'partition=c:'! The only other change I did notice is that under the top section, 2nd line down 'device', that changed from '...Volume6', to now '...Volume5'. The two screen grabs of the WBM file from 22APR (pre-change) & yesterday 23APR (post-change) are below:

 

 

Now my next task is to get the SSD to merge all the partitions to give a bigger drive.....I've been trying with Windows Disk Management & the EaseUS Partition Manager but cannot seem to sort that one!!

 

Attached Thumbnails

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[SleepyDude]

Hi,

 

The partition look good now

 

If you want to keep that Spare drive E: then the only space you can add to the C: drive is the 63.14GB Unallocated space in the end of the SSD.

 

You must use EaseUS Partition Manager because the Windows Disk Manager is very limited and can't do what you want!

 

- first you need to move both partitions 1.00GB Healthy (Recovery Partition) and spare (E:) to the end of the SSD without changing the partitions size, do this by dragging the blocks to the right side one after the other so that the Unallocated space is "created" next to the C: drive.

- extend the C: drive to use the Unallocated space

[OZDOUG]

Hi SD,

 

Sorry for the slow response....the elderly relative is now in hospital so I've been running back & forth a lot.......

 

The partitions were all combined & everything looks good with the machine except now I seem to be tied up with trying to catch up with the Windows 10 updates!! 

 

One thing I still am unsure was how I would boot the machine from the WinPE file?

That file was a small file Emergencydisk, disc image file & only about 440mb so I was not sure how I would set up the machine to boot from that. Could you explain that to me please? (for my future reference!)?

 

Not sure what I should do with the now defunct eMMC 32Gb flash drive......Maybe I could format it & put any programmes or apps that don't relay on Windows to run.....?

[SleepyDude]

Hi SD,
 
Sorry for the slow response....the elderly relative is now in hospital so I've been running back & forth a lot.......

 

No problem.

 

The partitions were all combined & everything looks good with the machine except now I seem to be tied up with trying to catch up with the Windows 10 updates!! 
 
One thing I still am unsure was how I would boot the machine from the WinPE file?
That file was a small file Emergencydisk, disc image file & only about 440mb so I was not sure how I would set up the machine to boot from that. Could you explain that to me please? (for my future reference!)?

 

If you created an ISO file then you have to burn it to a cd/dvd or transfer to a flash drive using a program like Rufus https://rufus.akeo.ie/

 

Not sure what I should do with the now defunct eMMC 32Gb flash drive......Maybe I could format it & put any programmes or apps that don't relay on Windows to run.....?

 

You can delete all the partitions on the eMMC and create a single partition to use the full space for whatever you need.

[OZDOUG]

Hi SD.....looks like I've created a problem!!

 

I formatted the eMMC & now I have lost quite a few functions: no WiFi, no Search/Cortana, cannot load Word or Excel, power options are limited to Restart or Shutdown, & no volume control.

I checked Device Manager & saw there were a few issues listed!:

 

I had a look at the info for the WiFi & saw this:

 

I tried to update the driver but got the following info:

 

Any help would be gratefully appreciated!!    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[SleepyDude]

Hi,

 

Removing the partitions from the eMMC that isn't in use doesn't create those type of problems! something else happen!

 

Can you post a screenshot of the Disk Manager showing the actual partition layout?

[OZDOUG]

SD,

Screenshot just now......

 

Only other prior events were:

Earlier that morning I opened machine from Sleep mode & (as my memory best serves me) attached a USB drive of documents & got error message 'Unexpected Store Exception'. Once machine rebooted found  no SSD 'C' drive shown & machine running from old eMMC 'C' drive. Tried a few reboots & checked in Disk Management & Device Manager but still no SSD drive. Shut down machine & removed & reattached SSD & rebooted.....SSD again shown in Explorer but not as the main active drive. Changed Boot Loader file again to read 'device' & 'osdevice' to 'D' drive (SSD unit) & rebooted. SSD now shown as 'C' drive & the main active drive, & Boot Loader as running 'device' & 'osdevice' from 'C' (as per my earlier posts).

All running fine (checking emails & reading some documents, etc) so decided to format eMMC drive.........& here we are!

 

I still have the original EmergencyDisk image file on a separate USB drive I made from original eMMC drive as Emergency Disk I created before I did the clone drive thing......

 

[SleepyDude]

Hi,

 

It seems you did some changes to the partitions and the system partitions are not in the same order!

 

You can adjust the partitions sizes for the C: and E: drives but you need to maintain the order and the size of the system partitions and without free space between them.

[OZDOUG]

I see what you mean....but I only see 'C' & 'D' drives, no 'E'.....?

 

I believe in Partition Manager it will allow me to drag the SSD © drive to the left to take the Unallocated 153mb partition, then to increase the right hand side of the SSD © drive to take the other Unallocated partition immediately to the right.......screen grabs below showing the steps:

 

 

 

 

Actions not done....just looked to see if it was possible!

 

[OZDOUG]

Hi SD,

Ran through the steps above & seemed to go well enough with Partition Manager, but still have the same problem! Screen grab below:

 

This somehow still left a 482mb partition so I merged that also...results below:

 

Also same result in Disk Management:

 

It seems the partition called 'Recovery' on Disk 0 doesn't look quite right. I would think it would be a 'Healthy (Recovery Partition)', not called "Recovery" NTFS Healthy (Primary Partition).

 

 

[SleepyDude]

Hi,

 

On the eMMC I would delete all the partitions except D: and resize it to use the full capacity.

 

I have seem reports that sometimes Easeus Partition Manager do changes to the partition types that it shouldn't do! maybe this is one of those cases and the software changed something on the Recovery Partition...

[OZDOUG]

Hi SD,

The first partition I tried to delete was the 100mb EFI one & I got the following message:

 

The only partition I had the option to Delete was the 1Gb one at the end marked, 'Healthy (Recovery Partition)' & this action created an Unallocated 1Gb partition. When I then tried to delete the EFI Partition again I got the following warning:

 

 

 

In Partition Manager it only allowed to slide the EFI partition to the extreme left, then expand the main Acer drive to the right to merge with the 1Gb Unallocated partition. Partition Manager did these actions then rebooted the machine. Below is the result in Disk Management 

....& in Partition Manager:

 

So the only other partition left is the EFI one....below are the options given in Partition Manager:

.......& the delete option gives the following message in Disk Management:

 

I didn't do this final partition delete as I wanted to check with you first....but I am happy to go ahead with it if you still think it is an option. 

 

Just reminding you that I still have the EmergencyDisk WimPE file I created before the cloning operation.....if there was any value to be gained from it?

 

 

 

[SleepyDude]

Hi,

 

Hi SD,
The first partition I tried to delete was the 100mb EFI one & I got the following message:
...
I didn't do this final partition delete as I wanted to check with you first....but I am happy to go ahead with it if you still think it is an option.

 

Windows protects those partitions of special types... Try to delete it.

 

Just reminding you that I still have the EmergencyDisk WimPE file I created before the cloning operation.....if there was any value to be gained from it?

 

Good I'm counting with it in case of problems

 

You should burn the ISO to a CD/DVD or create a bootable flash drive using Rufus.

If I'm remember correctly if you use the Wizard to create the Rescue disk and select a flash drive the program will create a bootable flash drive for you. Carefully it will format and delete everything on the flash drive.