I've got a new laptop and a 256gb samsung ssd 830 to put in it. I've read some threads on this site, and think I have a general idea of what to do. I want to clone the drive to the ssd using ghost 15. I'm running windows 7 64bit. It's a 500gb hdd.
I have one specific question about which partitions to copy. I'm not sure if My drive has a SRP or not. I'll attach a pic of disk management. There are 3 partitions in addition to the C partition. 260mb oem partition, 260mb efi system partition, and 18.9gb recovery partition. None of them say system reserved partition. Should I transfer all of these to the ssd?
To be on the safe side I would run a "One Time Backup" of all 4 partitions onto your external drive by highlighting all 4 partitions creating all the necessary .v2i files, you then have a recoverable copy of your computer if you mess up.
If you are going to use Ghost as your primary recovery media then you won't need the recovery partition.
The OEM and the EFI partitions will be required along with the C:partition containing the O/S and Apps etc.
There are two problems as I see it and one is the EFI partition and the other is copying the big drive to a small drive.
It can be done but it is not easy, I would be inclined to do away with the "Complicated" partitions and run a copy/backup of your C: drive into another folder on the external drive because it is quite safe to rely on Ghost as the primary recovery media.
I use Ghost 12 and Ghost 15 for the purpose of recovering or reimaging my computer and I do it on a regular basis and they are very reliable.
My colleagues on the forum have dealt with the EFI partition in previous threads and are better advised to assist you with this task.
I found that it was easier to down size the source drive before an attempt was made to "Clone" it onto the 256 GB smaller drive.
I figure I'll shrink the hard drive down before creating the image. Then I'll restore the efi, oem, and C partition to the ssd. Does that make sense? I just got the laptop and 400 of the 500gb are free, so I hope shrinking it won't be an issue.
Also, I'm having trouble booting from the Ghost cd. I went into the bios and the optical drive is set as the first boot device, but the pc still loads windows every time.
I tried booting from the disc on my desktop and it worked fine. On the laptop, I never see the "press any key" screen. And yes, the ghost cd is fresh from the box.
Also, even though my hdd is 91% free, I can only shrink it to 233,413mb. So about 233.5 gb. Will that be too large for a 256gb ssd? I know the space will decrease after its formatted, and free space is important to a ssd.
Finally, the only partition Ghost is showing for the One Time Backup is the C partition. Is this normal?
It didn't work. I was only able to do a backup of the C partition. So I restored that to the ssd and tried to boot from it. No good. I think I'll try a fresh install now. Thanks for all the help.
