Lenovo Ideacentre 520 - Windows 10 from scratch and new SSD

[szczepan325]

Hello people!

 

I was wondering if someone would point me in the right direction. Friends Ideacentre stopped booting. We have tried everything to make Windows 10 boot again, automated repair from RE, chkdsk, SFC, efi repairs in 10 different ways. It didn't work, so we decided to drop new SSD in there and just use Macrium to copy system image over. He has loads of personal files, and software which would be pain to install again, so clean install is a no-go. But the bootloader/EFI partition is probably garbage, so first we need to install Win 10 from scratch, so it makes all the necessary partitions, and then restore Win10 partition from image.

 

So here is the question:

Can we put the new disk in some laptop (not the Lenovo Ideacentre) to kickstart installation, create required partitions etc, take it out and then copy Windows partition? Wouldn't it mess with licensing? We don't want to do that inside of Ideacentre, because that thing is a pain to dissassemble and reassemble again, not mentioning the risk of damaging screen. And we would like to do the restore image part on the Ideacentre's new disk plugged into PC containing image (SATA is faster than USB).

 

Any thoughts?

 

[SupaKomputa]

USB2 yes, USB 3 not so much, you can just install / clone it with USB 3.

[szczepan325]

The problem is I have only USB2 SATA bridge. Still the question remains, can we start Win10 installation from thumb drive, just to get to partitioning, so Win10 installer will create EFI bootloader and other partitions, and then just restore C:\ from image? Preferably installation-> partitioning would take place via some old laptop, so we don't have to bother that AIO PC? Then we would just slap that SSD in Ideacentre, close it up and be done with it

[homeap5]

Yes, you can do that - restore partition to drive that contain boot partitions. And your license will be ok - boot partition is only for boot.

[szczepan325]

Thank you all for help.

 

I had to do fresh install of Win10 anyways, as registry got corrupted. Win10 restored from image would't boot, and for some reason RegBack isn't a thing anymore. Thanks, Microsoft!