Hdd to Sdd clone no OS path

[TheHoffmeat]

As the title implies, i was attempting to spruce up an old 2014 asus 2in1 rocking a 1t 2.5in hdd, 8gbs of ram and a duo core CPU.

After removing the optical disk drive, and using a 2.5hdd caddy, i was able to add an additional 1t 2.5in ssd, and slapped a 8bg ddr3 stick in the one accessible slot (other 4gb is soldered)
after formatting the ssd, i used macrium free trial to clone the hdd to the ssd. this all functioned as intended (or so i thought) after a reboot and bios boot change, i thought all was good. pc didnt seem to start much faster, but i assumed it was just a limit with the sata connection. it was not until after i formatted the HDD that i found out about asus's bios trick where it will force a known path if the current one dosent work (i found this out via multiple attempts at dirrecting the boot path to the SSD, and deleting the alternate path. though after a failed attempt at booting, the original HDD path is back in the BIOS.
So in short, my first two or three reboots after the clone gave me a false positive of a functioning OS clone.

anyway i use the comand prompt to clean the HDD over night. when i got home from work today i noticed almost 8gbs of ram being utilized (it usually sits around 3gb when idle) i assume this is because it was running a portion of the OS directly from ram, as i had just comand cleaned the HDD it was reading from. thus my problem. how do i create a new path via a very dumbed down BIOS.
or as an alternative, is it safe for me to plug that SSD into my desktop and manually remove the old photos and stuff from the file (im sure they are still there, as when trying to create my own OS file path via the BIOS, i had to sort through hundreds of files and programs, and each dead end made me restart, so i got to see a bunch of my programs and files) and after that just wipe it and put a fresh install of windows on it?

 

any help would be amazing, i have about googled myself into the grave at this point.

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

1 hour ago, TheHoffmeat said:

As the title implies, i was attempting to spruce up an old 2014 asus 2in1 rocking a 1t 2.5in hdd, 8gbs of ram and a duo core CPU.

After removing the optical disk drive, and using a 2.5hdd caddy, i was able to add an additional 1t 2.5in ssd, and slapped a 8bg ddr3 stick in the one accessible slot (other 4gb is soldered)
after formatting the ssd, i used macrium free trial to clone the hdd to the ssd. this all functioned as intended (or so i thought) after a reboot and bios boot change, i thought all was good. pc didnt seem to start much faster, but i assumed it was just a limit with the sata connection. it was not until after i formatted the HDD that i found out about asus's bios trick where it will force a known path if the current one dosent work (i found this out via multiple attempts at dirrecting the boot path to the SSD, and deleting the alternate path. though after a failed attempt at booting, the original HDD path is back in the BIOS.
So in short, my first two or three reboots after the clone gave me a false positive of a functioning OS clone.

anyway i use the comand prompt to clean the HDD over night. when i got home from work today i noticed almost 8gbs of ram being utilized (it usually sits around 3gb when idle) i assume this is because it was running a portion of the OS directly from ram, as i had just comand cleaned the HDD it was reading from. thus my problem. how do i create a new path via a very dumbed down BIOS.
or as an alternative, is it safe for me to plug that SSD into my desktop and manually remove the old photos and stuff from the file (im sure they are still there, as when trying to create my own OS file path via the BIOS, i had to sort through hundreds of files and programs, and each dead end made me restart, so i got to see a bunch of my programs and files) and after that just wipe it and put a fresh install of windows on it?

 

any help would be amazing, i have about googled myself into the grave at this point.

 

Can you not just swap the HDD for the SSD?

[TheHoffmeat]

1 hour ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Can you not just swap the HDD for the SSD?

I was attempting to add storage to the system and speed it up, it was severely bottle necked by the HDD, so throwing a clone of my hdd onto the SSD, and then using the HDD as less frequently used storage. but due to the failed SSD boot originally (asus forced a boot path to the old drive, tricking me to thinking i was running on the cloned ssd) this led to me wiping the HDD and a broken boot path. i am unaware how to fix it, so am curious if its as simple as finding the right folder in the bios boot path, or if i should remove the SSD and plug it into my PC and manually move the old date that is worth saving, and doing a clean install of windows (loosing all non essential data)

thanks for your input

[leclod]

If you did clone the HDD on the SSD, won't the computer boot if you connect only the SSD ?

 

If not, I'd save the data on the HDD and reinstall a clean windows on the SSD, (I'm not sure if you can install a clean Windows while keeping folders)

 

(I believe computers get confused when they have 2 OS drives connected)

Edited May 23 by leclod

[TheHoffmeat]

10 minutes ago, leclod said:

If you did clone the HDD on the SSD, won't the computer boot if you connect only the SSD ?

 

If not, I'd save the data on the HDD and reinstall a clean windows on the SSD, (I'm not sure if you can install a clean Windows while keeping folders)

 

(I believe computers get confused when they have 2 OS drives connected)

If that were the case it shouldn't be giving me the path issue, as the hdd has been wiped, So only the SSD has an os. But I can try pulling the hdd tomorrow to see. And when I mentioned a clean install it was meaning pull a few picture folders and stuff off, then formatting the ssd and starting a fresh install of windows. Thank for your input

[Alex Atkin UK]

25 minutes ago, TheHoffmeat said:

If that were the case it shouldn't be giving me the path issue, as the hdd has been wiped, So only the SSD has an os. But I can try pulling the hdd tomorrow to see. And when I mentioned a clean install it was meaning pull a few picture folders and stuff off, then formatting the ssd and starting a fresh install of windows. Thank for your input

Its why I suggested moving the SSD to where the HDD is, in case its locked to the internal SATA port for the boot drive.

 

See if it boots, if it does then try putting the HDD in the caddy and see if it still boots.  Maybe format the HDD from another computer to make sure nothing is left behind to make it think its the boot drive.

 

Normally when wiping drives I boot into Linux and re-create the GPT partition table.  Then leave it with no partitions, create them in Windows once everything is working.

 

Then again I never clone, more trouble than its worth.  I always remove all drives and do a fresh install on just the new drive, then put the old ones back in.  After all, you should be keeping a backup of your data elsewhere anyway.