Can not boot into windows 8 after cloning HDD to SSD

3

I have a problem about transition from HDD to SSD.

I have a Sony Vaio laptop (a third gen Intel) which came with a HDD. For higher speeds I bought a new OCZ vector SSD to replace it and a HDD box to make a portable HDD from the old one.

Then I removed the HDD, installed the SSD, cloned the HDD to the SSD with Norton ghost and rebooted.

After the reboot, the system report failed to boot (missing winload.efi) and need recovery. Is there anything goes wrong? I have no idea. The contents on the HDD and the SSD look quite the same.

I need your suggestion, if I must clean install the system at least hope you can show me how to backup the licence...

Of course the best thing is change something in the boot to minimize the work.

Tiana987642

Posted 2013-02-24T14:08:53.513

Reputation: 263

Recovering the license can be easy. Replace the HDD, boot from it and run a program to recover it. There are dozens of those and there are several posts on SU on how to do this. – Hennes – 2013-02-24T14:24:26.283

Did you clone the whole HDD or just the Windows partition? There will be a small (~100MB) partition that also needs to be cloned. – Shevek – 2013-02-24T14:27:52.540

Hi, thank :) Can I do it from the another system, since my HDD now become an portable one. I'm new with the UEFI things and it's very frustrated :( – Tiana987642 – 2013-02-24T14:30:45.640

@Shevek I have a full disk clone, do I need to turn off secure boot and change to legacy boot? I'm new with these things :( – Tiana987642 – 2013-02-24T14:34:06.387

@Hennes, thank for the the revision. I'm not a native English speaker – Tiana987642 – 2013-02-24T14:48:05.257

Answers

3

Well Norton Ghost in rather old and doesn't clone successfully all the data from newer operating systems such as Vista, 7, and 8.

I use Acronis True Image Home 2010 instead and does a far better job. Most likely the Windows clone will load successfully, or in worst case I can fix startup issues using the installation DVD once and that's it! So download Acronis or similar newer utility and you should have no problem. To make sure that there is 1:1 clone, select the option to manually clone the disk and then leave the partitions as is, without trying to resize them. You can later expand a small partition to fit all disk from Disk Management.

Another option that can also clone Linux and Mac partitions is Clonezilla. This creates a CD-ROM with which you boot the PC and start the cloning process, and if I remember correctly it is free to download.

spapakons

Posted 2013-02-24T14:08:53.513

Reputation: 406

Thank, I will try your suggestion and feedback later. Is there anything I need to change in the BIOS? Secure boot?UEFI? – Tiana987642 – 2013-02-24T14:49:03.883

Thank, it works :D As you said, Norton Ghost can't regconize two more hidden partitions. Acronis true image works like a charm. – Tiana987642 – 2013-02-24T17:03:26.297

3Will you be using paragraphs soon? – TFM – 2013-02-25T03:47:38.587

Asked: 2013-02-24T14:08:53.513

Viewed: 4 879 times

Active: 2013-02-25T03:48:07.450