Installation and Cloning

Since I have had issues on two different drives for my laptops I wanted to just post what worked.

  1. The drive was not recognized by the software for cloning.

  2. So I found if you plug in a sandisk SSD drive like my passport or extreme the software will download and work. 

  3. The software sandisk provides - Acronis True Image will allow a 1TB drive to go onto a 500gig drive, pretty cool. Of course you have to be using less than 500gb.

  4. Third party software same size to same size Macrium Reflect worked before I figured out how to download the WD cloning software. 

Also, you can look at your current drive in disk management to see how big it is, if it is encrypted, (had to remove bit lock for cloning software to work), resize it. 

So here is the step by step:

  1. Purchase your sandisk drive, you can go with a smaller ssd than your current drive if all of your information is less than the drive you purchase. 

  2. Review the hd removal video for the laptop you are going to put the ssd drive in. 

  3. You need to have a usb cable to sata drive so you can clone the drive. You can get these from amazon, best buy ect. 

  4. hook up the new drive via usb to your laptop. 

  5. Hook up a WD or Sandisk drive to another USB port on the laptop. 

  6. Download the Acronis cloning software and install it on your laptop. 

  7. Open the acronis software and select the cloning and pick the drive you want to clone and then the destination drive (Your new SSD)

  8. Clone the drive. This takes about an hour or so. Also there was no verification it actually did this but if it completes without an error message it worked. 

  9. Remove the USB drives and start the computer. Just to make sure it is working. 

  10. Shut down computer. 

  11. Take apart laptop and replace the drive with the new ssd drive. 

12 Reassemble the laptop. 

  1. Start the laptop

  2. You should be good to go.