I just got an Asus Zenbook UX31A.
It has a 128 GB of SSD. but when I went to Desktop > File Explorer > Desktop > Computer.
Where it says Hard Disk Drives (1), it says that I have 65.5 GB free of 93.9 GB. WHAT THE HELL?!
I bought this laptop cause it has a 128 GB SSD, and I know that I won't get all 128 GB of space, but the fact that HALF is already taking space?!
How can I find out what it is, and how do I remove it?!
Thank you.
There is a windows 8 recovery partition using about 10gb (this can be moved to USB).
ASUS may also have a recovery partition.
Normally on a 128gb drive you would only expect about 110 to be usable.
Of what is used on the C drive. Windows 8 alone takes up a good 10-15gb. Apps add more onto that. Anything asus preinstall adds onto that again.
Ok, so how can I remove these recovery partitions? or should I not remove them at all?
I'm thinking of installing this: http://download.cnet.com/Advanced-U...9986.html?tag=dropDownForm;productListing;pop
to uninstall some stuff. Probably all asus apps.
xMoKax said:
Ok, so how can I remove these recovery partitions? or should I not remove them at all?
I'm thinking of installing this: http://download.cnet.com/Advanced-U...9986.html?tag=dropDownForm;productListing;pop
to uninstall some stuff. Probably all asus apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i would open up disk manager (type disk under settings in start and click on create and format disk partitions), and see what is there. if you post a screen shot of the program open, ill look at it and tell you
Is this what you wanted to see?
Here is another screenshot, after I opened OS (C:
So, five partitions. The first one is the boot partition (it's usually only 200MB and can happily fit in less, but that doesn't matter much). Don't mess with it. Technically it's only required that you use a separate boot partition when using BitLocker, but it's a pretty good setup.
The second is nearly a gig of some kind of recovery data. It's too small to be the Win8 recovery installer, so I'm guessing it's some pile of Asus-specific crap that probably isn't even useful enough to be something like a bunch of drivers that you could download newer versions of from their website; more likely its useless garbage like that wallpaper it comes with and other pointless stuff. Check before deleting it, I guess, but it should be safe to kill.
The third is your OS volume. It is, as you noted, less than 80% of the SSD's size.
The fourth is probably the standard Win8 recovery image. It's basically a Win8 install DVD, and its purpose is to allow the use of the "Reset" functionality to wipe the OS clean - essentially just automating the "format and reinstall" process. It also can be used to repair a system that becomes damaged or to manually reinstall Windows if you manage to nuke the OS partition so hard you can't use the Reset feature. This partition can usually be safely removed after writing it to a DVD or Flashdrive; there are steps and utilities for doing so.
The fifth is the real hog that's using up your space, being almost four times as large as all the other non-OS volumes put together and taking up about 18% of the total capacity of the drive. My guess is that this is the image used to restore the OS to exactly the state it was in when you bought it (Asus pre-installed-crapware and all). It's almost certainly a complete waste of space, unless you paid for a copy of Office or something when you bought the computer and the re-installer is on there. Anyhow, that partition as a whole is too big to copy off to anything except a large flashdrive/SD card/etc., an external HD, or a blu-ray disk, but it *might* be possible to mount it and find any parts that are actually of any real value and blow the rest.
If you're interested, here's what I would do (it's what I do, and recommend doing, with *any* new PC): now that you've verified that the OS boots up, the hardware works, etc, prepare a bootable flashdrive, put the Windows installer on it (should be possible to get it from the 4GB recovery volume; as I said, there are steps and utilities to do this), download all the drivers for the hardware from the OEM's site (Asus.com in this case) and put them on the flashdrive too, then reboot from the flashdrive. Choose to do a custom install of Windows, delete every single partition from the existing scheme, select the resulting unpartitioned space, and tell Windows to install there (it will set up a sane partition scheme for you). This process removes unwanted partitions, removes OEM garbage (which can be a pain to remove otherwise), gives you a clean Windows install without the horriffic tampering the OEMs like to do (interesting fact: I ran Vista, and found it just fine and far better than XP, with no crashes since RTM on my clean-installed copy... until I tried using an OEM copy on somebody else's machine - more powerful than mine, mind you - and discovered what all the complaints about slowness and crashing came from; the difference between an OEM and a clean retail copy of the OS were astonishing and painful), and puts you in control of the disk usage.
Follow this
GoodDayToDie said:
So, five partitions. The first one is the boot partition (it's usually only 200MB and can happily fit in less, but that doesn't matter much). Don't mess with it. Technically it's only required that you use a separate boot partition when using BitLocker, but it's a pretty good setup.
The second is nearly a gig of some kind of recovery data. It's too small to be the Win8 recovery installer, so I'm guessing it's some pile of Asus-specific crap that probably isn't even useful enough to be something like a bunch of drivers that you could download newer versions of from their website; more likely its useless garbage like that wallpaper it comes with and other pointless stuff. Check before deleting it, I guess, but it should be safe to kill.
The third is your OS volume. It is, as you noted, less than 80% of the SSD's size.
The fourth is probably the standard Win8 recovery image. It's basically a Win8 install DVD, and its purpose is to allow the use of the "Reset" functionality to wipe the OS clean - essentially just automating the "format and reinstall" process. It also can be used to repair a system that becomes damaged or to manually reinstall Windows if you manage to nuke the OS partition so hard you can't use the Reset feature. This partition can usually be safely removed after writing it to a DVD or Flashdrive; there are steps and utilities for doing so.
The fifth is the real hog that's using up your space, being almost four times as large as all the other non-OS volumes put together and taking up about 18% of the total capacity of the drive. My guess is that this is the image used to restore the OS to exactly the state it was in when you bought it (Asus pre-installed-crapware and all). It's almost certainly a complete waste of space, unless you paid for a copy of Office or something when you bought the computer and the re-installer is on there. Anyhow, that partition as a whole is too big to copy off to anything except a large flashdrive/SD card/etc., an external HD, or a blu-ray disk, but it *might* be possible to mount it and find any parts that are actually of any real value and blow the rest.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for your response! So..
Partition 1: Don't Touch.
Partition 2: Asus bull****. Check first. OK to delete.
Partition 3: Volume. Don't Touch.
Partition 4: Win8 Recovery. OK to delete, after backup. Do I have to back it up to thumb drive? Can I back it up to an External Hard drive? DynamicRam told me to follow this: http://lifehacker.com/5991431/how-t...r-windows-8-and-free-up-some-hard-drive-space <Will that work?
Partition 5: I didn't buy a copy of Office, so I'm guessing that it is a complete waste of space. I'll try to mount it and see if there is anything that I would actually need [probably show you a screenshot], and delete the rest. If for some reason I'm not able to mount it, will I still be able to delete the contents inside?
GoodDayToDie said:
If you're interested, here's what I would do (it's what I do, and recommend doing, with *any* new PC): now that you've verified that the OS boots up, the hardware works, etc, prepare a bootable flashdrive, put the Windows installer on it (should be possible to get it from the 4GB recovery volume; as I said, there are steps and utilities to do this), download all the drivers for the hardware from the OEM's site (Asus.com in this case) and put them on the flashdrive too, then reboot from the flashdrive. Choose to do a custom install of Windows, delete every single partition from the existing scheme, select the resulting unpartitioned space, and tell Windows to install there (it will set up a sane partition scheme for you). This process removes unwanted partitions, removes OEM garbage (which can be a pain to remove otherwise), gives you a clean Windows install without the horriffic tampering the OEMs like to do (interesting fact: I ran Vista, and found it just fine and far better than XP, with no crashes since RTM on my clean-installed copy... until I tried using an OEM copy on somebody else's machine - more powerful than mine, mind you - and discovered what all the complaints about slowness and crashing came from; the difference between an OEM and a clean retail copy of the OS were astonishing and painful), and puts you in control of the disk usage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This right here, you said to put the Windows installer in a flashdrive, and to get it from a 4gb recovery volume? So, you're saying that inside Partition 4, the Win8 Recovery, there will be the Windows installer inside, and the file will be 4gb in size?
I'm really wanting to use Ubuntu instead of Windows 8. Will my best bet be, to backup the Windows installer in a flashdrive, completely delete everything (except partition 1 and 3?), and install Ubuntu?
Also, according to this person:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HU_jEWT6w8
It's best for me to install Ubuntu 13.04, instead of 12.04, since 13.04 has Windows 8 UEFI Secure Boot BIOS support, whatever that means.
To sum up what I pretty much want to do, is to remove all bloatware and pretty much delete Windows 8 (but back it up, for warranty purposes, if something happens to my laptop), and have only Ubuntu on my laptop.
Is this possible?
Been doing research all night, came across this:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Installing-Ubuntu-13-04-348582.shtml
In the "Installation Type" section, it says you have a couple of options, and option 2 says:
"2. Erase OS and reinstall/Erase disk and install Ubuntu (if there's no OS on it)
- Choose this option ONLY if you have another OS and you want to install Ubuntu 13.04 on a fresh drive, replacing the existing OS. This option will completely wipe the target disk drive."
So, can I just select Partition 5, and will it completely wipe everything inside, and install only Ubuntu 13.04? Just wanting to know if this is possible or not. Instead of having to go through the 5th partition and deleting/backing up whatever I need, and then installing Ubuntu.
Related
Check out this site, it's the guys from Mobile01 again trying to replace the existing HDD to CF card disk, you will see the RAM and HDD in closer view.
Result......? it doesn't work, because after install the CF disk, it needs to proceed to re-install the OS, and the OS is store in the original HDD, guess this guy didn't find a solution into this. However i do believe we will be able to sort this out in the near future.
Also replacing the RAM is currently not possible, there are no 2G module out there for sell yet, I guess we need to wait for the Hardware to catch up.
Go and check out the pic in this link:
http://www.mobile01.com/newsdetail.php?id=5414
how about cloning the disk to CF first ?
Maybe use a clone proggy to clone the actual HDD to the CF card first, then mount / solder it ?
Maybe i'm too dumbed down by windows OS'es, but if you clone the HDD bit for bit to the CF card, my guess is that it will boot straight away.
Maybe one needs to fiddle a little with the MBR, or the device ID, but that should be it really.
Please keep us posted.
Are the installation files on the harddisk?
I read in another thread that the installation files are in ROM soldered to the motherboard and that all you need to do after installing a new harddisk is to press FN F3 at bootup to restore Vista. This might be wrong and I'd actually wonder what the hidden HD partition would be for if it should be true.
Anyway, if they didn't make any mistakes installing the CF card, they should be able to install Windows from a USB drive.
However, have you seen what they installed instead of the 40GB HD? A 8GB CF card. This will never be enough to hold Vista, so I wouldn't be surprised if that was the cause for their problems, the installation routine might just balk at "insufficient space".
As the linked website is using Chinese (I guess, or is it Japanese, Korean, ...) characters and language, somebody able to read this would have to evaluate what they are doing.
Swop hdd
The problem with swopping the hard drive is it has since been discovered that the drive is artificially sized down to protect a HIDDEN partition using special features of IDE drives in conjunction with the BIOS.
I'm aware of no program on windows that will clone this special hidden area as the drive removes it and it is only visible on boot. However linux can see there is a hidden partition but i'm unsure not knowing much about linux whether it can clone it.
If you simply swop out the hard drive you will lose the ability to FN+F3 on boot to restore the image.
I would suggest therefore you do the following before the swop out.
1. Boot Shift
2. FN+F3
3. Do a full factory restore
4. Switch off when directed
5. Attached external USB CDROM/DVD drive
6. Use BartPE
7. Power on Shift and boot immediately to BartPe
8. Once booted insert a usb hard drive / key using the 3-way hub, so you have the cd and hdd connected via USB
8. Ghost / clone the drive from C: to your external hard drive / pen
You now have ghost image that you can restore to on the new hard drive (ie. not a FN+F3 restore process but a CLEAN ready to initial boot installation of Vista).
Regards
Blitz
The vista installation files are in a hidden partition on the hard drive.
This is why the 40gb drive shows as a 34.2Gb drive.
mw65719 said:
I read in another thread that the installation files are in ROM soldered to the motherboard and that all you need to do after installing a new harddisk is to press FN F3 at bootup to restore Vista. This might be wrong and I'd actually wonder what the hidden HD partition would be for if it should be true.
Anyway, if they didn't make any mistakes installing the CF card, they should be able to install Windows from a USB drive.
However, have you seen what they installed instead of the 40GB HD? A 8GB CF card. This will never be enough to hold Vista, so I wouldn't be surprised if that was the cause for their problems, the installation routine might just balk at "insufficient space".
As the linked website is using Chinese (I guess, or is it Japanese, Korean, ...) characters and language, somebody able to read this would have to evaluate what they are doing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The reason why they install 8G CF card is for faster read/write speed, and i guess it will also decrease battery usage since it's not mechanic moving like the original HDD.
Thanks very much wu5262 - I fully understand why they want to use a CF card instead of the harddisk .
I was pointing at the meager 8GB size they picked.
If you want to install Vista, use at least a 16GB card. If you can get your hands on one, use a 32GB card (admittedly not so cheap). For an example: http://www.amazon.de/Components-32GB-CompactFlash-HighSpeed-Karte/dp/B00162ZOPW.
So I'm considering throwing in my first SSD. I'm looking at nothing too fancy (OCZ Vertex 4 128GB SATA3 6GB/s, Read: 560MB/s, Write: 430MB/s).
I already have Windows 8 Pro installed and activated on a 500 Sata HD. I'd ideally like to throw in the SSD and have Windows running off of that. Now I've already seen a lot of posts recommended a clean install. Which I'd like to avoid if possible. I'm wondering if I could say, create a back up image of my C: from my SATA drive, wipe everything, install the SSD and do a fresh Win 8 install. Then once I'm up and running restore that image.
Or use some other Windows 8 recovery feature to back up files, settings and apps.
Anyone know if this is possible within Windows 8? I'm ultimately trying to avoid as much reinstalling of apps and programs as possible.
It doesn't hurt to find out. Do your image backup, pull out the HDD, plug in the SSD, and restore. If it works, great. If not, plug the HDD back in and figure out an alternative.
I don't see why that wouldn't work, other than Win8 installing any needed driver for the SSD, and perhaps a re-auth, since a HDD change qualifies as a "major" config change.
I'm assuming you already have a good image backup program handy.
So I guess I'd lose my activation key?
Try reading some articles about it? I have no experience with it so i have no idea:
http://lifehacker.com/5837543/how-to-migrate-to-a-solid+state-drive-without-reinstalling-windows
why don't you just ghost the drive this is what I do. I forget the name of the software I use but it is free and really easy and you can ghost the drive you on as it runs before windows boots. I will update once I have found the software as its been a while since I needed to do this.
edit: I don't have it on my laptop and I wont be back to work till Monday but if you google clone hard drive there are many options. You want one that will clone the running partition.
http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/home-edition/
pistol44 said:
So I guess I'd lose my activation key?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Although I have never tried it, you can backup your windows activation activation following this:
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/35737-GUIDE-How-to-backup-and-restore-Windows-8-activation
or just clone the harddrive like I said then its all just as if it was on the old you just plug new one in and off you go, then format the old one once tested. 2 points on this your going back into same hardware so that does not matter and windows 8 you can take the hdd out of a pc plug it into diff hardware and off you go after a slightly longer boot. I have swapped from an amd fx based desktop and put into an intel Centrino laptop and worked. I did this after cloning the drive so both desktop and laptop have activated windows 8 from same cloned hard drive (bit odd though as seems to avoid the need for keys and could be a work around to distro win 8)
pistol44 said:
So I'm considering throwing in my first SSD. I'm looking at nothing too fancy (OCZ Vertex 4 128GB SATA3 6GB/s, Read: 560MB/s, Write: 430MB/s).
I already have Windows 8 Pro installed and activated on a 500 Sata HD. I'd ideally like to throw in the SSD and have Windows running off of that. Now I've already seen a lot of posts recommended a clean install. Which I'd like to avoid if possible. I'm wondering if I could say, create a back up image of my C: from my SATA drive, wipe everything, install the SSD and do a fresh Win 8 install. Then once I'm up and running restore that image.
Or use some other Windows 8 recovery feature to back up files, settings and apps.
Anyone know if this is possible within Windows 8? I'm ultimately trying to avoid as much reinstalling of apps and programs as possible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you more worried about your desktop apps or your RT apps? If you have signed in with a Microsoft account and you are on your Trusted PC, your RT app settings will transfer to the new installs and you already know most RT apps install super fast.
If you are worried about your desktop apps, they will install much faster on an SSD drive and just make a backup copy of your "AppData" folder. That's what I did when refreshing my PC caused a bunch of errors and I re-installed.
Windows 8 uses different algorithms for SSDs than for HDDs so ghosting your drive is a bad idea.
dragon_76 said:
Are you more worried about your desktop apps or your RT apps? If you have signed in with a Microsoft account and you are on your Trusted PC, your RT app settings will transfer to the new installs and you already know most RT apps install super fast.
If you are worried about your desktop apps, they will install much faster on an SSD drive and just make a backup copy of your "AppData" folder. That's what I did when refreshing my PC caused a bunch of errors and I re-installed.
Windows 8 uses different algorithms for SSDs than for HDDs so ghosting your drive is a bad idea.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
True, the RT apps will come back after the install.. I guess I was more concerned for the 15 to 20 games I had installed. I'm looking at a good 4-6 hours of re-install time to get it back to the same state I'm at now. All personal items are backed up externally so I'm ok there.
I guess I've considered just re-installing from scratch now. But last question is will I need to re-activate Windows 8 if I'm adding an SSD? Since I'll be formatting my current HDD, installing an SSD which I'll want the OS running off of I guess there's no way to do a fresh install and keep activation since I'll be formatting the drive the OS is on.
Can I hypothetically, install the SSD initiate a Windows "reset" and hope that it gives me the choice to format my old HDD and install to the new SSD. For some reason I think not. Or do I need to image my C: drive, install the SSD then copy the image over then do a reset? I'm so confused..
pistol44 said:
True, the RT apps will come back after the install.. I guess I was more concerned for the 15 to 20 games I had installed. I'm looking at a good 4-6 hours of re-install time to get it back to the same state I'm at now. All personal items are backed up externally so I'm ok there.
I guess I've considered just re-installing from scratch now. But last question is will I need to re-activate Windows 8 if I'm adding an SSD? Since I'll be formatting my current HDD, installing an SSD which I'll want the OS running off of I guess there's no way to do a fresh install and keep activation since I'll be formatting the drive the OS is on.
Can I hypothetically, install the SSD initiate a Windows "reset" and hope that it gives me the choice to format my old HDD and install to the new SSD. For some reason I think not. Or do I need to image my C: drive, install the SSD then copy the image over then do a reset? I'm so confused..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can type in your serial and it will fail to activate by internet. Select to activate by phone and it should work, deactivating your old, erased installation.
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Ok guys let me give you a little background first.
I have a Lenovo Laptop and i wanted to upgrade to Windows 8. Lenovo puts alot of their own programs and stuff on the computer that were actually quite useful at times but they posted a pdf on their website that told me to uninstall 10 billion programs and drivers so I decided to install Windows 8 on a new partition I made which I then installed Windows 8 too without a hitch. I also did this because I didnt know how I would feel about the new OS but I really like it so i'm going to stay with it.
BTW I'm not savvy with this partition stuff at all. I was walked through it. I'm not a total noob though. i just get nervous.
My question to you guys is how can I remove the Windows 7 OS completely and merge that storage with my Windows 8 OS.
I have read its not as simple as just deleting the Windows 7 partition. I have read that if you delete something called a bootmgr (im pretty sure that means bootmanager)it will screw everything up and that it is sometimes in different locations.
I'm attaching a photo of what my drives look like currently. I'm guessing the bootmgr is on the partition with the red arrow pointing to it? If I am correct how do I add the Windows 7 partition (yellow arrow) to the Windows 8 partition (blue arrow)
The photo was taken from within the Windows 8 OS. i hope I have been clear enough for you guys.
You can delete your Windows 7 partition because Windows 8 now controls the bootmanager. Also, If you do delete the partition and boot manager is erased, I can walk you through restoring it. Plus the disk you burned to install Windows 8 with contains recovery tools that can restore the it. Just boot from the disk like you did when you installed Windows 8 and instead of selecting install now choose "Repair my computer" or "Fix problems that prevent Windows from starting". Microsoft has done a good job of making stuff like this recoverable from. Also, make sure you make a System Restore point. If you have an external drive you can also make a "recovery disk" in Windows 8 that will make an exact copy of the partitions of your choice. It takes a lot of space and will completely wipe the drive, so be sure to save any important files on the external drive before doing this.
housry23 said:
You can delete your Windows 7 partition because Windows 8 now controls the bootmanager. Also, If you do delete the partition and boot manager is erased, I can walk you through restoring it. Plus the disk you burned to install Windows 8 with contains recovery tools that can restore the it. Just boot from the disk like you did when you installed Windows 8 and instead of selecting install now choose "Repair my computer" or "Fix problems that prevent Windows from starting". Microsoft has done a good job of making stuff like this recoverable from. Also, make sure you make a System Restore point. If you have an external drive you can also make a "recovery disk" in Windows 8 that will make an exact copy of the partitions of your choice. It takes a lot of space and will completely wipe the drive, so be sure to save any important files on the external drive before doing this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This article told me the partition that is marked as active has the bootmgr on it. Is that correct?
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pwnerman said:
This article told me the partition that is marked as active has the bootmgr on it. Is that correct?
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Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think it is inside Windows 8. If you have Windows 7 installed and then install Windows 8, all the boot operations are handled by Windows 8 unless you have a third party boot manager installed or a Linux partition that would use grub. You are safe to delete the Windows 7 partition. It won't screw anything up. You are over thinking and over reading. If this partition WAS the one handling the boot operations, then as soon as you installed Windows 8, that changed. Just delete the Windows 7 partition and extend the Windows 8. You will probably have to do it during a boot up and it will probably take a third party program like Paragon Partition manager free or gparted live cd, but it's not going to screw up your bootmgr. Only way that would happen is if you deleted a Linux partition.
pwnerman said:
This article told me the partition that is marked as active has the bootmgr on it. Is that correct?
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Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes, the active partition must be the boot partition
housry23 said:
I think it is inside Windows 8. If you have Windows 7 installed and then install Windows 8, all the boot operations are handled by Windows 8 unless you have a third party boot manager installed or a Linux partition that would use grub. You are safe to delete the Windows 7 partition. It won't screw anything up. You are over thinking and over reading. If this partition WAS the one handling the boot operations, then as soon as you installed Windows 8, that changed. Just delete the Windows 7 partition and extend the Windows 8. You will probably have to do it during a boot up and it will probably take a third party program like Paragon Partition manager free or gparted live cd, but it's not going to screw up your bootmgr. Only way that would happen is if you deleted a Linux partition.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Err, no, that isn't always true, my Boot files are on a separate partition to my Win 8, if I delete my Win 7 I will lose the ability to boot, of course its fixable with the Win 8 DVD. Win 8 does take over the boot manager as is fairly obvious, but it doesn't change the location, its for this very reason that when installing multiple copies and versions of windows you always start with the oldest, each successive install will update the boot manager but it will leave it in place, unless of course you install Linux which can and will screw it right up an around the corner if your not very careful!
It's been stuck on this screen after I deleted and extended the drive with ease us partition manager. It rebooted I saw the lenovo bios screen then the Windows logo. Then this screen showed up and hasn't moved for about 2 hours. I'm guessing I got screwed.
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I've been having an absolutely horrendous time installing Window 8 onto an SSD i bought. Let me give you a rundown of what's going on.
I bought a 120gb SSD off of my friend for a new laptop I was getting. My intentions were to replace the 1TB HDD in this laptop with the SSD and use the HDD as an external, so I can have massive speed increases in everyday computing activity. Originally, I thought the laptop had 2 hard drive bays, making it simple to install Windows onto it. However, due to my negligence to pay attention, it turns out that this laptop only has 1 hard drive bay. So next, I say, "oh simple, I'll just get an external HDD enclosure and install windows that way." Nope, cockblocked by Microsoft on this one; I figure out the hard way that one cannot install Windows onto a device via usb. I then researched some more and found "Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool". I tried installing Windows onto a flash drive, but then accidentally formatted my camera's 16gb memory card losing hundreds of pictures. In vain, I should add, since it didn't even work in the end. Currently, I am stuck on how to install windows 8 onto my external SSD to later swap with the internal HDD. Hopefully this paragraph made sense lol. Any help here is greatly appreciated.
You've got the enclosure you need for the 1TB drive, right? What's stopping you from swapping the drives now, and installing the OS on the SSD when it's mounted internally? Alternatively, create a new partition on the current drive that is the same size or smaller as the SSD, and then install Win8 there. You can then copy that partition (the whole thing, using something like dd on linux) to the SSD, although getting the bootloader to come along for the ride would be tricky.
Also, with all due respect, if you managed to lose hundreds of pictures that weren't yet copied off the camera card while attempting (and failing) to install Win8 on a flashdrive, this might be a "don't try this at home" moment. I'm sorry for your loss, and I realize it was probably a very simple accident - confusion of which drive you were targeting, perhaps - but messing around with disk partitioning and advanced installation techniques without somebody who knows what they're doing guiding you is a dangerous idea.
Windows 2 Go locks down a number of system features, which limit its usefulness as a day-to-day OS. There's some configuration in the registry that controls this, so you might be able to use the W2G installation and then "fix" it, but you may want to do some research into W2G before attempting this.
I guess one could call me a noob when it comes to Windows lol... my expertise is Android
So I can swap the ssd and hdd while the computer is running? Wouldn't that cause all sorts of errors? Because when I tried swapping them, I couldn't get windows to boot from the hdd (which was in the external enclosure)
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Take the HDD out. Put SSD in. Put windows install disk in (not upgrade disk, most disks sold are upgrade only, you need install). Boot from instrall disk, follow instructions.
The hard disk replacement can only be dome when powered off. SATA devices do not support hit swapping and may even be damaged by it.
We ignore the HDD completely. Once win8 is on the SSD then you can put the HDD in the USB enclosure, plug it into your laptop now running win 8 and retrieve your files.
Copying wijndiws between different hard disks rarely works in my experience.
Oh, for the SD thing. Partitioning SD cards is not recommended, not all laptops can boot from SD either so it may have been completely futile.
If you don't have an install disk (only upgrade), you can copy the contents of your current Windows OS volume onto the SSD and then do the swap, which should cause the installer to think you already have Windows installed (if perhaps in a corrupted form). If you can do a full partition clone, then it needn't even be a corrupted copy; you could simply clone Windows onto the SSD (it may demand to be reactivated if you do this; ignore that) and then use an upgrade install.
Contrary to the name, upgrade installs do not need to be in-place upgrades; you can in fact wipe the entire SSD (and I recommend you do so) using the advanced install options once the installer has verified that these is (or was) a Windows install there.
I've done it on my HP DV6, the process was with a samsung ssd to clone the hard drive on the ssd with the program furnished by samsung. I expect there are other programs doing the same. I used a second external HD to take the files that didn't enter the SSD (256 GB).
Then I swap the disks (SSD internal) and I replace the DVD reader by the old HD repartition and format it (Now I use an external DVD Writer.
Then I upraded with win 8.
Take a bit of time but works
I hope it helps
François
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF300TG using xda app-developers app
Hi guys,
I've been doing the above ^^ for some time now. I've been using W8.1 as the main OS for my notebook. Yesterday I rebooted into Win7 to poke around. Every time that it said 'Starting Windows' it bluescreen (very rapidly) and restarted.
I tried the disc auto-repair, and this cut the bridge to W8.1 of course. When I tried Win7 it then said that there was another problem. The logon screen appeared, as if in safe mode, then produced numerous errors about being untable to log on or start logon services. I could not resolve this.
I eventually decided to try the manufacturer inbuilt restore of Win7 while leaving data alone. This seemed fine until it says 'preparing Windows for first use', then it said that the installation was interrupted (not by me or power use). I tried this several times but no use.
Shortened, I could not get back into Win8, I tried all the repairs, though it should only have been a bootloader issue, right? The Win8 bootloader will look back and see Win 7 and offer both. I formatted that partition, reinstalled Win8 on that partition, removed all data from the Win7 drive and then tried a complete reinstallation of the entire hard disk with the manufacturer restore disks. This worked.
I would like to poke around with W8.2 when it comes in the Spring. I need to understand what happened. My top two guesses are:
1. Minitool Partition manager, I suspected that program of being ... ruthless in hard drive partitioning and resizing in the past.
2. Perhaps some incompatibility coming from Win8?
Any ideas? I would be very grateful if anyone has any ideas.
Were they installed on completely separate partitions (i.e. not sharing any files at all)? If they were sharing a file system, the NTFS permissions could have gotten messed up and blocked access from one install or some such silliness...
Why were you using a third-party partitioning tool? Windows has been able to shrink NTFS partitions - even mounted ones! - just fine (and quite safely) since Vista.
I'm afraid I haven't got any other ideas based on what you've said so far.
Hmm well about 95% of data was on the C Win 7 drive and Win 8 linked into it, as if it were a data drive.
With the inbuilt partitioning tool, it never allowed me to say, shrink drive C and expand drive D. I can shrink C and leave a slice for another OS, but not expand it in the future ... perhaps it's a manufacturer lock? If it were a permission problem, it would be best to create a third partition as a data drive?
Thanks for the feedback.