SSD upgrade data migration query

[beachmat]

I'm going to upgrade the internal hard disk in an HP hotebook to an SSD, and I wanted to check something. Do I need to use HP Recovery disks to create the recovery partition on the SSD? If so can I also use it to clone the existing boot partition? Or do I need to use a third-party tool such as TrueImage for that? I seem to remember that when I previously tried to clone a recovery partition with TrueImage it didn't work, which is why I'm thinking I might need to use recovery disks to create the recovery partition properly.

Thanks

[WAWood]

@beachmat

Unless you are planning on buying an SSD with the same capacity as your HDD, it is pointless to migrate the Recovery partition to the SSD, as it will then NOT WORK with the HP Recovery Manager.

You should really use a third-party tool to "migrate" your HDD setup to an SSD, as some of them provide the feature for shrinking the partitions down to fit on the SSD without leaving partitions behind.

Myself, I prefer Macrium Reflect for doing this, but if you have Acronis True Image and are comfortable using that, that shoud work equally well.

Good Luck

[beachmat]

Thanks for that. The SSD will actually be larger than the HD so no problem there. If that is the only issue when cloning a recovery partition then great. I thought maybe HP Recovery might be doing some kind of authorization on the new disk when creating the recovery partition.

[WAWood · Accepted solution]

@beachmat

Sorry I didn't reply sooner ...

I have been told that the HP recovery system expects the Recovery partition to be in a specific location on the hard drive, and when it reformats the drive to do a factory reset, it knows that location and places the partition there.

If you do a "clone" of all the current partitions to a new drive and DO NOT change any of the partition sizes or locations, the HP Recovery function should still then work.  You could always then press F11 to see if it initiates, after doing the cloning.

Once you have done that, you can resize the OS partition if you want -- just be sure NOT to touch, resize, or move the HP Recovery partition.

Good Luck

[beachmat]

Yes that seems to be correct. The SSD I 'm migrating to is actually smaller, and even if I clone the partitions such that the recovery partiition doesn't shrink, it still doesn't work.

Thanks again, and also for the pointer to Macrium Reflect - it's excellent.