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Topic: Win 10 recovery. Finally gave up. |
Richard Sinkler
From:
aka: Rusty Strings -- Missoula, Montana
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Posted 4 Jan 2016 5:23 pm |
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I need to install a new hard drive in my laptop (running out of space. Removed all that I could, but it's not enough). I have tried 2 times now to use the recovery thumb drive I created, but no luck. I start the re-install process, and it just locks up. Yesterday, I started it around noon, and around 9 when I went to bed, it was at 56%. I got out of bed about 9:30 this morning, and it was still at 56% with the little circle in the middle of the screen still going. I tried again today. I had to run errands for about 4 hours today. When I left, it was at 2%. and 4 hours later, it was still at 2%.
Any ideas?
I still have the old drive,with everything still on it, so my laptop is not dead.
_________________
Carter D10 8p/8k, Dekley S10 3p/4k C6 setup,Regal RD40 Dobro, NV400, NV112 . Playing for 54 years and still counting.
Last edited by Richard Sinkler on 7 Jan 2016 9:14 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Mitch Drumm
From:
Frostbite Falls, hard by Veronica Lake
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Posted 4 Jan 2016 5:53 pm Re: Win 10 recovery. Any success stories?
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| Richard Sinkler wrote: |
| I need to install a new hard drive in my laptop.........I have tried 2 times now to use the recovery thumb drive I created, but no luck..............I still have the old drive,with everything still on it, so my laptop is not dead. |
Much more detail needed.
You created a "recovery thumb drive". With what application and following what instructions?
The two typical methods would be via imaging or via cloning. Either of these would effectively just put the partitions from the old drive onto the new drive. As they were either as of the date of the image (if you used imaging) or as of today (if you used cloning).
What is this "recovery thumb drive" supposed to do? Return you to the state as of the day you first installed Windows 10? Or return you to a recent state, as imaging would normally do? Or return you to the current state, as cloning would do?
Do you have installation media whereby you could do a clean install if you had to? |
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Richard Sinkler
From:
aka: Rusty Strings -- Missoula, Montana
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Posted 4 Jan 2016 6:21 pm
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One of the things the recovery drive does, is allow a clean installation of Win10. I assume that is what I have to do to install on a new hard drive. The recovery drive and repair drive, are created using a tool in Win 10. I did find a tool on Microsoft's website called "media Creation Tool" that is supposed to let you download the ISO file and install to a hard drive. I'm going to try that.
Info from MS on what a recovery drive does:
CLICK HERE
_________________
Carter D10 8p/8k, Dekley S10 3p/4k C6 setup,Regal RD40 Dobro, NV400, NV112 . Playing for 54 years and still counting. |
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Mitch Drumm
From:
Frostbite Falls, hard by Veronica Lake
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Posted 4 Jan 2016 9:47 pm
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| Richard Sinkler wrote: |
| I assume that is what I have to do to install on a new hard drive. |
It's one method.
It's something you CAN do. But it isn't what you HAVE to do.
If it fails, go with plan B--conventional methods unrelated to any tool found within Windows 10. |
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Jack Stoner
From:
Kansas City, MO
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Dave Potter
From:
Texas
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Posted 5 Jan 2016 6:55 am
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I read this, and was trying to think it through. I found the following on Macrium's Help:
"Important:
Windows cannot boot from a USB connected drive. This is a restriction imposed by Windows. If you clone your system disk to a USB connected external drive then, to boot your clone, the physical disk must be removed from the USB caddy and attached to your Motherboard SATA port."
I'm not sure if this is relevant to the "recovery thumb" process you tried, but it may be, given that the data was created through a Windows process.
If you're limited to using only one hard drive at a time, your options are pretty limited, IMO. One option that seems to me might work would involve buying an external USB drive. Amazon sells 1TB USB external drives starting around $60. The external drive could be used later to store laptop drive backups, of course.
What I'm envisioning is that if you reinstalled your old laptop drive and downloaded Macrium Free, you could use Macrium to create an image of the laptop drive, with Win10 and all your apps and data intact, on the USB external drive.
Then, you could install the Macrium rescue environment on the external drive. The rescue environment contains a USB-bootable, lightweight version of Windows and a full version of Macrium Reflect.
Once that's done, you could install your new laptop drive, boot into the Macrium rescue environment from the USB drive, run Macrium, and restore the image you made of your old laptop drive to the new one.
More on Macrium Rescue Environment at http://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW/Rescue+Environment
I checked Macrium Free features looking for limitations that would nuke my idea, and didn't see any.
I think that restoring an image of your old laptop drive onto a new, larger drive might not take advantage of the full size of the new drive INITIALLY. I also think you'd be able to use the built-in utilities in Windows to expand the new drive's partition size.
I welcome any comments on things I might have missed that could present issues with my ideas here. |
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Jack Stoner
From:
Kansas City, MO
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Posted 5 Jan 2016 7:07 am
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Dave if he does an "image" backup of the drive, to another drive, that can be used with a larger size drive and it won't affect the size of the drive. But, if he uses "clone" that will as it will create an exact image of the old drive on the new one, including unused space, bad sectors, etc. In other words don't use clone.
_________________
GFI Ultra Keyless S-10 with pad (Black of course) TB202 amp, Hilton VP, Steelers Choice sidekick seat, SIT Strings
Cakewalk by Bandlab and Studio One V4.6 pro DAWs, MOTU Ultralite MK5 recording interface unit |
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Dave Potter
From:
Texas
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Posted 5 Jan 2016 7:26 am
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| Jack Stoner wrote: |
| Dave if he does an "image" backup of the drive, to another drive, that can be used with a larger size drive and it won't affect the size of the drive. But, if he uses "clone" that will as it will create an exact image of the old drive on the new one, including unused space, bad sectors, etc. In other words don't use clone. |
Thanks, Jack. I thought it was images that copied everything exactly like the source, including partition sizes.
I've never tried "cloning", so don't have much familiarity with it. I've only tried imaging, which has served me well so far. |
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Jack Stoner
From:
Kansas City, MO
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Posted 5 Jan 2016 10:31 am
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When I switched from conventional hard drives to SSD's I tried cloning as the Samsung software that came with the SSD had a cloning program. The clone failed (SSD would not boot after cloning). I tried the cloning feature in Macrium Reflect (Paid version) and it got to the start of loading Win 8.1 but never got any further. I tried another Cloning program (forgot what it was) but it too failed.
I had made an image of the drive with Macrium before I tried all the clones and used that image to "restore" to the SSD and no more problems.
We had a discussion on the Win 7 forum and one the software guru's there tried cloning and found it iffy. He had failures and had a success.
I no longer recommend cloning, just the disc image (full drive backup) method.
_________________
GFI Ultra Keyless S-10 with pad (Black of course) TB202 amp, Hilton VP, Steelers Choice sidekick seat, SIT Strings
Cakewalk by Bandlab and Studio One V4.6 pro DAWs, MOTU Ultralite MK5 recording interface unit |
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Richard Sinkler
From:
aka: Rusty Strings -- Missoula, Montana
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Posted 5 Jan 2016 12:40 pm
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The USB thumb drive I am using does boot. It's just the install never makes it to the end.
_________________
Carter D10 8p/8k, Dekley S10 3p/4k C6 setup,Regal RD40 Dobro, NV400, NV112 . Playing for 54 years and still counting. |
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Richard Sinkler
From:
aka: Rusty Strings -- Missoula, Montana
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Posted 5 Jan 2016 12:55 pm
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The first link seems to imply doing a clean install over a Win7/8 drive. I'm trying to install on a new, blank drive. I already upgraded to Win 10 one the current HD. I obviously don't want to do a clean install on that drive. That will be used as an emergency backup drive in case the new drive ever goes bad. It's only a 320gb drive, and is almost full. I was wondering if I could install Win 7 on the new drive, and if that would make it any easier. Is the free upgrade still available, and could I do it for a second time.
The second link is for the Media Creation Tool I spoke of earlier. I was going to try that today.
_________________
Carter D10 8p/8k, Dekley S10 3p/4k C6 setup,Regal RD40 Dobro, NV400, NV112 . Playing for 54 years and still counting. |
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Richard Sinkler
From:
aka: Rusty Strings -- Missoula, Montana
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Posted 5 Jan 2016 1:06 pm
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Dave,
I do have external USB hard drives. One is an actual external hard drive with a lot of stuff on it and I don't want to format it and lose data and programs I have installed there. and the other is a drive I took out of my dead Dell laptop. It is housed in a separate enclosure and is smaller than the current laptop, but not a boot drive, as I think it bad bad boot sectors. I don't think the computer will boot to either of those. It will boot to a thumb drive though. It just doesn't complete the installation.
I do have Macrium free, but I have to have the full size of the new drive. I thought I would find out if I could use that. It would be nice to be able to restore all the programs and data, but not a necessity. I have all the programs and backups of data. I would like to be able to start with a clean installation with a clean registry.
_________________
Carter D10 8p/8k, Dekley S10 3p/4k C6 setup,Regal RD40 Dobro, NV400, NV112 . Playing for 54 years and still counting. |
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Dave Potter
From:
Texas
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Posted 5 Jan 2016 1:58 pm
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| Richard Sinkler wrote: |
| I don't think the computer will boot to either of those...I do have Macrium free, but I have to have the full size of the new drive. I thought I would find out if I could use that... I would like to be able to start with a clean installation with a clean registry. |
Well, if the objective is clean install/fresh reg, then my idea is out the window. But your external drive doesn't have to be "bootable" to Windows. If you hook it up with your old laptop drive installed, and use Macrium to create the rescue media on an external drive, that by itself is bootable into WinPE, and the full Macrium will also be installed on that drive, reachable from within the rescue media app. Not sure how to get to a clean Windows install from there, though, since you won't have a image of it to restore from. |
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Mitch Drumm
From:
Frostbite Falls, hard by Veronica Lake
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Posted 5 Jan 2016 6:22 pm
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| Richard Sinkler wrote: |
I do have Macrium free, but I have to have the full size of the new drive. I thought I would find out if I could use that. |
Regardless of what method you use--Macrium, Windows 10, cloning, imaging, thumb drive, external drive, etc---you will be able to use the full size of the new drive.
The entire capacity may not immediately show up as available. Some of it may show as "unallocated space", but you can certainly go into Windows Disk Management and "extend" the drive to it's full capacity with 3 or 4 mouse clicks from menus.
If you intend to use imaging, you don't need to format your external drive or lose anything from it.
All you need to have is sufficient storage space on that external to hold the image file.
If your current nearly full hard drive is 320 GB, then the image file of it would typically take up 150 GB of space as a rough estimate. Maybe 120; maybe 180. So you need to have that much available space on some external drive if you want to use imaging.
That's with "normal" compression, the default. Imaging programs usually have a "high" compression setting also, and if you used that you'd need even less free space on the external. |
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Richard Sinkler
From:
aka: Rusty Strings -- Missoula, Montana
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Posted 5 Jan 2016 6:58 pm
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Nothing has worked. I didn't try Macrium. So, I have just installed Win 7 on the hard drive. I will now see if I can use it to upgrade to Win 10. This copy of Win 7 has never been used to upgrade to Win 10. We'll see if that works.
_________________
Carter D10 8p/8k, Dekley S10 3p/4k C6 setup,Regal RD40 Dobro, NV400, NV112 . Playing for 54 years and still counting. |
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Richard Sinkler
From:
aka: Rusty Strings -- Missoula, Montana
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Posted 7 Jan 2016 9:13 am
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I finally gave up. After 4 long days, I just couldn't get it going. I was going to try Macrium, but it didn't acknowledge my DVD writer. The bios sees it, and Windows Explorer sees it, and I can use CD's & DVDs (tested it when Macrium wouldn't see the drive) in it with no problems. I actually got WIN7 on it and was going through the Win10 install, but it crashed and said it couldn't continue because there was a file missing. I finally got either the recovery or repair disk to work, and it was installing, but it crashed too. Now it has 3 partitions that say I can't install windows to. I can't get rid of these partitions through formatting (even tried to format it in WIN 7 on my desktop) or using the Seagate utility ( a pretty useless program that doesn't do formatting). So now that drive is dead to me. At some point, my original drive would no longer boot. Through one of the install attempts, there was a choice of installing windows and keep your personal files (all programs that didn't come with the computer will get deleted), or an install that wiped the drive clean. Nothing will get rid of those 3 partition. One says system, one had the 600+ GB of space (750gb drive), and some other small partition. When installing, an error message I get is, that it can't install to the drive because it is formatted as a GPT drive and the install needs an MBR drive.
I can't believe that the drive didn't come with a utilities disc, like every other drive I have ever bought in the past. Those utility disks would take care of the partition problems.
Oh well.
_________________
Carter D10 8p/8k, Dekley S10 3p/4k C6 setup,Regal RD40 Dobro, NV400, NV112 . Playing for 54 years and still counting. |
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John McClung
From:
Olympia WA, USA
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Posted 18 Jan 2016 2:33 pm
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Time to go Mac, Rich! And extended E9, while you're at it. 
_________________
E9 INSTRUCTION
▪️ If you want to have an ongoing discussion, please email me, don't use the Forum messaging which I detest! steelguitarlessons@earthlink.net |
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Richard Sinkler
From:
aka: Rusty Strings -- Missoula, Montana
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Posted 18 Jan 2016 7:18 pm
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I wish. And I would want a D12. And a very pretty girl to help me carry it. 
_________________
Carter D10 8p/8k, Dekley S10 3p/4k C6 setup,Regal RD40 Dobro, NV400, NV112 . Playing for 54 years and still counting. |
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