Cloning X1 SSD to HDD Fails

Seasons Greetings!

I'm hoping someone can give me some insights into how to fix an issue I am having. I recently purchased a Lenovo X1 with a 160GB Intel SSD. I want to clone it to a 320 GB HDD (Momentus Thin). When I clone the drive (HDD in an external USB case) using any one of four different cloning packages I am running into problems. Clonezilla doesn't like the hidden system partition, Norton Ghost and Macrium Reflect clone just fine but the I get a 'No Operating System' error when I try to boot to the new drive, and Easeus Todo won't recognize my external USB. I'm starting to think my X1 is cursed.

So questions: is there another clone software I should try (free or otherwise) that will definitely work on this thing? Could going from an SSD to an HDD be causing a problem? Is there something in the Lenovo Thinkvantage toolbox that I should be using instead to reinstall on the new hard drive?

Thanks in advance for the help!

 

The Intel (Acronis) data migration software works beautifully when going from HDD to SSD, but I don't know if it'll go the other way. Worth a shot.

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=19324

 

TT,

Thanks for your suggestion - unfortunately the Intel software didn't like the fact that I was trying to go the other direction. I did a few more cloning tests - running a full forensic bit-for-bit clone and copying specific partitions but nothing seems to work. I've read that cloning Windows 7 can cause issues, but still, this is getting ridiculous.

I think my next solution is to plug in an external DVDR, burn restore media from the original drive, and just restore to the new drive to get a factory install running. Any reasons why this might not work or any suggestions to make it run smoothly would be appreciated.

M.

 

You could download Acronis True Image Home 2012 directly from Complete hard disk recovery solution, backup, drive copy, clone and image computer software

If that doesn't work, it's a hardware issue most likely.

 

@Maelwys,

The trial version of Acronis did not do disk clone. I tried a couple of different ways to clone a SSD to SSD yesterday. I wanted to clone one bootable Win 7 installation to another.

It worked perfectly when I used the free Easeus Partition Master 9.1.0 Home Edition though. (I'm not sure if that's the same "cloning" component in the Easeus Todo Backup that you tried.)

 

The trial version will however do a full disk backup with all partitions and a full restore. Did you try that? I never use the disk cloning task.

 

No, I did not. I wanted to use disk clone capability as I had done multiple backups and restores using other tools. As I said, the disk cloning worked for me.

 

Has OP tried Clonezilla? Pretty good for freeware.

I don't see imaging software caring whether it is going from an SSD to a HDD or vice versa, perhaps only alignment could be the big issue.

 

I tried Clonezilla first - it has always been reliable. Unfortunately, in this case, it failed every time on the hidden partition when doing a straight disk to disc clone. Everything else I tried had similar results, or would clone error free but then not boot.

My solution was to get an external DVDR, burn the recovery media, and do a factory restore on the new drive. A few more steps required, but it worked without any trouble.