Help with recovery from usb to a new ssd disk

[arildjr]

Hi.

Have been struggeling for a couple of days now. I recently bought a Sony Vaio VPCYA1V9E 11.6" laptop.

Upgraded it to 8gb ram and bought a 60gb SSD disk. (Replacement for the 500gb original).

Tried with norton ghost to ghost the disk first. Ghost doesnt like that the disk is smaller so it wont let me ghost.. Fair enough.

Tried Vaio recovery (there is no optical unit on this one) And it needed a usb pen on min. 16 gb. I bought one and made recovery disk for this one. When i remove the original disk it boots from the usb and starts the vaio recovery. Then it asks if i want to backup my files before recovery, i press no (since the disk is brand new) and it goes to a blue blank window with only the mouse cursor showing and no activity after that.

I let that window stay for 10 minutes and nothing happened.. tried to do this 3 times with same result.

When i made the usb in vaio care or what its called I even checked the verify data option.

Ended up with putting the slow 500gb hdd back in the laptop.

Anyone got a clue on how i should get my SSD working?

Best regards

Arild

[Blencogo]

Hi Arild,

Try this.  It may work unless the recovery process has been changed.

After you start the 'Complete System Recovery' from the main menu, you will see a check box at the bottom of the screen to "SKIP".  DO NOT select any of the available screen options - Just select SKIP on this and the next screen.

You may get a warning saying all data will be lost, check OK (or I understand).

[arildjr]

Thank you for an answer.

I took out the hdd again. Inserted the ssd and booted from the usb drive.

It boots up and starts vaio recovery.  I get a tools menu, the recovery wizard and a exit on the menu.

Under tools there is only wipe option and system tests so i started the wizard once again. There is no such option as you mentioned. Tried to skip the backup again and same happened..

After that you get the blue windows background and the mouse cursor. Then it stops. Computer doesnt lock up.

It seems just normal but nothing happens. No menus or anything. I took some pictures.

Pictures are in steps from the recovery process.

And next picture is what comes out after pressing skip rescue.

[Blencogo]

I'm sorry it did not work.

On my Vaio - which is a current model, I get the same screens as you when booting from the Recovery Discs.

However, when I click on 'Skip Rescue' it goes to another screen (see below) which warns me that all data will be lost and I have to select 'Yes, I'm sure' and the recovery starts.

I think you will have to phone Vaio Support tomorrow and see if they can help.

[arildjr]

I  see.

Thanks for your effort mate!

I will first try to redo the usb stick. Might be a **** file or something EVEN if i put on the validation thing.

Seems wierd that it doesnt continue. Do you use a usb stick by the way or dvd's?

Regards

./Arild

[stephanius]

You can use the Linux-based GPARTED to resize and move partitions between discs.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/using-gparted-to-resize-your-windows-vista-partition/

Don't mind Vista/7, same thing under the hood.

After following the steps provided in the article I linked, you should be fine. It's possible that you'll get a weird error message, if that happens, google the error message and follow the instructions to remove the registry links to the physical ID of your old harddrive and the system partition.

[arildjr]

Stephanius: Thanks.. though i rather want to skip the recovery partitions since the SSD disk is abit smaller..

So what i want to do is keep the recovery on usb and just reinstall windows 7 from there.

Doesnt do any good though since recovery fails when trying to recover.

I reformatted the usb stick and made another recovery media and put in the other hdd again. Problem where still the same so i imagine that there is something wrong with the recovery setup or something on this vaio type.

Tried to phone sony support but no luck.. Sent them an email but no answer there yet either so.. 

[stephanius]

I've not tried this, but it could be that the reocovery fails because nobody expected a 60GB drive.

The option Start Recovery Wizard covers what 95% of people using the tool want.

Try the Tools option. That offers to non-default things, such as custom parition sizes.

Another thing to check, is if the SSD is 'clean'. When in doubt, use diskpart's clean command to wipe partitions and boot sector from it to ensure there is nothing left that the recovery tool could get stuck on. Important: make sure you don't wipe some other disc in the system by accident. Pay close attention to the disk sizes reported by 'list disk' and choose the SDD as active disk with 'select x' where x is it's number in the list.

[arildjr]

Hi again Stephanius.

I already tried wiping it through the sony tool thingie.

Cant just see that it wont work with me since its "only" a 60 gb disk.

As far as i know you wont get 500gb ssd disks and i cant see that it should be impossible to install a ssd disk in a vaio.

./Arild

[arildjr]

1 week now and still no answer from sony techs..