Impossible to migrate to SSD - M3920 64bit win 7 LDM

mathewjg

I have upgraded several laptops using Windows 8 and not come across the problems that I am having trying to migrate from my M3920 I5 desktop. Non of the available clone software can see the original drive in the desktop. I get stupid message from Samsung migration tool that "Unable to find Windows OS". The drive in the M3920 is the original factory installed NTFS 64bit version of WIndows 7 by Acer.

 

The only software that recognises the drive so far is Active File recovery and that reports that the M3920 drive is a dynamic drive running LDM (Logical disk manager) The drive has a recovery partition, C drive and D drive. I want to clone the recovery partition and the C drive or just the C drive if the recovery drive is not possible (although as mentioned it has been ok  on my other laptops)

 

I have tried connecting the old drive and the new SSD via USB to my laptop in the hopes that the clone software could than see the old drive but still no luck

 

Maybe I can convert LDM to MBR or any other system that is recognisable. 

 

Its very frustrating and while searching for a cause I discover that the drive has been installed  with RAID turned on and if I try to switch it to AHCI in bios windows fails. After spending more time on the internet it seems that this is OK because AHCI is a subset of RAID - but it would have been handy if a proper motherboard manual was available describing the options and why. On first look it does not make sense to use RAID for one drive and even now I am not really clear about why its set up that way

 

mathewjg

Just spent about 20 minutes waiting for the online chat service to connect me to a technical support advisor and then about 6 minutes talking online. Basically the answer was "we do not recommend you carry out any modifications to this computer as it was not designed for that purpose" and "take the computer to a technician"

They could save a lot of time and money by using a pre-recorded message eg if you have a problem with your computer please take it to a computer service centre"

 

 

I was advised that the computer can only fit 1 hard drive (actually it has 6 SATA sockets and plenty of internal space not to mention the fitted drive caddie) and consider that I just want to upgrade to SSD why would I need extra drive space?. I definitely got the feeling that the advisor had no idea of what I was on about and definitely was not in a position to explain anything about LDM - but thats not a suprise it seems hardly anyone does unless they work on network servers. So why is the computer configured to use LDM?

 

I guess I am going to have to do a clean instal 

 

At least I have had an education over the last couple of days trying to understand the set up.

 

To save you doing the same

The installed SATA drive shows up as a SCSI within device manager - this is quite common so just ignore it as it does not cause any problems and is usually associated with specific drive manufacturers and the way that the drivers interact.

 

The drive in BIOS  is set to  RAID by default- and if you search the internet most people recommend AHCI for SSD drives but you can leave this at RAID because AHCI uses a subset of the RAID configuration.

 

If anyone finds a data migration program that can recognise drives that are configured with LDM then please let me know