A5-575-33BM USB boot problems

YG

I recently bought my laptop and wanted to upgrade from the hdd to a m.2 ssd for boot times. I followed this video exactly (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCmAOwRYNwY) and everything was working until I got to the "recover from a drive" part and got this message: Unable to recover your PC. The system drive is too small. I am stumped and don't know what I did wrong. Any help is appreciated.

brummyfan2

If that fails, download and install Minitool Partition wizard Free program, run it and use Migrate feature to transfer everything from HDD to M.2 SSD, then remove the HDD and reboot, Windows will boot from M.2 SSD.
https://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html
https://www.partitionwizard.com/clone-disk/migrate-windows-10.html

brummyfan2

Hi,
Could you please post the size of the M.2 SSD and your original HDD, also tell us whether you are able to boot with your HDD.

YG

SSD is 256 gb. HDD is 1tb. I can boot with the hdd (I am using the laptop now), but when I change it to boot from the usb recovery drive (which I made using acer care center) and press recover from a drive to reinstall windows on the ssd, I get the error message.

brummyfan2

Hi,
OK, it's because the destination drive is smaller than the source drive(HDD), how much of 1TB is used at the moment, could you please post the Disk management.

YG

The video said I had to remove the hdd when booting from the usb to install windows on the ssd, is that wrong?

brummyfan2

Hi,
Right click Unallocated(238.47), create a New simple volume, give it a drive letter, then remove the HDD and try again.

YG

What does this mean? What do I choose?

brummyfan2

If that fails, download and install Minitool Partition wizard Free program, run it and use Migrate feature to transfer everything from HDD to M.2 SSD, then remove the HDD and reboot, Windows will boot from M.2 SSD.
https://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html
https://www.partitionwizard.com/clone-disk/migrate-windows-10.html

brummyfan2

Hi,
You choose GPT and click OK.

aphanic

Hey there, let's give you another option to clone that drive shall we?

Macrium's Reflect allows you to clone and re-deploy in the free version of the product as well, and even though you can do it in a live system (e.g. booting off of the HDD you have) I find it best to do these things while the system is offline. For that, they also allow free users to create a boot CD (or USB stick) and perform the operations from there.

I just built one for you, but you're welcomed to build it yourself (by installing the program and choosing to do so in the "Other tasks" menu):

Aaaaanyway, this is just a simulation of what you'd see but there's a bigger drive and a smaller one. Macrium will take care of resizing the Windows partition during cloning and once it's done you can shutdown the laptop, remove the HDD and see if it boots up fine from the SSD:







The rest of the procedure is kind of a next next next deal.

By the way, since sometimes Windows doesn't like the boot drive changing location and all if Reflect reported the cloning successful but you couldn't boot off of the SSD, boot into Refect again (HDD disconnected) and chose the Re-Deploy option in the left side of the app.

And another thing that could happen is that you need storage drivers for it to boot, but those are easily downloadable from the Acer support site for the model for example. I know, I know, many exceptions to the next next next, but I'd rather be straightforward and mention them now; it's generally uneventful the cloning of disks.

To create a bootable USB stick with the Reflect image I like to use Rufus because it takes care of all of the settings, it's just selecting the stick, the image and starting the process:

aphanic

Darn it.. forgot to put the image link haha: https://mega.nz/#!4FchlSxR!Xc20PnEVZ94J2Er0xlNx4z0VhtT1cyUQMHVysrcKUG8