Hello there,
AT LAAAAST!! After a whole week of test and error I succeeded thank God in Cloning my 750 go HDD onto my 250 go SSD and boot windows from my SSD with both HDD and SSD in their respective slots keeping both windows folders. I will explain the steps now:
This method is intended to those who have 2 Hard Drive slots in their Laptop and want to add an SSD next to their HDD and boot windows from the SSD and use the HDD as data and backup medium. Under windows 8 / 8.1. If you just want to clone your HDD to your SSD and take away your HDD, there are easiest methods out in the web so I advise you not using this one.
Before moving to explain the steps i strongly advise you NOT TO SWAP between your HDD and SSD slots, most tutorials do ask for swapping but in my case it nearly destroyed my SSD, it got freezed on the ASUS Logo and my SSD was not recognised anymore and I had to fix it by formatting it several times before it could be recognised again in desktop loosing all my data (luckily I had a backup). It even touched my HDD and luckily SCANDISK could repair it without loosing data. SO don't do it please (I read it also happened to others...).
PREREQUISITS :1- Backup all your data and your partitions from your HDD using Macrium Reflect free. Its free, easy and has very strong features as creating a boot key to restore data and factory partitions. It can also fix windows boot problems and lets you choose from which Hard Drive to auto boot (in case you have dual boot with 2 windows folders). Absolutely great software look it up in the internet and watch some tutorials before use. Don't forget once installed and backed your data and partitions to create a startup USB key, normally i think it will prompt you to do so automatically while backing up process, but if it don't please do it manually and make sure to add to USB key the windows PE rescue environment.
2- Format your SSD using Disk Management (right click on windows logo on the down left corner and choose disk management). Format it to GPT. Also verify that your Hard Drive slots (SATA option under UEFI BIOS) is on AHCI and not IDE (look it up in the internet if you don't know what it is). AHCI is not mandatory but advisable to take full advantage of your SSD speeds.
3- Disable Fast Boot from your UEFI BIOS and keep it that way always. Fast boot prevents using F2 key or ESC to access UEFI BIOS at startup and even though you can win about 10 s to 15 s boot time with this feature ON for most HDD, with your SSD you ll only win 3s to 5s, it is peanut considering the downside of fast boot not completely purging memory and keeping some bad files or errors all the way around forever. Nothing best than a good old COLD BOOT to purge everyhthing and start up as new. So I advise you to keep it off after installing your SSD and booting from it.
STEPS:1- Shut down your laptop : remove AC cable and remove battery.
2- Open hatch to access RAM and HD slots by removing screw in the middle.
3- Install the SSD in the empty slot : should be the right one next to the Woofer.
4- Close the Hatch, boot up windows normally, and go to disk management as described up to format your SSD to GPT.
5- Use EaseUs partition master to migrate your OS from your HDD to your SSD. Be careful at this stage there is a risk of Data loss so I advise you to watch video tutorials about OS migration using this software carefully and of course before that, follow my advice up there by backing up your all your Data using Macrium reflect.
6- Follow the steps in EASEUS to Migrate OS from HDD to SSD, once again watch video tutorials for step by step and make sure to activate an option "Optimize for SSD" when migrating.
7- When you click finish or execute at this stage, EASEUS will prompt you with a message saying that you need to swap between your SSD and HDD bla bla bla... as said before I do not advise this method.
8- Now it will prompt you to restart your laptop for the process to begin. You should do so.
9- The process will take from 30 min to 1 hour depending on your system config. At the end of the process I don't know if it will prompt you to restart of it will load directly to your new windows clone from your SSD. To be honest I left the software do its thing for about 40 min, and when i came back I found myslef inside my windows Session from the SSD. Did it reload by itlself I don't know?
10- Now you can either keep it that way for a while and work your Data Transfers from HDD to SSD to make sure everyhings fine or you can format your entire HDD to have it clean. It depends on you. Just verify that your C: drive now is the SSD and that your HDD is given another letter (D: or E: or whatever).
Once again my advice here but its up to you to do it or not, is to delete the EFI partition from your HDD so to make sure it will never conflict with the other EFI partition from your SSD from which your computer boots on now. And if something goes wrong you can still use your backup partition image with Macrium reflect to restore anything you want to your HDD and boot from it if necessary.
DONE
🙂 Last advice which is not least... look in the internet for : SSD optimisation for windows 8 and follow all the steps. Here is one
tutorial but there are hundreds on the internet. However if like me you are under windows 8 not 8.1 you absolutely need to reRun the Windows Experience Index which you ll find here : Control Panel -> System -> Evaluation click on it and then re execute the evaluation. This is the only way your new cloned windows will recognise your SSD and optimize it self for it. So its important to do it.
That's it
🙂 Hope it will help someone someday, i was happy doing it anyway
😉 dont hesitate to contact me if needed!