Computer help

[fecmech]

I planned on installing a Samsung 870 SSD in my Asus vivo book laptop. Got the ssd today along with a usb 3.0 to 2.5"SATA HDD/SSD cable w/UASP. I connected the cable to the SSD and plugged into my usb port. the drive did not show up on my laptop. Tried different ports, no joy. tried it on my desk top, no joy. If I plug in a jump drive it shows up so I guess the port is good. What am I missing here? One led lights up on the cable. Did I get a bad SSD?

[bakerjw]

So you are using this as an external drive to your laptop?

Does the drive show up under computer management -> storage -> Disk Management? Drives are not formatted when shipped so it will need to have a partition created and then formatted.

ETA Samsung SSDs are absolutely rock solid. The chance of getting a bad one is very remote.

[fecmech]

Thanks bakerjw! Now to figure out and clone my old drive.

[DougGuy]

You can download the Gparted .iso and use a freebie called Balena Etcher to write the .iso to a usb stick that will then be bootable, use it to partition and or format your new SSD. Gparted is one of the best partition editors.

https://gparted.org/

Balena Etcher: https://www.balena.io/etcher/

You can also download the Clonezilla .iso and use the same program to write the .iso to a usb stick that will then be bootable, use it to clone disk to disk or partition to partition to copy your old drive to the new SSD. Clonezilla is what I have used for years, since long ago abandoning the old Norton Ghost.

https://clonezilla.org/

[JoeG52]

This is a good tutorial on what you are trying to do...
https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/ssd-upgrade-tutorial
For cloning I use 'EaseUS Todo Backup Free'. It is easy to use and like the name says it is free.

[Mr_Sheesh]

Nice to see others on here know of a couple tools I haven't heard of :) It's almost like new software comes out all the time -grins-

[bakerjw]

There are a lot of software packages out there. We use a package from Paragon at work. We use it to save images and roll them back as needed.

Is this a new or older laptop? New laptops and desktops are coming with NVME M.2 slots. It is solid state storage that attaches to the motherboard and looks like a piece of ram. It does not use the SATA interface which limits to about 6GB/s and runs natively at about 30GB/s. They SCREAM!
https://www.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-MZ-V8V1T0B-AM-980-SSD/dp/B08V83JZH4

A lot of laptops have 2 drive bays in them. Good to have one for the OS and one for data.

[DougGuy]

There are a lot of software packages out there. We use a package from Paragon at work. We use it to save images and roll them back as needed.

Is this a new or older laptop? New laptops and desktops are coming with NVME M.2 slots. It is solid state storage that attaches to the motherboard and looks like a piece of ram. It does not use the SATA interface which limits to about 6GB/s and runs natively at about 30GB/s. They SCREAM!
https://www.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-MZ-V8V1T0B-AM-980-SSD/dp/B08V83JZH4

A lot of laptops have 2 drive bays in them. Good to have one for the OS and one for data.

Images are great! Long ago I did win98 installs, made good money doing these custom, but I would make an image from a fully installed and configured OS, install all the utilities and programs I wanted, then go into device manager and remove everything in there, totally strip it of motherboard resources and all hardware, shut down and them make an image of the drive. Burn this to CD, and never install windows again! Boot with a tool CD with ghost on it, write that image to a new machine and then boot it up. It would start up with "windows has found new hardware," etc, it was funny to watch so we called the image CD "Jaws."

Once the new install was up and running with user name and passwd, all their account stuff loaded and configured, I would again take an image of their install, put it in a small partition on another drive and hide the partition. When restoring was necessary, unhide that partition, overwrite their boot drive with the image, and reboot, the computer goes back to the day I took the image, all viruses and other junk that they had installed was gone. I made GOOD money keeping win98 boxes running like this!

[fecmech]

I DID IT! I DID IT! IT EVEN WORKS! Sorry for shouting but I'm pumped. Thanks to all who took the time to respond, your input helped me tremendously. I used the Samsung Data Migration program and the clone took about 40 minutes (there was only 65GB on the 1TB drive). Boot takes seconds and programs pop up immediately. One question I have regarding a windows recovery disc. My laptop does not have a CD drive. I backed up the old HD to an external drive before I cloned. I 'm running win10 on the laptop. My pc has a cd R/W but running Win8pro. Can I make the recovery disc on the PC? Again thanks to all, the knowledge on this board is amazing as are the helpful folks who inhabit this place.

[bakerjw]

I store all of my pertinent data on a RAID 5 array that is backed up to one of my web servers (Boy they hate the part of my unlimited data contract).

If you have an external drive, you can use a lot of tools out there to make an image of your hard drive. Many of the software packages can be run from a CDRom or thumb drive. So if a drive dies, put in a new one and use the tool to restore it.

I also strongly recommend using a backup service for more critical files. All it takes is one wrong click and in a short while you get a pop up advising that you have to pay a lot of money to decrypt your data. That is my biggest fear, someone on my home network letting one of those things loose.

[DougGuy]

I DID IT! I DID IT! IT EVEN WORKS! Can I make the recovery disc on the PC?

Only if you have an .iso of the disc you can burn it on any machine that will burn isos to disc. If the recovery disc is made from files that are already on the laptop, you will need to make it from the laptop which would probably mean connect an external dvdr to write to.

[Mr_Sheesh]

You can definitely buy external USB cabled DVD read / write drives, plug them in, add free software if needed, then burn DVDs or CD-Rs for recovery media or whatever. And the drives aren't very costly, $20 or so iirc

[pworley1]

Congratulations!

[John Guedry]

I love when someone gets a problem solved. But all that stuff is pure Greek to me.