Example of Pre-emptive Maintenance

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My Dell Latitude E5420 had a ~7 year-old Toshiba 256GB SSD that was still working fine, but was quite a bit slower than modern SSD’s. I decided to replace it with a Samsung 860 EVO 250GB SSD to improve performance and ordered one.

It arrived last Thursday, and since the September updates had already been installed, I used Image For Windows to create a new total drive image to be stored on my NAS. While that was going on, I docked the new SSD in my NAS and did a full (my preference) NTFS format. Since that also places a MSR partition on the drive, I then used DISKPART to clean the drive, then ran the Convert GPT command.

After the drive image was complete, I restored it to the new drive in the dock, using the options “Scale to Fit” and “Align to Target”, since I was restoring a drive image of a 256GB drive to a 250GB drive. Once the restore was complete, I removed the new drive, opened my E5420 and swapped out the drives.

After putting the laptop back together, I powered it on and booted up. Windows booted normally, noticeably quicker, and when I checked Properties, Windows remained Activated. Next I installed Samsung Magician 6.1, and everything is good to go with improved performance for my nine year-old laptop.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

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RockE

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I found out the hard way that keeping all USB ports on both laptop and cooling assembly clean helps keep them in great working order.  Apparently, probably, there presently exists hardware and software causes concerning the usb ports.   Each laptop and its cooling assembly are taking their turns in a local business computer place getting cleaned and thoroughly checked.

“Dirty” [and malfunctioning] USB ports caused problems with backup/restore operations.  No external USB platter-driven HDD nor any USB flash drive was picked by normal or safe mode Windows 7.

Booting a Macrium Reflect DVD or an Image For Windows DVD did the job, the external usb hard-drives and flash drives were picked up — backups made.

If anyone has any ideas as to the possible software, normal & safe mode Windows 7, causes for the above-mentioned problems — let’s start a new thread in this forum, thanks!

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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I must be going computer blind, where is the New Thread button?

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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WSRolandJS wrote:

I must be going computer blind, where is the New Thread button?

You can’t create a new thread within a thread.  To start a new thread, you need to go “up” one level to the Forum header, in this case, “Backup”.  Click on that to get up to the main forum category.

At the bottom of that Forum category, you’ll see “Create New Topic in “Backups” with the appropriate textboxes for title and content.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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It’s at the bottom of the forum page, just like a new post is at the bottom of the thread.

Eliminate spare time: start programming PowerShell

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