Samsung large spinner to small ssd fails to boot

[carmen617]

Ugh, this is a job I've done successfully a hundred times. Have two identical Dell AIO's for an over the weekend job for a business, clone from 1TB spinner to 250GB Samsung SSD (neither is using more than 90GB on existing drive) using Samsung's data migration program. Up sold them to this during an onsite clean up/tune up visit to increase performance/speed. Anyway - one of them, no problem. The other, after clone, fails to boot, just gives me Dell splash screen. No boot options, no error, no beep code, nothing but Dell splash screen. Thinking maybe clone was bad, replaced original drive, system booted fine. Redid the clone, same failure to boot.

Promised job done for Sunday pickup. Have NO desire to clean install (this system is the host for the client's QuickBooks file, ugh, don't want to have to recreate that). If I can't get it to work will just put old drive back and tell them it was a problem and do something later, but sure hate to waste my time and not earn money. Company coming for dinner, football season starts tomorrow - anybody have this problem before and have a solution for me?

 

[Sky-Knight]

I had this problem last night actually with a WD Blue, I moved the SSD and original drive to another system, tried again and it worked.

Sometimes for whatever reason the cloning process hangs up on a particular SATA controller.

But, this is also why I tend to stick with WD Blue SSDs, because all WD drives have Acronis attached, which is much better about imaging installs than whatever Samsung rebrands. (You can use the WD Acronis as long as a WD drive is attached to the system, it doesn't have to be involved in the actual image)

 

[carmen617]

I had this problem last night actually with a WD Blue, I moved the SSD and original drive to another system, tried again and it worked.

Sometimes for whatever reason the cloning process hangs up on a particular SATA controller.

But, this is also why I tend to stick with WD Blue SSDs, because all WD drives have Acronis attached, which is much better about imaging installs than whatever Samsung rebrands. (You can use the WD Acronis as long as a WD drive is attached to the system, it doesn't have to be involved in the actual image)

Thanks, it's actually a WD blue drive. I know WD Acronis will work whenever there is a WD drive involved, but I haven't had much luck going from big to small with WD Acronis. I've been much more successful with the Samsung program, unless the original drive is pretty borked. Will give this a shot though tomorrow first thing and see if it works.

 

[Diggs]

I've had problems with many clone programs going from large to small HDD/SSD especially UEFI machines. As we've discussed in other threads Macrium does it best (IMHO).

 

[frase]

Yeap with macrium one can remove partitions not required when migrating.

 

[Sky-Knight]

I don't know why I always forget about Macrium...

 

[Mick]

I'll whisper this, but I have had success with this exact same issue (Big spinner to smaller SSD) using Aeomi.

 

[carmen617]

Well, just as a follow up to this, tried three different cloning techniques and none worked. I was wrong about the second system as well - it booted further (past the Dell Splash Screen) but then ran diagnostics and told me there was no bootable device. Finally googled the actual system and found out that nobody can get a cloned Samsung or Crucial ssd to work on it - some BIOS issue that Dell isn't fixing with an update. The offending system is a Dell Inspiron 3455 AIO, also sold as the Vostro 20-3055. There are a few lone reports of Intel SSDs and WD SSDs working, but most of the threads I found about this system just petered off into nothingness, or offered the workaround of turning off UEFI and doing a clean install (which apparently isn't always successful as well). Not going to waste any more time ordering different brands of SSD and hoping, just handing systems back to client unchanged. Weekend of work wasted, bah humbug.

 

[jogold]

did you try deleting the sata driver from Device manger before cloning?
this was the old way to do it when changing hardware. it forces windows to reinstall all the hardware from scratch, and often the Dell splash screen hides the beginning of Windows startup.Cant hurt to try.

 

[timeshifter]

Did you try a clean install as a test?

 

[carmen617]

Did you try a clean install as a test?

I'm not going to do a clean install, so no need to test it. It's clone or nothing. Two systems with the exact same problem and multiple threads at Dell/Crucial/Macrium describing the same issue with the exact computer is enough for me.

Don't think it's Windows drivers that are the issue, as I don't even get the option to enter BIOS or change start up settings. There is something that makes Samsung and Crucial drives incompatible with this computer. Some users report being able to clean install Samsung or Crucial drives by changing to Legacy boot mode, but that isn't going to solve my problem here. I suppose I can tell the client this might work with a WD SSD, but I'm not wiling to put any more time and effort into getting the drives I have in stock to work.

https://www.dell.com/community/Stor...t-after-cloning-onto-Samsung-850/td-p/5099219

https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2212187-will-dell-3455-aio-take-an-ssd