Confused Migrating Win7 to a SSD without re-installing

[SilverHood]

Have a Win7 desktop, I just bought a SSD drive, 240 gigs. Plugged it in, formatted it, it's ready to go.

I followed the steps here:
http://lifehacker.com/5837543/how-to-migrate-to-a-solid+state-drive-without-reinstalling-windows

Win7 partition clones fine... but when I try to boot from the SSD, I get an error, saying insert boot media or some such. Any ideas?

 

[Syri]

Personally, I'd say to just reinstall. If you start a fresh install, it will all be optimised for the ssd from the start, so it should get the best speed it can right away. It will also mean you're not copying years worth of crap across that's been left around by windows and other apps, so you get a fresh start with just the apps you now use, and no old versions and old files. That's just me though. I'm afraid I can't think of anything offhand as to why it wouldn't boot though, unless the clone software only takes the partition itself, and not the boot sector and partition table etc, in which case you may just need to boot the windows disc, get to the command line and use that to make the ssd bootable, I can't remember the command, but it should be easy to find on google.

 

[Yaka]

re-install mate just much easier.

 

[caLLous]

Yep, re-install. Much cleaner solution, fresh start and all that.

 

[soze]

I agree you should reinstall but if you are really against it try checking your boot order and if you do not even get start up repair you are left with booting from a Disk and trying the start up repair for a fix mbr command.

 

[TdC]

bios boot order // fix boot in windows. partition with the clone needs to be active and bootable in disk manager

 

[old.Osy]

The steps you followed are ok, but the guy missed a step.

It's highly likely that your current Win7 install doesn't have drivers for the SSD.

You need to boot normally from the original HDD, with the SSD connected. It should detect it and self-install drivers for it. Do a reboot and it's only after that that you actually clone your Windows 7 install and mash it on the SSD.

Good luck.