Thinkpads Forum

Hi,

I just cloned my 500Gb Seagate harddrive to a new 500Gb SSD, using TrueImage 2013
(SSD as main drive, Hdd in caddy).

Now the machine won't boot (just cursor blinking in upper left corner).

1. Bios "sees" the SSD
2. I've tried upgrading Bios to Middlethon's
3. I've put the SSD in another laptop (HP Presario V6500) and it started to boot right away

So I'm thinking this is a T61 problem.
Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Regards
Ketil

What was the OS on the hard disk?
Regardless, the problem is that the SSD needs to be aligned, which is different from a HD.
Your best (and probably only) bet is to install from scratch, preferably Vista/SP1 or W7/SP1.
XP on an SSD is asking for problems!

RealBlackStuff wrote:What was the OS on the hard disk?
Regardless, the problem is that the SSD needs to be aligned, which is different from a HD.
Your best (and probably only) bet is to install from scratch, preferably Vista/SP1 or W7/SP1.
XP on an SSD is asking for problems!

Hi,
the OS is XP. As far as I've read, TrueImage is supposed to take care of ssd alignment.
Anyway, it started to boot when placed in a different laptop, although I stopped it pretty
fast because of different hardware.

I'm aware of the limitations of XP on ssd, but why does it seem to boot on the HP and not
on the Thinkpad?

Ketil

It's all about the drivers. Something is not working from the driver end.

Fresh install is best. As already stated Vista or Win 7 will play much nicer with a SSD.

Ketil wrote:... why does it seem to boot on the HP and not on the Thinkpad?

Geometry! You don't need a fresh install, but you do need to repair/replace the Master Boot Record (MBR).

You will need a flash drive, floppy drive, or CD from which to boot to a utility which can repair the MBR, while the drive is in the primary bay of the Thinkpad. An easy way is to use the XP Recovery Console, if you have a bootable XP installation CD. Let me know if you would like more details on how to proceed with that or a different utility.

XP is so easy to reinstall I look for excuses to do it when I have to use an XP machine.

Great opportunity for a system refresh, and if you use nlite you can have a nice up-to-date slipstreamed install CD (or DVD if you want to toss applications on it too) making life even more convenient.

use AOMEI partition assistant to clone bootable HDD partition onto SSD. There's some good info here: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=107229

good luck

@ Ketil:

First: Welcome to the forum!

Next, please inform what specific SSD you have? You say it is a "500 GB Samsung" so is it perhaps the 512GB 2.5-inch SSD 840 Pro Series, model MZ-7PD512BW? If so, it does support XP according to its datasheet. Also, during the clone process, did you clone the entire source (the old HDD), or only part or it? Hint: Are you aware that Samsung has made available their free Data Migration Software? By the way, you may also want to install the Samsung SSD Magician to allow you to TRIM the drive under XP, as native TRIM doesn't work (under XP). Another cloning option might be the (free trial version of) Image for Windows (I have never tried it, but according to this thread is works find (at least with Windows 7).

According to the thread Acronis True Image Home v11 and SSD(s) Question your ATI ver. 13 will take care of partition alignment if cloning a HDD onto a SSD, while older ATI versions won't.

RealBlackStuff wrote:... the problem is that the SSD needs to be aligned, which is different from a HD.

<snip>

XP on an SSD is asking for problems!

1) Wrong, 2) strongly disagree (to this completely unsupported, superficial postulate holding no useful information whatsoever!).

There is no need to perform a (partition-) alignment on a SSD running Windows XP. Most (but not all) SSD's will however perform better if carrying out a partition-alignment. Intel SSD's are known to, in real-life applications, to perform equally well with XP regardless of being partition-aligned or not. Whether this is perhaps also the case with Samsung SSD's; that I don't know. In any case, whether you have your new Samsung SSD partition aligned or not will not affect its ability to run XP (!).

As to using XP on a SSD, I have been doing this on multiple ThinkPad's (icl. several T60's); never had any issues (I'm using Intel SSD's). I have cloned HDD's on T60's (with XP) onto SSD's many times... never had any problems. What I can therefore say from own, actual, long-time experience is: XP on a SSD will work just fine. Since XP will however "die" in about a year (in the sense that Microsoft Update on XP/SP3 will expire) is a different issue... at that point you'll need to move on to another security-supported OS (some more recent Windows flavour or Linux).

My suggestion? Get hand of a Windows 7 copy; e.g. via the The Marketplace (try posting a "WTB": Want To Buy, advertisement there), "max. out" your T61 with RAM, and make a fresh install of Windows 7 on your super-speedy new Samsung 840.

Good luck with getting your T61 up and running with the new speedy SSD... and please keep us posted about the progress!

Johan

EOMtp wrote:

Geometry! You don't need a fresh install, but you do need to repair/replace the Master Boot Record (MBR).

^^^^^This. Times ten thousand and twelve.

A disk that boots in HP will never boot in a ThinkPad, the latter have an unique MBR.

Johan wrote:

There is no need to perform a (partition-) alignment on a SSD running Windows XP. Most (but not all) SSD's will however perform better if carrying out a partition-alignment. Intel SSD's are known to, in real-life applications, to perform equally well with XP regardless of being partition-aligned or not.

Well, most of the SSD/XP combo users would tend to disagree with you on that statement, since it's been established for quite some time that proper alignment is necessary for both optimizing the SSD performance as well as for its longevity...

Here's a few approaches:

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum ... rking-life

http://www.overclock.net/t/1226963/how- ... partitions

http://forum.acronis.com/forum/3267

@Ketil:

While I understand your wish to stick with XP, your T61p will be much better served by W7.

To this day I miss running W2K dearly and believe that it's the best OS I've ever used. But at one point it simply became a thing of the past, and couldn't cope with newer hardware without causing issues.

Nowadays, pretty much the same holds true for XP.

Time to move on.