Way to get a T420 HDD clone to run in a T430?

[matis]

I tried it and it wouldn't boot. Was told this was because the T420 drivers would have to be deleted and T430 drivers installed.

Is this true? And if so how would I accomplish that, given that the T430 won't boot with the T420 HDD clone?

I'd hate to have to re-install everything, especially since the T420 came (from eBay) with a legit copy of Word installed and I do not have a way to install that on the T430 -- unless I could get a clone to run.

Any help appreciated.

Matis

[thinkpadcollection]

Get a jellybean key finder software first to glean COA # for your Word. You already have windows COA # stickers on your notebooks for both T420 and T430 under battery compartment. Obtain windows 10 Pro and Word installation ISO. You can use windows COA # for 7 Pro, 8.x Pro to activate windows 10 Pro.

I have windows 10 Pro on my T420, and you should have no problem with Windows 10 Pro on ivy bridge T430 as well. I have ivy bridge workstation installed with Win 10 Pro too.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection

[TankPad]

Start Windows in safe mode, then you can uninstall the old driver. It should boot fine though. I've done it myself a few times.

[TPFanatic]

Try uninstalling a bunch of drivers first then move the drive over.

Also see if you can run Sysprep and move the drive before the reinstalling drivers stage.

The T420 drive must be a 7mm to fit in the T430 bay.

[dr_st]

It mostly should just work.

I would try to figure out why it wouldn't boot, before messing around with drivers.

[turomini]

Try uninstalling a bunch of drivers first then move the drive over.

Also see if you can run Sysprep and move the drive before the reinstalling drivers stage.

The T420 drive must be a 7mm to fit in the T430 bay.

The T420 can take a 9.5mm hard drive, you might just need different rubber rails if it came with a 7mm drive.
The T420s can only have a 7mm drive.

[GomJabbar]

While I wouldn't expect this to be the case since both are ThinkPads from Lenovo, but it could be the hard drive geometry is an issue. When a hard drive is formatted, the number of heads and cylinders may vary between different computers even using identical hard drives. This can cause booting problems among other things.

I can't say I know much about it, but the UEFI BIOS might be causing you problems. It would take more research to see if this could be the case. At any rate, at least check the BIOS setup in both ThinkPads to verify they are both using the same system, whether UEFI or Legacy.

[matis]

Hi, I tried making a new HDD clone in the T420 and transferring it to a T430 , again.

Still wouldn't boot.

I'll try looking in both bios as suggested but it will take me a bit to have the time to do that.

Thanks all for the help.

[thinkpadcollection]

Turn off UEFI by turning on legacy mode for storage section first. To boot in UEFI mode requires GPT partition which you do not have, Legacy is used where MBR partitions are used for booting. I had a computer Latitude 3350 with UEFI as well, SSD is in MBR and 3350 motherboard came with UEFI enabled did not boot at all. Changing to legacy solved the booting problem without changing anything to the SSD that was running on other PC and moved to this.

I learned about this on my HP Z220 computer which has a UEFI firmware I wanted to use since I have 2 conditions met: larger than 2TB hard drives and Windows 10 64bit OS so I converted over to GPT from working MBR using MBR2GPT utility that came with windows 10. Also one important benefit with GPT is multiple backs up of filesystem partition data in different locations throughout the partitions where MBR filesystem only have one.

There is ONLY a requirement to keep in mind: GPT requires any 64 bit OSes starting with bootable XP OS on MBR partition (read/write only), WIn 7 and later can boot and write/read either MBR or GPT as primary HD provided firmware has UEFI otherwise MBR partition as boot and r/w to different hard drive/SSD partitioned as GPT. Also can use GPT partitions on non-UEFI computers but treated as read/write only on second hard drives or more via Boot OS 64bit XP or later on primary HD/SSD as MBR.
GPT allows larger than 2TB per partition and safer.

In your case change from UEFI to Legacy will solve your problem.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection.