Boot from MSata - HDD interface fails

[pnsathyan]

Hi All,

Need some expert advice urgently. I have Thinkpad X220 and my HDD interface has failed.

I took out the HDD ( intel SSD HD ) and put in a enclosure and I can see its readable.
I tried cloning to a new HDD and inserted that into the HDD enclosure it doesn't work. (used Samsung cloning software for this).
I tried inserting the existing HDD in a enclouser and boot using USB HD ( doesn't work it tries to repair but is not able to repair it).

So this basically tells me that the HDD interface has failed.So right now not able to boot into windows at all with my X220.

My next option is to insert a msata ssd and make that bootable.

1) First question is that possible to have msata like a traditional HDD and only boot from that ?
2) If qn 1 answer is yes how do I go about cloning my existing HDD into msata . I don't have access recovery disk and I also don't have a optical drive.
3) How do I make it boot off the msata ?

Kindly advise at the earliest, kinda stuck without being able to boot into my X220 .

My Laptop - X220 with 8gb ram and 150 gb ssd
OS - Windows 7 professional.

Thanks and Rgds,
Sat

[axur-delmeria]

Is the original HDD (is it a hard drive, or an SSD) detected by the X220? Does it show up when you set the boot order?

Just because the drive is "readable" doesn't mean it's working 100%. If the contents of the original drive were somehow corrupted, cloning won't do any good. At this point, consider the Windows installation as irreparable and move on to recovering your files and documents.

Have you tried doing a clean install on the new HDD? If you did that and failed, whether because the Windows installer can't find the HDD, or the format fails due to things like "HDD I/O error" and not because of UEFI settings or GPT partitioning, can you be a little more convinced that the X220's SATA port is malfunctioning.

AFAIK, booting a full Windows installation (not a recovery disc) from a USB enclosure or flash drive will never work "out of the box".

To answer your questions:

1. Is it possible to use an mSATA SSD to replace the SATA HDD/SSD? The answer is YES.

2. How to clone? As I've said earlier, it's pointless to clone if the contents of the original drive are corrupt.
If you insist that the SATA port is defective, use the USB enclosure.
I use the Ultimate Boot CD copied to a USB flash drive, to boot Parted Magic, which has tools for cloning drives.

3. How to boot? Go to the BIOS setup and set the first boot device to the mSATA SSD, just like a normal HDD or SSD.

[pnsathyan]

Is the original HDD (is it a hard drive, or an SSD) detected by the X220? Does it show up when you set the boot order?

Just because the drive is "readable" doesn't mean it's working 100%. If the contents of the original drive were somehow corrupted, cloning won't do any good. At this point, consider the Windows installation as irreparable and move on to recovering your files and documents.

Have you tried doing a clean install on the new HDD? If you did that and failed, whether because the Windows installer can't find the HDD, or the format fails due to things like "HDD I/O error" and not because of UEFI settings or GPT partitioning, can you be a little more convinced that the X220's SATA port is malfunctioning.

AFAIK, booting a full Windows installation (not a recovery disc) from a USB enclosure or flash drive will never work "out of the box".

To answer your questions:

1. Is it possible to use an mSATA SSD to replace the SATA HDD/SSD? The answer is YES.

2. How to clone? As I've said earlier, it's pointless to clone if the contents of the original drive are corrupt.
If you insist that the SATA port is defective, use the USB enclosure.
I use the Ultimate Boot CD copied to a USB flash drive, to boot Parted Magic, which has tools for cloning drives.

3. How to boot? Go to the BIOS setup and set the first boot device to the mSATA SSD, just like a normal HDD or SSD.

Thanks a lot for the quick reply . I Tried to put in another HDD which is new and had been cloned a week ago when the HDD used to boot as well. Even that gave the same issue. Also in BIOS it doesn't even recognize the drives whereas when I connect as USB , it is recognized. Basicaly means the interface is not working.

If I clone it it will only clone the main drive I am assuming . The rescue and recovery drive will not be cloned I am thinking.

How can I do the clean install on the new HDD. I donot have any recovery CD's or the CD's that the thinkpad shipped with since it doesn't have an optical drive. Whatever OS was shipped is on the HDD , which is why I chose to clone it instead of doing a fresh install.

Is there a way of doing a fresh install onto the new HDD ?

Thanks a lot
Sat

[axur-delmeria]

Is there a way of doing a fresh install onto the new HDD ?

Yes. If you have an ISO image of a Windows 7 installer disc, you can put it into a USB flash disk and boot from there. Since the installer is 2+ GB, you need a 4GB flash disk. You can use the Windows USB DVD Download Tool: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/downloa ... nload-tool or Rufus https://rufus.akeo.ie to create the bootable USB disk.

If you don't have an ISO image, you can download via torrents here: http://www.techverse.net/download-windo ... l-servers/ but make sure to verify the file using the MD5 and SHA1 hashes.

Now comes the tricky part: activation. Fellow users on this thread have said that the Product Key on the Windows COA sticker can be used, though you may have to use the telephone-based activation/verification service.

Alternatively, you can recover the product key from the original HDD as discussed here: http://superuser.com/questions/636568/h ... hard-drive

OEM activation is composed of 3 parts:
1. SLIC (Software LICense) embedded in the BIOS
2. XRM-MS file to validate the SLIC
3. Product key

The XRM-MS file can be extracted from the original HDD, but I don't know if it's allowed to post it here. Try a google search for "extract xrm-ms".