Cloning HDD to SSD help

J Wikoff

New Member
I have a Lenovo Flex 2 15 laptop with an i7, 8 GB memory, 1 TB HDD. I am trying to clone the HDD to a brand new Sandisk Ultra 2 SSD to swap it in. The laptop does not have a 2nd drive bay, so I got a Sata/USB adapter. I have Macrium installed, as a number of reviewers of the SSD suggested to clone the drive. I plug the SSD and adapter into the USB 3 port, and the computer never recognizes that anything is plugged in. Macrium doesn't show any drives available to clone to. After a while, the SSD gets a little warm so it seems like it gets power. I can put the SSD into an old laptop and it recognizes the SSD in the BIOS. If I plug the old laptop's HDD into the adapter on the Lenovo, it spins up, but the computer doesn't seem to recognize that one either. I've gone into the disk management utility to initialize the drive, but again it doesn't show it available to do so.

What am I missing here?
 
Are you plugging the adapter into a usb 3.0 slot or 2.0 slot? If 3.0 slot make sure the usb 3.0 driver is installed in device manager. Try plugging it into a usb 2.0 port
 
Then I would assume the adapter is bad. Try hooking it up to a different drive and see what happens. Or hook up the adapter to a desktop system and see if there is any difference.
 
I hooked it up to the old laptop running Vista. It installed a USB mass storage device driver, but it did not show any drive connected.
 
Its because there is no data on the drive, you would have to format it and assign it a drive letter before it would show up in windows. It will show up in disk management though. So something is up with your laptop detecting usb. Have you scanned your system for malware? Malware will cause this issue.
 
Here lets try something. Run the following and post the requested logs.

1.

Please download AdwCleaner by Xplode onto your Desktop.



•Please close all open programs and internet browsers.
•Double click on adwcleaner.exe to run the tool.
•Click on Scan.
•After the scan you will need to click on clean for it to delete the adware.
•Your computer will be rebooted automatically. A text file will open after the restart.
•Please post the content of that logfile in your reply.
•You can find the logfile at C:\AdwCleaner[Sn].txt as well - n is the order number.

2.

Please download Junkware Removal Tool to your desktop.

•Shutdown your antivirus to avoid any conflicts.
•Very important that you run the tool in this manner:
Right-mouse click JRT.exe and select Run as administrator
Do NOT just double-click it.
•The tool will open and start scanning your system.
•Please be patient as this can take a while to complete.
•On completion, a log (JRT.txt) is saved to your desktop and will automatically open.
•Post the contents of JRT.txt in your next message.

3.

Please download Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware and save it to your desktop.
  • Double-click mbam-setup.exe and follow the prompts to install the program.
  • At the end, be sure a checkmark is placed next to
    • Update Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
    • and Launch Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
  • then click Finish.
  • If an update is found, it will download and install the latest version. Please keep updating until it says you have the latest version.
  • Once the program has loaded, select Perform quick scan, then click Scan.
  • When the scan is complete, click OK, then Show Results to view the results.
  • Be sure that everything is checked, and click Remove Selected.
  • A log will be saved automatically which you can access by clicking on the Logs tab within Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware

If for some reason Malwarebytes will not install or run please download and run Rkill.scr, Rkill.exe, or Rkill.com. If you are still having issues running rkill then try downloading these renamed versions of the same program.

EXPLORER.EXE
IEXPLORE.EXE
USERINIT.EXE
WINLOGON.EXE

But DO NOT reboot the system and then try installing or running Malwarebytes. If Rkill (which is a black box) appears and then disappears right away or you get a message saying rkill is infected, keep trying to run rkill until it over powers the infection and temporarily kills it. Once a log appears on the screen, you can try running malwarebytes or downloading other programs.

Please post the log that Malwarebytes displays on your screen.

4.

Download OTL to your Desktop


•Double click on the icon to run it. Make sure all other windows are closed and to let it run uninterrupted.
•Click on Minimal Output at the top
•Click the Quick Scan button. Do not change any settings unless otherwise told to do so. The scan wont take long.
◦When the scan completes, it will open two notepad windows. OTL.Txt and Extras.Txt. These are saved in the same location as OTL. Just post the OTL.txt file in your reply.

Then post the logs from the following 4 programs.

1. Adwcleaner
2. Junkware removal tool
3. Malwarebytes
4. OTL
 
I've plugged the drive/adapter into my work laptop, running windows 7. This time, Disk Management (DM) does see the drive. It asked me MBR or GPT, and I chose MBR. Now, online directions say I have to right click>Initialize. I don't see that as an option when I right click on anything, not even grayed out. DM shows the disk as unallocated. The drive does not show up in the computer drive list of Windows Explorer. What do I do next?

EDIT: Nevermind. I chose "New Simple Volume" and went from there. It seems like it's working now. We'll see what happens when I plug it back into my laptop at home.
 
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Right click the unallocated portion and you can choose format/add-drive-letter. Afterwards you should see it show up in 'My Computer'/explorer.
 
Just edited my previous post. None of the directions I was finding said to click "new simple volume", but that was apparently what I needed to do, now that I'm on a computer that is even seeing the drive.
 
If it still doesn't detect it when you plug it back into your home laptop, I bet you anything that you some malware on your system that is stopping any new hardware from being detected. I've seen this a lot working on clients machines, some couldn't detect my flash drive until I did some cleaning.
 
The laptop is only a few months old, doesn't get a whole lot of use, and we haven't installed much on it, so I figure it's pretty clean. But I'm not ruling that out.

it does detect my external USB backup drive just fine, I know that much.
 
I've seen hardware that was already connected to it get detected but not new usb hardware. I work on computers all the time and see this quite often. Even running Ccleaner should help.
 
I plugged it i when I got home and it still wasn't recognized. So I plugged it in through a powered adapter I picked up today and it's working.
 
Well you may not have the 'USB 3 charging' option enabled in the BIOS which may prevent sufficient power to the device.
 
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