Migrating Windows 7 to a new drive, cloning the encrypted HDD to SSD
I have laptop with Windows 7. The whole drive is encrypted with Bitlocker. I want to switch magnetic hard drive to SSD. How can I mirror the entire system onto the SSD with the LEAST amount of user attention? Ideally, I'd like to be able to just pop the SSD into the laptop and get on with the life
Solution 1:
I successfully upgraded my laptop drive to an SSD. It’s much faster now. Instructions:
Make sure you get an SSD that is bigger than your HD. I bought the Intel 520 SSD 240GB for about $250.
Back up your laptop just in case.
In Control Panel, open the Bitlocker Driver Encryption applet, go to Tools and print out the Bitlocker Recovery key (about 48 digits).
Using the same Bitlocker applet, suspend Bitlocker encryption.
Download Clonezilla Live CD, which is a linux-based boot CD for cloning drives, burn it to a DVD.
Boot laptop with this Clonezilla DVD.
Plug a large USB drive to the laptop with enough space to hold the disk image.
Use Clonezilla to save the disk image from the HD to the USB drive. It saves the partition info too. Will take hours.
Take out the HD and install the SSD into the laptop.
Boot with Clonezilla DVD and Use Clonezilla to restore the disk image from the USB drive to the SSD. It will restore both the main multi-GB partition and the Bitlocker Disk Encryption (maybe 315MB) boot partition to the SSD. Will take some more hours.
Reboot from the SSD this time. In my case I got the dreaded boot error from Bitlocker asking for the recovery key. I entered it and it booted OK. This is because I had forgotten to suspend Bitlocker before. When I tried to reboot again, it again asked me for the recovery key. I entered it again. It turns out you have to go to Control Panel, Bitlocker Disk Encryption, suspend it and resume it to have it accept the new config.
Go back to Control Panel, Bitlocker Drive Encryption and resume Bitlocker encryption.
Also, MS Office might give you an error that Office 2010 requires activation. If your company has a site license you may just need to connect to the corporate LAN, otherwise you may have to call Microsoft or somehow reactivate it.