Last year we bought a dual-SSD EeePC 901 in Singapore. It seemed the perfect size and tech for an ultraportable, and I have to say it is way cute and lovable, too. It has been a serious attention grabber in airplanes and meetings around the world. What surprised me, however, was how much the little, square snowyboard gets used and how often it gets preference over the other laptop.
Still, it is undeniably more than a tiny bit slow. A few months ago, I upped the RAM to 2GB, which was a cheap way of getting rid of the worst lagginess, but fast it is not. And worst of all, with every Windows update, the boot SSD filled up and the computer needed some serious attention for a few hours before it recouped itself. And those Windows updates just keep coming and getting bigger. Ubuntu, you say? Not in my job.
Well, it was time to stop the misery and get a new SSD. And that was really a good idea. Now the Eee is actually fast. I am a bit awed right now.
So, to the chase: This is how I installed a new SSD without re-installing Windows:
Preparations:
1) First I downloaded and installed a BIOS update from the Asus BIOS-updater, which is installed by default on the Eee. This will enable the Eee to use SATA-disks as well as old PATA-disks, so now I could get the fastest SSDs.
2) Got a Windows install disc ready and bootable from USB. The easiest and best way was to install the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool from http://wudt.codeplex.com/ and Windows 7 Eval from Microsoft Technet. With this you can make a USB-disk from the original Windows ISO-file. Since you don’t have to install the OS, you can use any Windows-disk, but I found that the best tools are on the Windows 7 ISO. Sticking to Microsoft original tools keep you safe, as well.
3) I already had EasyPeasy on an SD-card. This was needed to get a disk cloning tool. You can get the instructions and download from here: http://www.geteasypeasy.com/. Alternatively I have used EASAEUS inside Windows for cloning, but it makes the rest of process easier to do the cloning completely outside Windows.
4) Purchase a new SSD. I got a 64gb Super Talent from IT24.no — MemoryC has them for Euros, while Digital Impuls stocks a few slower ones in Oslo. I got the fast SATA verson (150mbps read speed), marketed for Eee S101 everywhere and the 90x-series some places.
Installation and migration:
1) Backup everything to a thumbdrive, especially the 8GB secondary SSD which will be gone forever afterwards, and your C: /WINDOWS/SYSTEM32/CONFIG-folder.
2) Open up the backlid of the Eee, unscrew the SSD at visible there, replace with new SSD and close up again. This was a two-minute thing. Videos on youtube.
3) Restart the Eee, while pressing ESC at the init to be able to choose the SD-card as boot device.
4) Boot into Easy Peasy, find Gparted (partition manager) in the menus.
5) Copy and paste the system SSD (C-drive) to the new SSD. It will automatically fill the whole disc, so I also shrank the new partition and then made a secondary NTFS partition to make room for a D-drive.
6) Copy the backup of the D-drive back to the second partition from within EasyPeasy to make it easier for the Eee later on.
Now, if Windows were a bit smarter, things would be done. But Windows gets easily into trouble with drive assignment, and surely will do so when you cannot completely replace the old boot SSD. I tried disabling the old boot SSD in BIOS, which was not very successful. It only created a boot error message without actually removing the disk from Windows in the end, which meant a very confused operating system indeed. C and D was a complete mix/up. Disabling C inside Windows now meant complete system dodo goodbye. And the change seems irreversible. Don’t do this.
So here is why you need the Windows Install disks on a USB-drive (or SD card. To fix the drive assignments and make Windows behave.
Making windows behave and reassigning drive letters:
7) Do not boot into Windows after point 6
8) Boot into the Windows Install Disk (again, by pressing ESC on startup). Choose Repair (not install). If you are lucky, it finds your OS and repairs its by itself, but that’s a bit rare.
9.) Click next or whatever this version asks for until to you get the tools menu somehow, then choose the command line (DOS box).
10.) Open regedit (by typing regedit…)
11.) In regedit, go to somewhere obscure, or like me, to the key you will edit later, “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices”. I dont think it matters much.
12.) Choose File-Import. Now you need to find your system registry file on the new SSD (not on the old!). Normally it is “C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\System” (no extension), but it may also be on the D or E-drive. You really should have a backup of this file first, I remind you.
13.) The whole old system branch is now replicated under your current branch of the registry. Go down to this sub-branch: “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices”
14.) The drive names are in the key names of this branch. You should change the key names containing C:\ into something else. Your new SSD, probably now D:\, should also be deleted, or changed into C:\. You might not be allowed to call it C, but just deleting that key should also work. Deleting all keys should work too, since Windows then will assume your new SSD is the C:\-drive. Check out http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188 for more info on copying and pasting back and forth between these.
15.) Go back up to the branch you started from in point 11.
16.) File-Export, and save as the same file you imported from in point 12. Now you have replaced the system registry completely. Messing up this means either having to copy the system file back from backup or wave goodbye to your installation forever.
17.) Reboot. All should now be in order, although Windows might take a little time reorganising itself on first boot, and even need a second boot to be completely finished.
18.) Enjoy a faster system.
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