Help with cloning a SSD Help!

Hey guys!

I just picked up a Toshiba Q Series SSD and tried to clone it last night. It did not work and I am a little flustered. Can anyone help me?

Here's the situation:

I had the SSD in an external enclosure and connected it to my laptop via USB (it did not show up in the explorer but showed up in device management). I then went to initialize and format it. Afterwards, I unplugged the SSD because I did not want to clone my HDD yet. Later on, I plugged the SSD back in the laptop, and it no longer shows up (both in explorer and device management).

Is the drive dead? Can I reformat it somehow? Please let me know if you know what's going on with my SSD. Thanks!

I'll take a shot at this.
Let's take Windows out of the equation. Connect the external SSD to USB port and boot into BIOS. Get into HD configuration in BIOS. Does your laptop BIOS recognize the SSD drive? Does the LED indicator (if there's any) light up?

I will try this when I get home. Thanks!

In regards to the LED indicator, I tried removing the SSD and plugging in just the enclosure and the LED still lit up

morph2_7 wrote in post #16375924
I'll take a shot at this.
Let's take Windows out of the equation. Connect the external SSD to USB port and boot into BIOS. Get into HD configuration in BIOS. Does your laptop BIOS recognize the SSD drive? Does the LED indicator (if there's any) light up?

I replaced my current HDD with the SSD instead and the BIOS does recognize the SSD.

Any other ideas?

So the SSD is good. If you goal is to clone then replace the current HDD with the new SSD, all you gotta worry about is your cloning software capability of detecting both HDs. I assume you use a boot disk to launch the cloning software.

I was going to use EaseUS Todo (no boot disk) to clone the HDD. My intentions were to connect the SDD, run the EaseUS Todo, then replace the HDD with the SDD.

I've never used that software but I'd say if you haven't already tried it, launch EaseUS software and find out if it detects both drives. If it does, clone them (read Important note below). I know Seagate and Western Digital provide cloning software. If Toshiba does the same and if EaseUS fails to detect the drives, try Toshiba's software.

Important:
Backup the source disk before you do anything with the cloning software, just in case something goes awry.

I did a bit of digging and found this info:
http://www.toshiba.com …B/HDTS312XZSTA?​share-this

The bottom of the page shows this:

2. A free copy of NTI Echo data migration software is available for download at http://www.toshibastor​age.com/SSDKit/. NOTE: Use of NTI Echo software in a Notebook or Ultrabook™ will require the use of a SATA to USB bridge cable (not included).

So, there's you other option.

Oh sweet! I'm gonna try that NTI Echo.

I tried launching EaseUS with both drives in there, and right after I formatted it, it read both drives. But then, after I unplugged the SSD from the USB and plugged it back in later, it no longer reads it.

Hiep, you might also want to search for newer firmware for your SSD, if things still fail. Once again, don't forget to backup, backup and backup the original HD. Good luck.

Will do. Thanks for all your help so far!

Toshiba's software doesn't recognize it either. *sigh*

Is it partitioned and formatted in windows? I expect every tool will require that before it will do anything. Suggest you plug it in, go into windows disk management, delete any existing partitions, create a new partition, format, then try to clone it.

XXClone is a good free tool. If your OS is more than a year old I suggest a reinstall anyway, it'll be faster, and it will enable SSD features properly which a clone may not (or may, don't know).

If you get stuck let me know, I could remote in with TeamViewer and poke around for you.

Try installing the SSD in the laptop, put the old drive in the USB enclosure, boot off USB drive, perform cloning, then boot normally off SSD.

BTW, I don't see any need to backup a source drive for cloning since it's just getting read, the same thing would be done for the backup, the only thing that could wrong is user error of choosing source drive as target.

So everything you've done is within Windows but Windows itself does not recognize the SSD. Your next option is to clone without Windows in the scenario. That means you'll have to boot off a USB flash drive (or boot CD) and run your cloning software off of the flash drive / CD.