problem Problems after replacing a laptop's HDD with an SSD

[apairofpcs]

I've noticed a few problems, developed after replacing a laptop's HDD with an SSD.

When I did the first chkdsk /F /V scan on the SSD, I saw the following message in it's log file:
"The second NTFS boot sector is unwriteable."

When I did the first chkdsk /R /V scan on the SSD, I saw the following message in it's log file:
"Adding 101843 bad clusters to the Bad Clusters File.
Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.
Write failure with status 0xc0000185 at offset 0x3a387ffe00 for 0x200 bytes.
"The second NTFS boot sector is unwriteable."

In addition, all the system restore points disappear from the program's list, for no apparent reason. Sometimes three will be in the list, but all of them will disappear. This worries me, since using system restore has saved me from sudden death many times on each of my three pcs.

Here is what transpired before the problems appeared:
I decided to replace the stock Seagate 320 GB HDD in my Lenovo T530 Thinkpad laptop, with a Samsung 250 GB 840EVO SSD. I used the EaseUS Todo imaging program to image the two partitions on the Seagate drive. I used a PNY 128 GB USB v3.0 flash drive plugged into a USB v3.0 port, as the destination drive for the two image files. One image file was that of the data partition, and the other image file was that of the system.drv partition. I connected a USB to SATA adapter to a USB port and to the Samsung SSD. I restored the images from the flash drive to the SSD one at a time, using the EaseUS Todo program. When I was done, I tried to boot from the Samsung drive. It didn't boot properly, stopping at the Thinkpad logo page. I decided that imaging the partitions one at a time instead of both at the same time, was the problem. I imaged both partitions at the same time onto a second PNY 128 GB flash drive. To our surprise, when I was done the laptop rebooted by itself and was hanging with a cursor flashing against a black background at the upper left corner of the display. Seeing that I couldn't get it to proceed properly, I had to press the power button until the pc shut down.....as much as I knew this was not the proper way to shut down a pc!

Next I decided to try a different approach to transferring the data from the Seagate HDD to the Samsung SSD. I installed onto the Seagate drive the Samsung Data Migration program that came with the SSD, and cloned the entire Seagate drive in one step. I transferred the cloned data to the Samsung drive. After this was complete, a message appeared asking me to replace the HDD with the SSD in the drive's bay. I did this, and it immediately booted to the desktop. It appeared that the mission was a total success.

I checked the Samsung drive in My Computer, and saw that the system.drv partition was not there. I don't know why the cloning process didn't include the system.drv partition. But all was well at the time, with the SSD working identically to the HDD.

Later that night I did the first chkdsk /F /V scan, to evaluate the new drive. That was when I noticed the message above in it's log file. Today I did the chkdsk / R /V scan. That was when I noticed the message above in it's log file.

It's obvious that the cloning process was not flawless, because the system.drv partition was missing. This could explain the boot sector message. So far, the chkdsk messages don't seem to be causing any problems. But I'm terribly concerned about the sudden disappearance of the system restore points.

Although the system.drv partition is not visible in My Computer, it's visible when I look at the Info tab in the HD Tune 2.55 Hard Disk Utility program. It's size is 400 MB, just like on the Seagate HDD.

Regarding the bad cluster count at the beginning of this post, I'm thinking that the images were being transferred to the Samsung drive when it mysteriously rebooted and hung without making any progress. When I pressed the power button, I interrupted the transfer and damaged some clusters.

It's worth mentioning that something that happened to the Seagate drive in the past may have been the cause of the bad clusters in the Samsung SSD. About two years ago, I used one of Lenovo's Diagnostic tests for Storage devices, to "Scan for and recover bad sectors.". After this was complete, the Health tab in the HD Tune program didn't show any data for the drive. Also, the scheduled chkdsk scans I requested would appear upon a restart, but the 9 sec. countdown to the scan never started, since all scans were aborted, even though I didn't press any key! It was only after many Windows Update modules were installed, that the drive came back to life. At that time, it became visible in the Health tab and chkdsk scans resumed.

Considering my issues, wouldn't any drive cloning process clone the problems of the host drive as well? If so, the Samsung drive may have inherited the Seagate's problems. However, restore points were never missing on the Seagate drive. I'm thinking that the absence of the system.drv partition, is the reason.

It's a must that my restore points remain available to me.

Do you have any ideas how I can solve this dilemma?

 

[Stereodude]

Have you scanned the SSD with Samsung's Magician SSD software?

It sounds like you have a bad / failing SSD.

 

[LunarMist]

I've noticed a few problems, developed after replacing a laptop's HDD with an SSD.

When I did the first chkdsk /F /V scan on the SSD, I saw the following message in it's log file:
"The second NTFS boot sector is unwriteable."

When I did the first chkdsk /R /V scan on the SSD, I saw the following message in it's log file:
"Adding 101843 bad clusters to the Bad Clusters File.
Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.
Write failure with status 0xc0000185 at offset 0x3a387ffe00 for 0x200 bytes.
"The second NTFS boot sector is unwriteable."

In addition, all the system restore points disappear from the program's list, for no apparent reason. Sometimes three will be in the list, but all of them will disappear. This worries me, since using system restore has saved me from sudden death many times on each of my three pcs.

Here is what transpired before the problems appeared:
I decided to replace the stock Seagate 320 GB HDD in my Lenovo T530 Thinkpad laptop, with a Samsung 250 GB 840EVO SSD. I used the EaseUS Todo imaging program to image the two partitions on the Seagate drive. I used a PNY 128 GB USB v3.0 flash drive plugged into a USB v3.0 port, as the destination drive for the two image files. One image file was that of the data partition, and the other image file was that of the system.drv partition. I connected a USB to SATA adapter to a USB port and to the Samsung SSD. I restored the images from the flash drive to the SSD one at a time, using the EaseUS Todo program. When I was done, I tried to boot from the Samsung drive. It didn't boot properly, stopping at the Thinkpad logo page. I decided that imaging the partitions one at a time instead of both at the same time, was the problem. I imaged both partitions at the same time onto a second PNY 128 GB flash drive. To our surprise, when I was done the laptop rebooted by itself and was hanging with a cursor flashing against a black background at the upper left corner of the display. Seeing that I couldn't get it to proceed properly, I had to press the power button until the pc shut down.....as much as I knew this was not the proper way to shut down a pc!

Next I decided to try a different approach to transferring the data from the Seagate HDD to the Samsung SSD. I installed onto the Seagate drive the Samsung Data Migration program that came with the SSD, and cloned the entire Seagate drive in one step. I transferred the cloned data to the Samsung drive. After this was complete, a message appeared asking me to replace the HDD with the SSD in the drive's bay. I did this, and it immediately booted to the desktop. It appeared that the mission was a total success.

I checked the Samsung drive in My Computer, and saw that the system.drv partition was not there. I don't know why the cloning process didn't include the system.drv partition. But all was well at the time, with the SSD working identically to the HDD.

Later that night I did the first chkdsk /F /V scan, to evaluate the new drive. That was when I noticed the message above in it's log file. Today I did the chkdsk / R /V scan. That was when I noticed the message above in it's log file.

It's obvious that the cloning process was not flawless, because the system.drv partition was missing. This could explain the boot sector message. So far, the chkdsk messages don't seem to be causing any problems. But I'm terribly concerned about the sudden disappearance of the system restore points.

Although the system.drv partition is not visible in My Computer, it's visible when I look at the Info tab in the HD Tune 2.55 Hard Disk Utility program. It's size is 400 MB, just like on the Seagate HDD.

Regarding the bad cluster count at the beginning of this post, I'm thinking that the images were being transferred to the Samsung drive when it mysteriously rebooted and hung without making any progress. When I pressed the power button, I interrupted the transfer and damaged some clusters.

It's worth mentioning that something that happened to the Seagate drive in the past may have been the cause of the bad clusters in the Samsung SSD. About two years ago, I used one of Lenovo's Diagnostic tests for Storage devices, to "Scan for and recover bad sectors.". After this was complete, the Health tab in the HD Tune program didn't show any data for the drive. Also, the scheduled chkdsk scans I requested would appear upon a restart, but the 9 sec. countdown to the scan never started, since all scans were aborted, even though I didn't press any key! It was only after many Windows Update modules were installed, that the drive came back to life. At that time, it became visible in the Health tab and chkdsk scans resumed.

Considering my issues, wouldn't any drive cloning process clone the problems of the host drive as well? If so, the Samsung drive may have inherited the Seagate's problems. However, restore points were never missing on the Seagate drive. I'm thinking that the absence of the system.drv partition, is the reason.

It's a must that my restore points remain available to me.

Do you have any ideas how I can solve this dilemma?

What does the SMART data show?

 

[apairofpcs]

Have you scanned the SSD with Samsung's Magician SSD software?

It sounds like you have a bad / failing SSD.

I just finished running all of Samsung's diagnostic tests, and have attached screen captures of each one.

It's unlikely that I have a bad / failing SSD, since it was new out of the box just before I attached it to the USB to SATA data migration adapter. However, maybe that power button shut down I did when the laptop was "hanging", could have caused the high number of bad clusters. Anyway, here are the files showing the drives behavior when using the Samsung software.....

 

[apairofpcs]

What does the SMART data show?

To my untrained eyes, all entries look nominal except for the Total LBA's Written number in the Raw Data column.

I attached three screen captures from the HD Tune program.

 

[Stereodude]

Windows shouldn't be detecting bad sectors on a good drive, but the Samsung software doesn't show any sector reallocation or unrecoverable errors.

 

[sdbardwick]

Did you resize the partitions on the 320GB drive prior to moving them to the 250GB drive? Or was the software supposed to do that automatically? This message

[SIZE=2][FONT=Arial]"Adding 101843 bad clusters to the Bad Clusters File.
Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]Write failure with status 0xc0000185 at offset 0x3a387ffe00 for 0x200 bytes.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]"The second NTFS boot sector is unwriteable."[/FONT][/SIZE]

makes me think that the file system thinks it had a 300+GB partition when it did error checking. The second NTFS boot sector message might refer not to the second sector in a sequence of boot sectors, but rather the spare copy of the boot sector that NTFS creates at the end of the partition - in this case over the 300GB mark.

 

[apairofpcs]

Windows shouldn't be detecting bad sectors on a good drive, but the Samsung software doesn't show any sector reallocation or unrecoverable errors.

Precisely! I'd trust the S.M.A.R.T. results more so than chkdsk's results.

I spoke to a fellow pc hobbyist. He said he believes that the 2nd boot sector partition wasn't assigned a large enough capacity for it's needs. This 2nd boot partition, named System.DRV on the Seagate drive, is missing on the SSD. It was 400 MB. I don't remember assigning any capacity to the 2nd partition, when doing the cloning.

Does anybody have an explanation as to why my system restore points can't seem to remain in the list of points? Is there any other program I can use instead of system restore, to protect me from sudden death, if the laptop becomes unstable?

 

[apairofpcs]

Did you resize the partitions on the 320GB drive prior to moving them to the 250GB drive? Or was the software supposed to do that automatically? This message

[SIZE=2][FONT=Arial]"Adding 101843 bad clusters to the Bad Clusters File.
Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]Write failure with status 0xc0000185 at offset 0x3a387ffe00 for 0x200 bytes.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]"The second NTFS boot sector is unwriteable."[/FONT][/SIZE]

makes me think that the file system thinks it had a 300+GB partition when it did error checking. The second NTFS boot sector message might refer not to the second sector in a sequence of boot sectors, but rather the spare copy of the boot sector that NTFS creates at the end of the partition - in this case over the 300GB mark.

I didn't do anything, besides let the program clone the Seagate for use on the Samsung. I'm not sure if the program is smart enough to assign a capacity to the 2nd partition on the smaller drive? My pc hobby buddy and I will look into this matter thoroughly.

I must impress on all of you that the loss of all restore points without warning, is my primary reason for correcting whatever problem the cloning created. I've never had a drive that lost it's restore points. I've allocated about 20 GB for restore points, more than enough for at least two weeks of manual / daily restore point creation.

 

[jtr1962]

Would anyone here be able to suggest partition resizing software which apairofpcs might be able to figure out how to use on his own? Based on my reading of the problem, I think all we might need to do is resize the Windows partition. I helped him with the original cloning process but apparently the Samsung migration software has a bug which doesn't take into account partition sizes when cloning drives.

 

[jtr1962]

"The second NTFS boot sector is unwriteable."[/FONT][/SIZE]

makes me think that the file system thinks it had a 300+GB partition when it did error checking. The second NTFS boot sector message might refer not to the second sector in a sequence of boot sectors, but rather the spare copy of the boot sector that NTFS creates at the end of the partition - in this case over the 300GB mark.

That's exactly what I was thinking, and no I don't think the Samsung migration software resizes partitions automatically.

 

[Handruin]

Maybe try disabling the RAPID mode while troubleshooting this issue to make sure it isn't masking problems or causing them?

 

[apairofpcs]

Maybe try disabling the RAPID mode while troubleshooting this issue to make sure it isn't masking problems or causing them?

I was thinking of doing this, but didn't think that it has anything to do with my problem. I'll do it and report back to you.....

 

[apairofpcs]

Eureka! I found what operation flushes all the restore points. It's a chkdsk scan. Needless to say, since I already know why chkdsk gives a description of the boot sector problem, I won't be doing anymore of them until somebody here helps jtr1962 and myself correct the partition table flaw.

To be triple sure that my finding was accurate, I created a few restore points. I did a few Samsung Magician optimization scans. I left Rapid Mode enabled, although I disabled it briefly per Handruin's recommendation. It was not the cause of the deleted restore points. I did a few restarts. I installed a new Windows Update. After each task, I checked that the restore points were still there. i scheduled a chkdsk, restarted and cancelled it before it started. The restore points were still there. I scheduled another chkdsk, restarted and let it run. After the desktop appeared, I checked for the restore points. They were all gone. I followed this procedure three times, with the same result.

I'm a happy camper now, knowing that I can create restore points and they'll remain until the allocated space I've given for them is exceeded.

 

[apairofpcs]

Here's another indication that the Samsung SSD has a problem. I was wondering why Windows Update has been finding so many 5.2 MB modules to install. I just looked at the latest one, KB3021952, I looked at the already installed updates and I found the same one installed many times. It looks like it isn't recognizing the update and wants to install it over and over again.

Have you ever heard of a Windows Update list of installed updates having the same module entry multiple times?

 

[jtr1962]

I used testdisk in the past to help me fix a bad partition table. It's not too user friendly but if you read the documentation you might be able to figure it out. BTW, the Windows update problem you mention might simply be caused by a bad partition table. I'm seen all sorts of weird problems which went away when partition table problems were fixed. This thread may interest you.

 

[apairofpcs]

I used testdisk in the past to help me fix a bad partition table. It's not too user friendly but if you read the documentation you might be able to figure it out. BTW, the Windows update problem you mention might simply be caused by a bad partition table. I'm seen all sorts of weird problems which went away when partition table problems were fixed. This thread may interest you.

Thank you. I will investigate all of your leads. Can anybody explain to me why a 320 GB Seagate HDD's 400 MB system drive partition, is not being properly recognized when using Samsung's Data Migration software to clone the contents of a HDD to a SSD? How is the partition size determined? By the user? Or automatically by the size needed?

 

[jtr1962]

Thank you. I will investigate all of your leads. Can anybody explain to me why a 320 GB Seagate HDD's 400 MB system drive partition, is not being properly recognized when using Samsung's Data Migration software to clone the contents of a HDD to a SSD? How is the partition size determined? By the user? Or automatically by the size needed?

This document on the Samsung migration software might answer some of your questions.

 

[LunarMist]

Have you tried the True Image or something like the Macrium reflect?

 

[apairofpcs]

Have you tried the True Image or something like the Macrium reflect?

No I have not, nor have I tried any other program. The laptop has been extremely stable since the cloning procedure, so there's no urgency to repeat it at this time.

As long as I don't use chkdsk, the pc performs as it has in the past with the factory supplied Seagate HDD.

 

[apairofpcs]

The problem was fixed by using EaseUS Partition Assistant. The process was kind of roundabout. Jtr and I shrunk the Windows partition and then enlarged it back to its original size. This fixed the bad partition table. If you recall, chkdsk deleted all restore points and also couldn't write to the second NTFS boot sector. Now both problems are resolved. All is good in the world.