Re: [gentoo-user] Guidance on using Gentoo to clone a Win 10 system drive

[Mark Knecht]

On Tue, Jan 7, 2020 at 9:58 AM Mark Knecht <markknecht@×××××.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 7, 2020 at 4:52 AM Mick <michaelkintzios@×××××.com> wrote:
> >
> > This is getting a tad O/T, since we're talking about activation of a
non-
> > Gentoo OS, but here it goes:
> >
>
> I completely agree. I wasn't expecting the conversation to go this
direction when I posted. I'm happy to participate if others want to.
>
> > On Tuesday, 7 January 2020 00:39:19 GMT Mark Knecht wrote:
> >
> > >    I'm going to let the machine sit overnight and see if it activates
> > > automatically.
> >
> > It should activate as long as it is connected to the Internet, but
there are
> > two different ways of activating Windows 10 manually, should you not do
so
> > during the installation procedure.
> >
>
> After maybe 16 hours it didn't activate but logically I don't know why it
would have. I've installed Win 10 using the M$ install tool writing to a
USB flash drive but I'm not given any product IDs/Keys. M$ would have had
to determine on their own with no help from me this was a reinstall and
generously activated it which I think is asking too much.
>
> Owing that I'm not 100% sure the previous install was actually Win 10
Pro, having updated from Win 7 with their free conversion to Win 10, I'm
going to put the old drive back in, double check what version of Win 10 I
was using and then try again if I installed the wrong version this time.
>
> On a more Linux note I'll build a bootable USB drive with clonezilla and
see about cloning the old drive to the new SDD that way. that sort of
solution is why I posted here in the first place. Trying the Win 10 install
and hoping it worked was just an easy 1-day experiment.
>

>
Just to close out my part of this what-turned-out-to be-non-Gentoo thread...

1) I went down the Clonezilla path never having used it before. It was easy
to use, cloned the hard drive, Win 10 Home (what was actually installed)
booted but wasn't reliable and kept crashing. I may not have done this the
best way, going directly from the old drive to the SSD. Possibly should
have created an image instead but I didn't know that at the time.

2) I then went down the path of figuring out how to get human support at
Microsoft. It turns out that Win 10 has a built in method for moving to a
new hard drive on the same machine based on creating a system image much
like I imagine Clonezilla would have done had I chosen that option. I
created the image, put the SSD into the machine, rebooted from a Win 10 USB
install flash drive and chose to do the recovery method instead of the
install. A little while later the machine booted from the SSD and has been
stable for the last day or two.

I've dedicated an older WD Green 1TB drive to keeping the system images and
will image this machine once every few months or so in case I need to do
this again in the future.

I'll be back to talk about using Gentoo again soon. Sorry for the noise and
as always this is one of the very best, most helpful places for good Linux
info so thanks, thanks, thanks.

Cheers,
Mark