In search of the perfect 4530s Dual boot SSD setup. Copy System, HP Utilities?

[Mongo]

Hi, all!

I have a brand new HP Probook 4530s A7K05UT#ABA i3-2350M @ 2.3GHz with the stock 4GB RAM. The BIOS is upgraded to F.28.

Just to show I have read up, I already replaced the RealTek WLAN card with an Atheros AR9285. Bluetooth and Wifi is working fine in Windows.

I have a 120GB Kingston HyperX 3K SSD that I will replace the internal hard drive with. I'll move the existing 500GB drive to the Multibay.

I have some questions on how to partition the SSD to dual boot Windows and OS X Mountain Lion.

I only have the Windows 7 image on the hard disk which I'll clone, although I can make a System restore DVD.

I assume I need to clone the 300MB NTFS Windows SYSTEM partition to be the first on the new drive, and put the NTFS C: Partition next (I have to shrink my C: a bit to get it fit.) Then I'll have my HTFS OS X partition. I'll size the Windows partition at 40-50GB and the OS X at 60GB depending on...

FYI, I partitioned the SSD with GPartEd and cloned the System partition with CloneZilla and copied the Windows partition. It wouldn't boot successfully from either the SSD drive internally or the orignal hard disk over USB. I'm sure I missed hidden files on the Windows partiton so I need to clone that, too once I prune it to fit.

Would it serve any purpose to clone the 18GB NTFS HP_RECOVERY Partition and/or the 5GB HP_TOOLS partition? Could I still access those if they were on the hard disk in the 2nd Multibay?

Reading what racerrehabman recommends, OS X would create a 128MB EFI partition first. OK. (BTW, I gather i should have turned on EFI compatibliity in the BIOS as I did.)

Is there any issue with partition alignment on the SSD? Do I need to be concerned about setting the 1024MB alignment of the boundary of the SSD partitions?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

 

[RehabMan]

Hi, all!

I have a brand new HP Probook 4530s A7K05UT#ABA i3-2350M @ 2.3GHz with the stock 4GB RAM. The BIOS is upgraded to F.28.

Just to show I have read up, I already replaced the RealTek WLAN card with an Atheros AR9285. Bluetooth and Wifi is working fine in Windows.

I have a 120GB Kingston HyperX 3K SSD that I will replace the internal hard drive with. I'll move the existing 500GB drive to the Multibay.

I have some questions on how to partition the SSD to dual boot Windows and OS X Mountain Lion.

I only have the Windows 7 image on the hard disk which I'll clone, although I can make a System restore DVD.

If you want a backup of your Win7 as shipped, I would just use Win7 Backup to create a system image to a USB drive.
That's your failsafe if you want to get back there. Or you could order discs from HP. Usually if the laptop is new, they will just send them to you free (express your frustration that the "Recovery DVD" maker app is gone).

You will probably get your cloned Win7 image to work, but you will be doing some work at the recovery command line (BCDEDIT). I see you've read my one-and-only blog article (someday, I'll write more, really...), and you will want to understand some of that BCDEDIT section as understanding it helps you understand how Win7 boots... (there's a lot of stuff that has to line up to make Win7 boot: MBR boot sector, partition marked active, BOOTMGR in root, hidden Boot directory, properly setup BCD store).

My recommendation is to install Win7 from scratch. You'll jettison the bloatware anyway and save yourself some hassle. There isn't anything that you'll miss from the default HP Win7 install, and chasing down all the drivers necessary is pretty easy from HP's site.

I assume I need to copy the 300MB NTFS Windows SYSTEM partition to be the first on the new drive, and put the NTFS C: Partition next (I have to shrink my C: a bit to get it fit.) Then I'll have my HTFS OS X partition. I'll size the Windows partition at 40-50GB and the OS X at 60GB depending on...

It won't be first, as you'll end up with a new EFI partition, after you partition using OS X Disk Utility. You can keep the SYSTEM partition if you want, but I recommend against it as it eats up one of your 4 partitions allowed on the MBR side of a hybrid MBR/GPT scheme. If you still decide to go for the clone, but then want to combine the SYSTEM partition to the main Win7 partition, you should pay attention to the section on my blog where you copy the Win8 boot loader files from the Win7 partition to the Win8 partition. You will be doing exactly that, except from your copy of the SYSTEM partition to your cloned Win7 main partition. This is because, by default, Win7 boots off the SYSTEM partition (so \BOOTMGR, and \Boot\*.* are on the SYSTEM partiton), then transfers control to the main Win7 partition.

It really probably is easier to just install Win7 from scratch. And better.

Would it serve any purpose to clone the 18GB NTFS HP_RECOVERY Partition and/or the 5GB HP_TOOLS partition? Could I still access those if they were on the hard disk in the 2nd Multibay?

I say make a backup and forget about them. You don't need them anyway, and it is unlikely you'll be able to get them to work if they are on a separate drive.

Reading what racerrehabman recommends, OS X would create a 128MB EFI partition first. OK. (BTW, I gather i should have turned on EFI compatibliity in the BIOS as I did.)

No, you don't need UEFI turned on in the BIOS. First of all, it will confuse things in that when you use F9 to boot, it will give you two options for booting each device (UEFI and BIOS). And you don't want to install Win7 (if you do end up installing from scratch) as UEFI, because Chimera will boot it as BIOS anyway (and therefore it won't boot if it was installed in UEFI mode).

If you were going to use a UEFI boot loader like Clover, then you'd want it on (assuming you were booting Clover in UEFI mode -- I think it can also start in BIOS mode).

Is there any issue with partition alignment on the SSD? Do I need to be concerned about setting the 1024MB alignment of the boundary of the SSD partitions?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

It depends on what cloning software you are planning to use. You will want to make sure it aligns SSDs correctly. I generally use gparted in Ubuntu to do this as it aligns on MB boundaries by default. You will still want to check it after it is done to make sure you have alignment correct. And I would suggest using Disk Utility to create your initial partition layout... you want the EFI partition that OS X creates. I've never got it to work when I used a different program to create that partition. So even if you wipe out all of the other partitions (in something like gparted), you want to leave the EFI partition created by OS X during your initial partitioning.

And then don't forget about anytime you mess with the partitions in Linux gparted, you have to do something to rebuild the hybrid MBR. That's where 'gptsync' comes in.

 

[Mongo]

If you want a backup of your Win7 as shipped, I would just use Win7 Backup to create a system image to a USB drive.
That's your failsafe if you want to get back there. Or you could order discs from HP. Usually if the laptop is new, they will just send them to you free (express your frustration that the "Recovery DVD" maker app is gone).

You will probably get your cloned Win7 image to work, but you will be doing some work at the recovery command line (BCDEDIT). I see you've read my one-and-only blog article (someday, I'll write more, really...), and you will want to understand some of that BCDEDIT section as understanding it helps you understand how Win7 boots... (there's a lot of stuff that has to line up to make Win7 boot: MBR boot sector, partition marked active, BOOTMGR in root, hidden Boot directory, properly setup BCD store).

My recommendation is to install Win7 from scratch. You'll jettison the bloatware anyway and save yourself some hassle. There isn't anything that you'll miss from the default HP Win7 install, and chasing down all the drivers necessary is pretty easy from HP's site.
...
It really probably is easier to just install Win7 from scratch. And better.

*sigh* I do have a Windows 7 Home Premium 3 pack but only 1 install left. I wonder if I can use the HP OEM Windows license key with it.

I'll just regret losing all of the hacking time I've spent so far uninstalling the crap and getting all of the HP upgrades. At least the BIOS will stay upgraded. Wait! I'll lose all of those games! |-{)

INo, you don't need UEFI turned on in the BIOS. First of all, it will confuse things in that when you use F9 to boot, it will give you two options for booting each device (UEFI and BIOS). And you don't want to install Win7 (if you do end up installing from scratch) as UEFI, because Chimera will boot it as BIOS anyway (and therefore it won't boot if it was installed in UEFI mode).

If you were going to use a UEFI boot loader like Clover, then you'd want it on (assuming you were booting Clover in UEFI mode -- I think it can also start in BIOS mode).

Got it. I'll turn that off in the BIOS.

It depends on what cloning software you are planning to use. You will want to make sure it aligns SSDs correctly. I generally use gparted in Ubuntu to do this as it aligns on MB boundaries by default. You will still want to check it after it is done to make sure you have alignment correct. And I would suggest using Disk Utility to create your initial partition layout... you want the EFI partition that OS X creates. I've never got it to work when I used a different program to create that partition. So even if you wipe out all of the other partitions (in something like gparted), you want to leave the EFI partition created by OS X during your initial partitioning.

And then don't forget about anytime you mess with the partitions in Linux gparted, you have to do something to rebuild the hybrid MBR. That's where 'gptsync' comes in.

Thanks for that! You saved me hours of hacking and cursing!

 

[RehabMan]

*sigh* I do have a Windows 7 Home Premium 3 pack but only 1 install left. I wonder if I can use the HP OEM Windows license key with it.

I used my HP OEM product key in the battery compartment to activate a retail Win7 Home Premium w/ SP1 on USB stick.
No problems activating. It seems to work.

 

[Mongo]

I used my HP OEM product key in the battery compartment to activate a retail Win7 Home Premium w/ SP1 on USB stick.
No problems activating. It seems to work.

The OEM key did work for me, even though I had only the Windows 7 Premium upgrade boxed set, which allegedly won't install if it doesn't detect a previous version of Windows. I guess having the SSD disk already partitioned satisfied it.

WOOT! It is alive and cooking!

I can't thank you enough Rehaman! If I didn't have your tip on gptsync I would have been lost. I used gptsync repeatedly as I hacked my SSD portitioning.

What was a godsend is PartedMagic on a USB stick, on which I found on a hunch, includes gptsync. I made several backups of my OEM drive partition with Clonezilla there and used GPartEd to mess around with the partition sizes. Having the Windows part backed up saved me when I messed it up by letting Windows "fix" problems booting from the remote hard disk over USB.

Being stubborn I wasted many hours trying to clone the OEM Windows partition. I'm amazed that there is no way to copy a Windows install other than by image. Of course even when I shrunk the hard disk partition as much as any program would do it, it was till bigger than the SSD destination. I never found anything that would move the data to make free space.

In the end it turned out that you were right and it was much faster to just install Windows 7 cleanly and update and add software. I did dump some of the HP crud, like I noticed that even when you removed MS Office 10 begware it kept using the 5GB of hard drive space.

My Mountain Lion install by no means went by the book, but I handled each SNAFU. Hint: Apple will not let you touch Mountain Lion in any form on a Mac that doesn't have qualifying hardware. My Macbook Pro is a 2005 Dual Core. Can't buy Mountain Lion. Can't open Mountain Lion. The DVD gets ejected silently. ARGH.

In the end I have my BWA HA HA!

The Kingston HyperX SSD is blazing fast and been flawless. Windows boots in 20 seconds. OS X same!

Thanks again, RehabMan!

 

[RehabMan]

Glad to hear you got it figured...

 

[Mongo]

Rehabman, I also owe you thanks for your great instructions on using the Probook installer!

RehabMan, can I ask a favor?

This is PartedMagic: http://partedmagic.com/doku.php?id=downloads

I used unetbootin to make the USB stick version. I'm trying to put it on a very small 384MB partition on the SSD so I have my own "System Recovery" I created a s04 and formatted it as fat32.

I even used UNetbootin to make the "LiveUSB image" on the partition. It installed with no error, but it wont boot. I'm sure I need a Linux boot record or to change a config file.

I ran gptsync again and it says the GPT and MBR tables don't need repair.

Any ideas? I'm sure it's the same as any Linux. I just can't seem to find how to fix it. Maybe a dd if=/dev/sdb/s01 (USB) of=/dev/sdas04 bs=424 ?

I thought of trying to use CloneZilla to back and restore the s04 MBR.

 

[RehabMan]

Rehabman, I also owe you thanks for your great instructions on using the Probook installer!

RehabMan, can I ask a favor?

This is PartedMagic: http://partedmagic.com/doku.php?id=downloads

I used unetbootin to make the USB stick version. I'm trying to put it on a very small 384MB partition on the SSD so I have my own "System Recovery" I created a s04 and formatted it as fat32.

I even used UNetbootin to make the "LiveUSB image" on the partition. It installed with no error, but it wont boot. I'm sure I need a Linux boot record or to change a config file.

I ran gptsync again and it says the GPT and MBR tables don't need repair.

Any ideas? I'm sure it's the same as any Linux. I just can't seem to find how to fix it. Maybe a dd if=/dev/sdb/s01 (USB) of=/dev/sdas04 bs=424 ?

I thought of trying to use CloneZilla to back and restore the s04 MBR.

Hmmm... Not sure. I've never had much luck repairing broken Linux boot files. Several times in getting my triple boot to work (and a few times reworking how my partitions are laid out), I had to re-install Ubuntu because I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to fix a broken grub2/fstab setup. Eventually, I just gave up as it was easier to re-install than google enough stuff to figure it out. I'm not a heavy Linux user, so I don't have much stuff installed there, so it was easier just to start over.