Hello there,
I was hoping that somebody may be familiar with this problem.
It’s been a while since I have been on this forum, and since the last time my systems have changed considerably.
My main machine is a Dell Latitude E6410 (i5-520M) laptop with the latest BIOS running 64bit Windows 10 (pro), with a Qumox (Maxmemory X100) 256GB SSD. There appear to be no special drivers for this disc.
I am running Macrium Reflect (free edition 64bit v7.1.3317) as backup software.
I use a weekly turnaround, full system disc image on a Sunday, differential every weekday and Saturday, each verified during that process.
Like many others I downloaded and installed the now notorious W10 October update.
This installed without serious incident, however I ran into a few irritating problems afterwards. The most significant was performance related (Dell - Intel Chipset?), and there were others that banged my OCD bone beyond tolerance. When it became apparent that there was not going to be a fix soon, I decided to restore the final image I made prior to all this.
On attempting to restore:
I used the Macrium Boot Windows PE from the boot disk.
I then tried the USB stick with the PE environment.
I then tried a CD
All of the above booted as expected and the restore ran, but only partially.
In each instance the restore proceeded as expected, but then after a while the disc activity light stopped, and no further activity took place. The PE environment still seemed to be active, but did not finish the restore. I may have given up prematurely, but it looked to me like nothing further was happening.
I installed the SSD disc in another (desktop) machine and removed the partitions from it entirely.
I returned it to the laptop and tried again. The same symptoms. Restore ran with constant disc activity, then apparently ceased anywhere from approx. 9 – 40%. I waited a while, but after several minutes gave up, this being pretty time consuming and not without stress.
Eventually the solution I chose was to connect up the SSD in another (desktop) machine and run an image restore of the same backup but on that other machine while it was running full Windows 10 (again 64bit). That was successful and without incident.
The laptop is back up and running perfectly with the previous 1803 version of Win 10.
I think this is likely to be some sort of foible with the Dell Laptop and SSD discs, the machine is quite old.
I have succeeded in the past with this scenario on this same machine, but did have difficulty with the SSD .. taking a couple of attempts before success. Before I had no difficulty restoring to a 7200rpm 250GB HDD that it replaced, and did this on a number of occasions when the HDD was installed.
There does not appear to be a problem with any of the hardware involved, and the system works pretty well and passes every test I can think of.
I have an inkling that having Speedstep being turned on in the BIOS may be a factor, but just got too fed up to test that theory.
I’m pretty sure that I tried to do the whole restore thing with nothing other than an external USB disc and the laptop undocked and other external and internal discs removed. Next time, I’ll be more circumspect, but for the time being I don’t want to go through the exercise again without good reason.
The 'good reason' of course, is likely in the pipeline with the re-issue of the Windows 10 October update, which this time I have deferred in the update settings for as long as possible as a configurable screen grab and paste buffer really aren't worth that much trouble.
Any thoughts on this matter would be very gratefully received, especially experiences of any similar experiences.
Kind Regards and thanks in anticipation.