Y410P Lenovo SSD Migration and Restore

Already had a Macrium Reflect backup of the C: Windows partition only from when I first bought the laptop. However, I actually needed the entire drive backed up for other partitions I was missing to boot Windows.

This also may be helpful in how to restore to SSD without Lenovos extra recovery partitions.

Require two external media. One for booting utilities, Another for the storage of backup image.

1. Download Windows 8.1 evaluation and burn to DVD or USB
 (if you dont have enough USB sticks, you may need to swap the HDD/SSD back and forth for next steps)
2. Install Windows 8.1 eval onto full SSD, this will create proper partitioning

Boot back into the original drive...
1. Install Macrium Reflect
2. Make recovery disk onto USB (overwriting the Win 8.1 eval) or CD
3. Install SSD again
4. Boot to Macrium Reflect Recovery disk/usb (with macrium image copied to it, or on another USB drive)
5. Restore the Macrium image (Windows only partition) to the C partition of SSD.
   (my image is store on my large external storage drive)
6. Boot to SSD, Windows will run automatic repair.
7. Now running on activated Windows 8.1

At this point feel free to make a Clonezilla image of the entire drive. If things go wrong you can restore and skip all the previous steps. (I've done this CloneZilla restore successfully already because I had some trial and error on the next steps)

For me, I ended up with 1.8gb unallocated space in front of the Windows partition. All my partitions were aligned, however. Each partitions starting location was divisible by 4096.

1. Install gparted to USB
2. Boot to gparted
3. Move Windows to 1MiB of space in front. Resize.
4. Move Windows to 2MiB of space in front. Resize.
Why? see: http://lifehacker.com/5837769/make-sure-your-partitions-are-correctly-aligned-for-optimal-solid-state-drive-performance

5. Apply the changes in gparted.
6. This took 30-40minutes for me.
7. Boot to Windows.

New issue "File system corrupted, run chkdsk." Also Clonezilla won't make a copy of the partition either.

Samsung Magician Over Provisioning and Windows Disk Management report that chkdsk is needed.

1. Burn Windows 8.1 eval to usb again or use the DVD if you made one.
2. Boot the eval disk, Go to Repair Windows
3. Troubleshoot > Advanced > Command Prompt
4. run: chkdsk /f c:
5. Boot into Windows again. You can now use Magician and Windows Disk Management to shrink and expand (to the right) the windows partition!
6. Now a CloneZilla backup image should work.

In summary

1. Install Windows 8.1 Eval to lay out the partitions
2. Restore Windows C: partition from original drive
3. Make a backup with clonezilla
4. gparted to align and regain space in front of partition
5. Windows 8.1 Eval boot disk to run chkcdsk /f c:
6. Make a backup with clonezilla

Personal note to me. At the moment my restore options (if I were to need it in the future) are from step 3 clonezilla. I have games and stuff installed now. But recording these steps here its not a big deal. I just have to wait 30-40mins to align on step 4.