Transferring an encrypted disk from Thinkpad X220 to X230

Actually John if you decrypt the drive take an image to an external HD then run Universal restore from an Acronis bootable CD with the external HD attached to the new computer and the drivers on the external HD this will work fine.

Make sure you specify to use Universal Restore in the Acronis restore options for the new machine. Point it to the drivers folder. Windows will do the rest on startup and worst case you may have to point a couple of devices to the driver repository once the image restore is done.

Yes. However, I just never move drives to different machines. Any installation can be improved, and so switching machines is a good time to do this.

Also Windows 7 is past its best before date and on life support. Now is also a time to upgrade operating systems.

I use Windows 8 Pro 64-bit as a business consultant and it works great for Server 2012, Server 2008 and Server 2003 (now dead). No issues and I keep it in Desktop mode only to avoid Metro. After 2 years of heavy use in a Corporate environment, I do not see any real negatives.

Windows 7 Mainstream Support Ended Jan 13th.. Extended support ends Jan 14,2020 (4 Years 8 Months from now)

Windows 7 aint going anywhere its the best operating system for me too.

I have to say if we had the same SSD in the second laptop that would be ideal, but it will work fine with the existing one decrypted, even if we were to have a new SSD in the second laptop we still need the original decrypted before the image is taken.

I've moved from similar hp model A to similar hp model B before and the machine won't even start in safe mode. acronis ur will wipe all these drivers down. we're decrypting only to use acronis ur.

also its not good for an OS to be booted up with the wrong drivers on it god knows what that can do at registry level/system file level.

If the user has Acronis UR available it should be used.

Safe mode does not influence sata controller drivers, no wonder :)
You CAN use things like UR, but you don't have to.

IT could well work, ive seen it work many times and not on some others, its actually kind of hard to know exactly what is BSODing the machine definitely does not have to be the Sata controller(which can also be disabled in the bios usually in machines pretty sure id have tried that tbh) but its a risk trying this especially without an image being taken prior. A network driver conflict alone could completely mess up the windows OS.

I think its more of a question of what is the best way to get this done and considering we have UR available, if we had a brand new SSD in the new machine to imagine onto that would be perfect and risk free IMO of course. Everyone has there own.

On top of all this the OS on a fully encrypted disk can be very very flaky. Nevermind the fact Windows cannot recover even using recovery tools from some BSODS. What if we transfer the disk and it BSODS the machine and the fully encrypted disk can never be accessed again? Not even through a Linux based recovery tool.

Ill leave my contribution at that and GL.

It will not work

If decryption is needed, how is it done for McAfee?

Hi Sunhux,

If you need to decrypt it open up the encryption product whilst in windows you should find an option to permanently decrypt from here.

M

Thanks, can point me to where to download the following X230's drivers so that
I can have them on hand, in case it BSoD after moving to X230:

Laptop Drivers (presume this includes the motherboard?)  - Top Folder
Audio - Sub Folder(in audio you extract the driver exe file contents)
Network - Sub Folder(in network you extract the driver exe file contents)

any HDD & USB drivers needed?  Understand X220 uses USB2 while X230
uses USB3 ports

The Lenovo X230 drivers are here. I have one and this is the site I use.

http://support.lenovo.com/ca/en/products/laptops-and-netbooks/thinkpad-x-series-laptops/thinkpad-x230?menu-id= technical_support

Another question:
If after login to my currently encrypted X220's Windows 7, I thought of just taking
a Windows 7 "bare metal backup" to a USB HDD, then on the X230's Windows 7,
can I just do a Windows 7 "bare metal restore" & I"ll get back all my apps & settings?

Apps include MS Office, Outlook (with archive pst), various Adobe products,
my 3G USB dongle driver (Huawei) with its dialler, Nero DVD writer, Logitech
unifying software, various USB drivers (including recognizing my Note 2 Android
phone), SnagIT, various PDF writers (cutePdf etc), printers that have been defined,
Cisco VPN client, Ghostscript, Python script interpreter, Real & VLC players, 7-zip,
Irfanview, WinPCap (for Wireshark), winscp & YTD downloader

Or while doing the Win 7  "Bare metal restore", I have to exclude certain Windows
folders so as not to overwrite X230 specific drivers ie drivers that are unique to
X230 hardware (so that it doesn't BSoD)?

In which folder are the X230 drivers found?

Hardware drivers are often in the INF folder in Windows.

Hey sunhux if your using UR get hold of the drivers extract them into folders as I explained above and specify that folder take the image backup after decryption then recover the image onto the new machine.

sunhux have you decided how your going to proceed with this?