Dell Inspiron 5000 Service & SSD - LFC

[@Adamant_IT]

Reuploaded. There was a few details that got missed in editing - I did spot them at publishing and used the KZbin Editor to blur them, but an hour later it still hadn't actually kicked in, so I opted to just nuke the video. Just got home to tweak it and re-export, so now it's sorted! I'm not going to try to show servicing stuff again... It's a real shame because there's a lot of stuff I'd show which I think is useful to people learning general repair - but this just prooves how hard it is to make sure you cover every little possible moment when customer data is on show. It's just not practical :(

[@deminybs]

Lol I was wondering why I couldn't make a comment, had original video open the entire time and let me watch the whole thing but refreshed to see if comments would show up then it said video is private . glad you got it fixed up.

[@Pochaco2007]

In that case, I think I´m going to unsubscribe. I watch these videos because I learn from them

[@javiTests]

Yes, it's a bit of a pain so I understand your position. They are quite helpful so maybe you could have a small team or patreons or someone that checks them out before uploading? Any decision you take, it'll be fine. It's not worth to risk your clients personal data.

[@Adamant_IT]

That's actually a position I want to get into, Javi, but it's not something I'd want to rely on for privacy stuff. It's not that I'll never show any software related stuff again, but a full service on a customer laptop just isn't viable with my limited resources. I could get away with a slip up when I had a couple of thousand subs, but now the audience is bigger, the potential damage is just as large...

[@zx8401ztv]

I think i must be silly, i remembered you realising the battery was missing :-D You did make me laugh when you said you would not change the way peoples windows was set up, then you removed lots of things and arranged the desktop to your way :-D Don't take my comments too serious :-D

[@Pekeliini]

In theory you could've just used a m.2. version of the MX500 and install it on the m.2 slot. It wouldn't be any faster than the 2,5" model but you then you'd still have the 1TB HDD for larger storage. I know they don't really need all that extra storage but in my experiense, the SATA vs. 2,5" price difference is pretty close to 0 so it wouldn't have costed anything more. I understand that the point was to use what you have in stock but just something to comment on to feed the glorious algorithm.

[@metroids224]

I've just found your channel yesterday, I've watched a good 4 hours already, awesome stuff

[@MrMasterJones]

I really hope you’re financially successful because damn do you work hard and damn do know what your doing. Good stuff

[@DarkGT]

Don't rush the clock, privacy is the first priority.

[@sportytone1]

I'm not a professional, but I tend to use Hirem's Boot CD. It's a one-stop stop for a lot of the tools I have used in the past.

[@Iain1957]

Dell laptops don't use a generic charger so you have to get one from Dell which is harder than you think due to their stupid website and 1000s of models. I have two chargers (one for the office and one for home) and even then it is easy to go off and not have a changer and not to be able to buy a generic one.

[@beardyface8492]

NO! NO! NO! And again emphatically NO! On USB type C power delivery! Not only are type C ports fragile compared to barrel jacks, you can pretty much guarantee they'll be soldered to the motherboard & rip traces off when the charging cable (inevitably) gets tripped over. Not to mention the possibility of frying the controller if pins get bent & 19V gets applied to data lines. Give me a remote barrel jack on flying leads or a daughter board EVERY TIME, at least that way it's an easy fix, no soldering, no bodge wires to repair ripped motherboard tracks, & no replacement of USB controller chips required EVER! USB type C might be good for YOUR revenue as a repair shop, but for charging it's an absolute DISASTER for consumers. The actual answer is to copy Apple & go for a magnetic connector that's incapable of doing damage when the cable gets yanked. You'd also get sworn at if you removed my language bar.. I plug in an external keyboard that's a different layout from the laptop from time to time, it's there for a damned reason!

[@richardsmeeton8910]

System restore is still quite handy when windows update biffs your keyboard and trackpad drivers with non-working newer ones. Happened to me last month. I do clear out system restore points on customer computers but I’ll manually create a fresh one after all the updates are done.

[@stevesmusic1862]

Why not Autoruns to configure the startup stuff? Better than faffing around in the registry

[@Adamant_IT]

Autoruns is good, yes 👌

[@GaryB007]

That's what I use. Makes tweaking very easy to do.

[@DavideCampagnaGiuseppe]

I would have installed an m.2 SATA ssd, and left the 1TB HDD for storage

[@CoMmAnDrX]

Dell Part Number should be on the USB daughter board!

[@necuz]

And if you don't want to read the tiny print, just scan the QR code and get the full PPID (see: www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000139589/how-to-find-the-ppid-piece-part-identification-on-dell-poweredge-parts )

[@ahinson]

If the user has installed any Progressive Web Apps (they might be and don't even know it) the browser needs to be able to run in the background for the service worker to function correctly. By disabling this, it breaks background syncing for notifications like you mentioned, and other things. For example, If the user selected "Install Twitter" from the address bar in Edge or Chrome, they have a PWA. Also, if they rang the bell on your KZbin channel, there goes the new video notifications.

[@HazewinDog]

funnily enough, Windows keeps adding English (UK) to my installs, while I only want to have English (Netherlands), Dutch and Korean.

[@mcg6762]

Inconsistencies between MB, GB etc is usually the mess caused by the computer industry early deciding that the K prefix means 1024 and not 1000 and hence the M prefix is 1024*1024 etc. Today we should really use the Ki, Mi, Gi prefixes which are specifically based on powers of two. Hard drive manufacturers naturally use the G and T prefixes to be power of ten based because it makes the drive look bigger.

[@pierobonisoli9067]

Youmu Konpaku right? 💯 Where can I find that wallpaper?

[@TM_599]

Hello Mr.Yotube Algorithm, this is the content I want to see! On a more serious note, thanks for the video, picked up a few more tips on Windows optimization!

[@DaleDix]

Anything at all, anything. I don't care what it is, even moving a pixel. if you change any settings or icons on my computer you better get your running shoes on.

[@Adamant_IT]

Yea, there's an art to how much or how little to change. Some people have their icons arranged in a pattern, you can see it instantly, and in that case I don't move them. There's a lot of discretion involved in how much or how little to change, and experience tells me how aggressive to get. Sometimes I do the bare minimum to complete the task, other times it's a matter of "the customer has no idea how to set up a cosy desktop, so I'm just going to do it for them."

[@antoineolivier1287]

42:10 I use Sysinternals Autoruns. Nothing can hide from it!

[@justinspiredfallout]

Agreed!

[@ste76539]

Sorry I missed this information - why did you replace a 1TB hard drive with a 500Gb SSD? And did you give the old hard drive back to the customer? I know if I sent in my laptop for a service and it came back with 50% less storage space I'd be apocalyptic.

[@yummysteak164]

So a comment will mean more like this is recommended to me from the YT algorithm?? Excellent. ...okay, something constructive in the comment itself....something constructive....I can do this.... ..... ........ ........... Clearly the phone is a paid actor!!!!!!!!!

[@THEZONEXP]

Been watching you for a while and I learned a lot . Keep up the great work :)

[@katrinaireland8898]

Hi Adamant IT, I just love videos like this, keep them coming and I like most of all your videos!

[@JonathanWellskcender]

I work in system support, so have seen my fair share of broken systems. I had a computer come in once that wouldn't boot and tried System Restore as you do 'just in case'. In the >20 years that I've been doing this, I've never seen it work, except this time. I took the rest of the day off to celebrate. Hasn't ever worked again since.

[@NoOnionsUK]

I'm confused - why didn't you put a M.2 SSD in and keep the additional 1TB HDD? Was it purely a cost issue?

[@Adamant_IT]

Even if I'd gone M.2 and left he HDD in there, I wouldn't want the customer to be storing anything on it anyway because it'll fail at some point and the customer probably won't be backed up. Better to just get rid of it altogether and go all-solid.

[@zeusgb]

Wow that charger was never going to pass a visual inspection. Why on earth did the customer think that was OK to use?

[@Robotnik123]

I bought Dell Inspiron 15 5000 which looks something like this a few months back. Was really easy to upgrade the RAM and put in a hard drive to supplement the 256GB SSD. Dell even included the screws. Has a core i5 11th gen CPU but no USB-C which seems strange.

[@remington2277]

I know this is two years old. But I never would have replaced a 1 TB drive with 500 GB. You would have saved a lot of steps shrinking partitions, etc. The cost benefit is questionable. Most likely Dell charged a premium to install a 1TB drive.

[@Retroornew]

love the " i didnt put the battery in moment" especially as you didn't edit it out, Ive lost count of the times i have done that.

[@kcinplatinumgaming2598]

I tend to buy a USB drive caddy there cheap now as a curtesy , remove all the windows system files excluding there photos ect and give them it as a an external drive.. once windows images have completed the transfer.. they will love you forever for that .. and they can use it for as a travel caddy

[@mcg6762]

"The customer hates changes. Never change anything". Proceeds to rearrange everything and change every setting on the computer.

[@schlowe2003]

With the DC jack... double check to make sure they are using an actual OEM charger.... I've found numerous times where they complain about a charger and hand me a $5 chinese knockoff that has 6 different adapters to get to the correct size (but not wattage or voltage) for the tip. Those never work more than a day or two if they're lucky. I've also had instances where the cables are flopping away from the tip and wires are exposed and everything... and when they start flexing like that one, the chargers are highly capable of causing issues where the DC jack would be suspect. When the cables start to separate like that one, GENERALLY they don't last much longer. Also, the "CN" portion of what's on the sticker is usually the part number associated with the part you're trying to find a replacement for. Try looking for those first. The first 5 digits after "CN" are usually all that's needed. -DCSE

[@VOLTRONDEFENDER4440]

my Lenovo legion 5 laptop only had a M.2 SSD but I installed a 1tb hard drive from my old hp pc

[@gerydblackmore5484]

Did a service on my sis dell inspiron 10th gen i5, needed a new fan and ram upgrade. Nice and quiet now and faster, already had an NVME 256GB in it. X Then a good software service and bios update. like new. yep and still windows 10, no win 11 for her she hates it. x

[@TempleKa]

Considering the only way I know to get 1080p or more on Netflix in Windows is using the app or Edge, I prefer to use the Netflix app. Chrome only streams at 720p i think.

[@chrisnewitt7444]

Thanks for the backup clone advice worked like a charm got an hp omen pc for 60 pound 128 ssd upgraded to 512 ssd thanks for help

[@hugosimoes5119]

norton ghost can do file-file transfer, disk-disk, disk-compressed file, compressed file to disk if the source partition has fragmented files, files will be restored unfragmented.

[@gerydblackmore5484]

why do people abuse the charger bricks cables. ?? especially when the dell oem are expensive. When img drives i like to use the samsung software if its a sammy ssd, acronis or macrium reflect if its any other. will use the free acronis if its a wd or sandisk drive. Personally i will use MR Free for my img bk ups, thinking about buying the acronis- is the paid version any good?? still use sync toy for my data bk up with a bach file that runs weekly. i a program works ill use it till its dead. x

[@jordanlivesey4715]

we've just ordered an ssd for my lenovo idea pad 320, the ram is also getting upgraded, both my brother and I as I don't feel ok doing all that on my own, good thing is the ram is not soldered, its just a single soldimm slot with 4gb of ram already in it, the max it can have is 8 according to the spec sheet

[@man350z]

Interesting how you decide on a smaller Data capacity SSD and then talk about how customers do not like change. I hope you asked the customer if a smaller data capacity was fine, because as the IT at my company never talks to the end user and they never get the computer setup for the job it will be performing. I find IT making decisions for the customer as you did a disservice.

[@kevinwright7931]

Like you said, "The customer has had this laptop for 4 years." and in the meantime what ever tweaks and customization to the setting the customer has done over the years. He/She doesn't remember how they did it. So you want to make look exactly the when they dropped it off to you.

[@DanBurgaud]

Do you have a video on cloning System on an M.2 SSD Drive to another (bigger) M.2 SSD Drive when the machine only has a single M.2 slot?

[@efthimios1917]

Is the AdamantIT voice something you do knowingly to sound friendly and not lose customers? xD

[@lufferov]

I use the Netflix app because the browser version doesn't support 5.1 surround sound.

[@PunisherIzAloNe]

So the white light which turns on once the charger is connected is suppose to work like this on most dell laptops. So once you plug the charger in it will turn on for 1 second and turn off and turn back on. at times it will not turn back on and for that there are two reasons. 1 the battery is already fully charged or the charger is either bad or lower wattage 45W vs 65W. If 45W charger is used on a laptop which requires 65W. the light will not turn back on. It will turn on the laptop but it will not charge it and it also will indicate on the boot screen for the charger warning. hope this helps!

[@josearrasola7236]

Good day sir , I see you make the video over I didn’t find anything wrong wit the first one ! ?

[@MrBook123456]

good video

[@DDT2005]

I gave you a like, but I already watched the original. Maybe I will watch this again in the future.

[@JeffRyman69]

A video showing explicitly how you edit the registry to prevent startup of a program would be useful. Thanks.

[@GaryB007]

Use Autoruns instead. Easier and less chance of messing something up.

[@tharcisseilunga6658]

Know what?Your videos are paving a way for me!Thank you.

[@ScottAce-Macgyver]

hiya where did you get your electric screw driver from please? thanks Scott

[@JessicaFEREM]

something I always run is the CTT toolbox, I've found it handy because it basically disables a lot of windows bloat, though you should definitely pick and choose what it does, and I recommend. but the reason i use it is because it does a lot of the work for me, things I'd do manually to speed up computers. as well I recommend uninstalling things via revo uninstaller, you can get a portable version of it on portableapps. it basically removes remnants like files and reg keys after it finishes.

[@CoMmAnDrX]

System Restore and Windows 10 is like having sand in the crack of your bum!

[@strooooble]

Looking forward to general servicing videos if you do decide to do those, I am a bit of a hobbyist system admin for my landlord next door and want to learn more about keeping his machines clean. Thank you for showing us this! :)

[@MonsterConrad]

I've used system restore when my wifi card failed mid update on an old laptop running windows 8.1 pro.

[@laserhawk64]

I really enjoy these videos -- I daresay I've learned a fair bit from them, and I'd like to see more :) TBH I prefer these over literally anything else you could do. LTT is good for build videos, but you're who I come to when I want to know how to fix what I broke.

[@flaviokonti5522]

I found out so many new info from just watching this video, thank you

[@torsson2]

First

[@Silentjackll]

I never came across anyone who was happy with me for effectively cutting their storage space by half. Just get the 1 TB drive.

[@alexatkin]

That did puzzle me, I assume he actually discussed this with the customer as for all we know they removed a ton of files before handing it in.

[@Adamant_IT]

Vast majority of people have less than 200GB of data. 1TB is overkill for most laptops. Of course there are always exceptions though, check with the customer and the use case.

[@zfrenchy1716]

Sis you do the service video, cannot found on the upload list ?

[@maikelpeeters7328]

why not place a m2 ssd in it? and leave the 1tb hdd for storage?

[@adriaanserrao2016]

no modern laptop or pc should have a hard drive near it, exept as secondary storage

[@R0knR0lla_]

Thank you Graham, good tips on the shrink volume, I didn't know that. 👍

[@desoneill5489]

I would have recommended to your customer that he/she pay just a little bit more and upgrade to a 1tb SSD drive. I have found Crucial to be relatively cheap and reliable. I have been repairing mainly Dell laptops for nearly 20 years. I have found them to be generally the most reliable and best supported laptops. I have never purchased any replacement parts from Dell and source mostly from eBay (worldwide, however US postage is usually too expensive). I totally agree with you about non genuine chargers. I never use them or recommend them for any laptop. The biggest killer of laptops is heat. People often use them on soft surfaces like beds without realizing that they draw in air from the base and expel it at the rear in order to provide cooling. The heatsink and fan become clogged with lint and the laptop overheats. It usually doesn't harm the CPU by fries the GPU and requires a replacement motherboard. When it comes to desktop computers I recommend that they build one up themselves or go to a computer shop and have one built up. I don't recommend proprietary brands of desktops.

[@ackman3981]

He loves 500GB ones. He never goes with anything larger. Wonder if he told the customer that he was going to give them less storage than they started with. Just probably told them that SSD was the way to go and that was it.

[@pessimism056]

I vastly prefer these types of videos to your two guys talk tech series.

[@Left-Handed-Cat]

Has a clone ever failed to boot? What did you do? Unfortunately, I have had it several times, also with various cloning tools. Pretty annoying. I could never find the exact problem, I think it has something to do with secure boot?!

[@Adamant_IT]

Yea it can be a bit of a dark art, it's one of the reasons why I still use Drive Snapshot, because I already know the tricks to fix a non-booting clone, etc. One way of getting around it, if the cloning software you're using can do individual partitions, is to clean-install windows on the new drive, then restore _just_ the windows partition ("c drive") from the old drive over the top of the new install. So long as there's a new and valid boot manager from the clean install pointing at the right partition number, whatever windows install you put there will boot.

[@MorDreadful]

For cloning I use Easeus, this combined ewith data recovery which I hasve used, with the licence I got a couple years ago, I do not need anything else. I used this for a damaged HDD on a laptop whiuch also preserved the OEM Manufacturers image, which wouldn't load before. Just saying. I know Easeus is updated but it isn't a licence I need to subscribe to yet have all the utilities I need. In fact, it's a couple of Easeus applications I use which have proven their worth time and time again. As you said, people use different things. Acronis is great fort creating an image and backing up sure, especially with it's PXE boot from a WDS type server. I use WDS for general images where no Manufacturers image can be cloned, you know, the hidden part of the the hss/ssd that has the original image. WDS is great for this kind of thing, something to consider. These are my preferences. People should consider runing old PCs they have and turn them into servers with Images on like WDS which is on Windows Server 2019 Essentials and above. Essentials is the only one you need for the home or small business.

[@richardsmeeton8910]

If you can find an old copy of Easeus 4.6 free edition it’s fully functional and still works on everything you need including shrink and expand with SSD optimisation on cloning.

[@vollhorst140]

Nice, MX500 instead of these aweful BX500 ssd. Thumbs up. Nice and Relaxing Video!

[@vollhorst140]

@@TheSpotify95 if you already have those, take the bigger one.

[@PHDarren]

Manufacturers always make laptop charger (and mobile phone) cables too short. So at some point they will get stretched, pulled, or the jack yanked in the socket.

[@beardyface8492]

Then they also do TRULY stupid stuff, like going to USB C charging soldered to the motherboard instead of a barrel jack on flying leads so you have to pay for motherboard repairs/new motherboards/new computers, rather than a simple charging port. I get that USB C is good for this guy's revenue, but it's a disaster for the customer, since it pretty much *has to be* soldered directly to the motherboard & involve expensive repairs, rather than being plugged in & replaceable by a reasonably savvy consumer with suitable screwdrivers.

[@henrymccants144]

Watching during the ENG v DEN halftime. #priorities

[@digihorse6730]

Have you seen the 100 port box from Northbridge Fix. It might be worth a look.

[@VOLTRONDEFENDER4440]

LOL your getting so many phone calls

[@rimantasrimdzius229]

why u dont use tron deblote script to clean windows

[@rickeyrecon409]

That screw driver pencil where did you but it

[@internetsurvivor]

He didn't hide the intel graphics icon D:

[@steve6375]

Did you test CMOS battery voltage and that it remembers time if you disconnect all power and large battery for 30 mins? also test card reader and USb port/ Not shown on video?

[@Adamant_IT]

Not something I check unless I have a reason to.

[@steve6375]

But you bought the usb board off eBay and fitted it. Do you just assume that it works then?

[@VioletDragonsProjects]

the junk that comes pre-installed on Windows 10 is crazy, even uninstalling it all it seems to come back, i use Linux these days hardly as much trash is installed. still a lot of stuff that could be nuked

[@Arkosh888]

"twist the customer's arm" there is something that i want to happen ( on bad customers of course ) lol

[@Adamant_IT]

Heheh, of course the correct term would be "up sell" ;)

[@Itchy-Pixel]

The reason system restore rarely works I found is if you have onedrive on that drive.I moved onedrive to another drive and now I can restore my C drive using it again.

[@Adamant_IT]

Interesting... next time I need to try Sys Restore and it's not working, I'm going to try moving the one-drive folder from the command line and then seeing if sys restore works. Needs to be possible from a recovery environment.

[@KrissBartlett]

Yes i use Acronis alot easier when you have a small ssd

[@ErickBuildsStuff]

How do you repair Windows10 for a laptop with dual boot ubuntu and windows? tried many times but it doesn't repair anymore. stuck with bootselect/troubleshoot menu of windows10

[@Adamant_IT]

I've got no experience with dual-boot setups I'm afraid, on the rare occasion I've run two systems, I put them on separate disks and use the BIOS boot menu.

[@EvilTurkeySlices]

It’s be never had good luck with Linux/Windows dual boots. It’s often GRUB that messes up more. Sometimes the windows option just stops working.

[@markbegley1197]

Talking about customers not liking change, how will he feel when you replace his 1T hdd with an ssd that has half the space? Sure there's no comparison as to read/write speeds but like you say, customers don't like change.

[@lethargic.]

12:41 gonna ask the customer for ssd change, 13:02 customers answer

[@markbegley1197]

@@lethargic. Ah, ok... Thank you for pointing that out. I missed it somehow when I watched the video.

[@wynard]

The customers charger is giving me nightmares. How can you still use that and not live in fear of your house burning down? How did they think this wasn't causing a problem with charging and provided it together with the laptop?! Some people...

[@douglasjacobs3803]

how about windows 11? i just install it on my laptop and it works just as good as 10

[@Adamant_IT]

I'm going to take a look at 11 at some point soon on one of my test rigs, but never run beta software on production. I won't be installing it on any customer or work-critical machines until RTM.

[@michaelthompson9798]

Glad “S” got there details hidden 👍🥳 typical IT personnel, not wanting to deal with customers via phone and preferring to redirect to online FAQ’s and on.I’ve chats 😜😝🤦‍♀️🤦😂🥳

[@redfrog2100]

this kind of services video is the best

[@dash8brj]

I had a good laugh when you reassembled the notebook and realised the battery was missing. I've done that before too, in front of a customer no less. We just laughed and I said "oh I'd better put that back, its kinda important" :)

[@HATCHETHAS]

We just use Samsung EVO's for upgrades now, Samsungs own data migrator tool (Just works with Samsung drives as far as I know) does the job including resizing and the drives themselves are quality.

[@ultrablack7271]

Yes clonezilla is the best ;)

[@jordanlivesey4715]

I'm thinking of buying a laptop like this because its already good with linux so I've heard, here's something you might want to cover and I had the issue a few days ago, I went to boot my system up and I got this error, your pc needs to be repared, the operating system couldn't be loaded because a criticle system driver is missing or has errors, I had to reinstall windows and am happy to report the error no longer appears, what must have happened is during a criticle driver update the computer must have gone to sleep or shut down to install other updates and that's what must have caused it, but I'm interested to hear of other fixes that involve not having to reinstall windows, thus preserving the data, the driver in question was the AMD psp2.0 device, but that can happen with any criticle driver so it can't even boot into recovery

[@JessicaFEREM]

ah yeah, you really want to twist their arms on those specific segate resewood drives, there's really about a 50/50 chance those models will fail in a way that'll irrecoverably damage the drive.

[@katrinaireland8898]

Great love video like this

[@Matlockization]

It just occurred to me as to why you would shrink the hard drive partition when all you need to do is just run defrag a few times as it does the same thing. Remember, your transferring from a hard drive on to a SSD, not the other way around.

[@Adamant_IT]

This depends on the defragger. Most defraggers won't move system restore points, master file table data, and so on. If this data is outside the "shrink size" then you'll still have problems. Most drive imagine tools account for this, but snapshot does not, which is its principle drawback.

[@Matlockization]

@@Adamant_IT Good point.

[@tonyzambos3138]

Enjoyed the repair as I replaced the hard drive in my Inspiron 13 with an SSD a couple of weeks ago. Because I couldn't definitely determine if Windows had been corrupted or the drive was having issues, did a clean install. Was able to connect a USB adaptor to the old drive and copy back the files I wanted. And yes, everyone should have a Windows Media Install USB drive. Thank you for all your videos. They help me thru the Covid lock down.

[@ZXspectrum..]

You sir are a cool comical nerd

[@AnonymousIcarus]

Oh my God, I have the exact same habit as you regarding arranging the notification icons (plus settings) and start menu shortcuts, exactly in that order! 😅 I was a bit astonished seeing this because I never saw two people's style match exactly the same with one another (more than that, who do not know each other even, met never, and live thousands of miles apart). My habit originated in Windows XP days that got extended in Vista/7 and more so in Windows 8.

[@trainmaster0217]

Drive Snapshot...simply the best. It's the easiest and the fastest for imaging and backup of your data. I've tried them all. Great choice Graham.

[@EmilePolka]

migrating data from HDD to SSD in a complicated way. yeah, ill go with that a few clicks away that other cloning software can do much better.

[@fragalot]

21:36 So many recovery partitions looks like windows was clean installed two other times with out clearing out the old partitions. Is there any way of knowing which recovery partition is the active one, so you can delete the others?

[@Adamant_IT]

IMHO, none of them are needed, because you can always just boot a recovery environment from a Win 10 flash drive. But I don't touch anything _in front_ of the Windows partition, because if the Windows partition changes number (eg, becomes Partition 2 instead of Part 3) that'll break the boot manager, and then you've got to fix that.

[@fragalot]

@@Adamant_IT interesting since after you restored the image onto the new SSD, there were no recovery partitions. Did you just omit them or did the software not copy them?

[@beardyface8492]

@@Adamant_IT Problem with that approach is that Windows version updates can't expand the recovery partition *in front* of the C drive & quite commonly shrinks C:\ then creates a bigger one after it. This leaves your customer with no working recovery options when they google how to recover on their phone which likely can't create that USB recovery environment since it lacks the port to do so without jumping through hoops & making purchases... Seems to me you're doing stuff to increase your customer returns when you've broke stuff since you've removed their options to DIY.

[@norkris8729]

youtube i want to see