No help from the manufacturer's site? No help from the cloning software site?

Surely there must be a solution.

The company that supplied the new HD was quite helpful, but, so far, I have been unable to resolve the problem. According to their tech support, the AF drives are proving troublesome, and i'm not alone.

Spending hours and hours working on resolving a problem with a $50 hard drive is not cost-effective. If I have to spend much more time on this it would have been cheaper to have bought a new laptop, but, the downside it i'd have to reinstall all the software, again. It's all turning out to be an annoyance.

I have yet to play with an AF Drive. Does not sound good.

I notice a trend, particularly among the tin-foil hat crew, that the best hardware is old hardware. The stuff that just plain works even though it does not have the latest specs. That's tough with a laptop as you really lose a lot of performance if you don't have a decent SSD.

I notice a trend, particularly among the tin-foil hat crew, that the best hardware is old hardware

I liked that because it personally resonates with me.

Heh! Folks have repetitively said that about me as far back as 1977 when I built my first Microcomputer Kit.

I allegedly turned my back on "tube [valve] technology" - I still love it, and it is my busiest internet forum.

Nostalgia is one thing, however we all need to go with the flow - keeping up has been for years my "bread and butter, food on the table business" - also keeps me younger at 73.

More on this - the cloning software results in errors, but it's not the drive that's the problem. It's proven to be fine. The supplier thinks that I should use different cloning software, and recommended an alternative. I tried that but couldn't get software to work at all on my system. :/

Booting from the newly-cloned AF HD results in Windows trying to fix the errors.
It fails.
According to the HD supplier, they believe it's to do with Windows on the new HD, and it's created a sector which is locked. Who really knows!

I suspect i'm going to have to restore windows, and then install all the software, again. What a chore.

As i mentioned previously, it would have been easier, and probably more cost-effective to get a new laptop!

Do you not have a way to do a true LOW LEVEL format of the drive? After doing that then run a check disk and deny all problematic sectors. Today's mfgrs (the m and the f stand for something else) have been known to install id sectors on drives to fit a specific OEM version install. Not saying that is the specific problem here, but if you can truly wipe the drive and reformat, you might have a different result.

I haven't really done much drive cloning in recent years and the last that I used was called Ghost....

Is it possible to give us full specific details of the particular drive?

The last SSD I did about 12 months back was a Samsung 840 EVO 120GB, and the companion software simply went beautifully for me after I followed instructions to reduce the size of existing Drive "C" down.

In fact in response to an earlier post up above - I visited the Samsung site and found a utility which updated my firmware and then did a health check of the SSD.

Note - this is a 1TB 2.5-inch hard drive branded HGST

It seems AF drives aren't recognised by USB caddies, or aleast not by the ones I have here.

I have cloning software, and that's it. It's always worked with non AF drives, with no problems what-so-ever, so this is an irritation.

I'm a little limited with what i can do as the only machine with suitable spare sata connections is only used to clone drives. I can't use the laptop for cloning because it only has one sata connection.

I can only think of putting it into the laptop and starting a completely fresh install with Win8.1, and, of course, I want to do this before Win 10 installs itself on the old drive as I suspect it won't download a second time.

I want to do this before Win 10 installs itself on the old drive as I suspect it won't download a second time.

I read somewhere that Win 10 will allow you to make recovery discs after it installs so that you CAN do a clean Win10 install if anything borks. IE, make your own cop of Win10 install.

I'd like to think that would work, tangor, but in my experience, it's not worked previously. Who knows exactly why, but, when it failed in the past i had to ditch the OS entirely. I can't be the only one in the world in the middle of this upgrade. But whether MS have thought of that, i wouldn't be counting on it.

1TB 2.5-inch hard drive branded HGST

One of these? There is more than one 1TB Also there are 7.5 mm and 9 mm drives. How difficult is it to determine part number?

[hgst.com ]

I'd like to think that would work, tangor, but in my experience, it's not worked previously.

I said recovery and yes, those have not been all that reliable. I have to go find the dang article that related a provision to Win10 upgraders to make their on Win10 Install via either USB or DVD The way I read it seemed to indicate that MS wants US to make our own Installs to not only repair our newly upgraded systems, but the actually CLEAN INSTALL if we choose to do that. Dang if I can remember where I found that.... So don't take this as gospel!

Yes, IanCP, it's this one [hgst.com...]

Last evening I decided to start afresh and found the Win 8 disks i ordered with the machine. None of the Win 8.1 recovery disks seemed to work. They came up with an unfathomable error, or said they couldn't proceed, or asked me to enter the Key. Which, of course, the win 8 key didn't work! Hence starting with a fresh install from win 8. Almost four hours later, after the updates were going through, the update failed. :(

From a commercial point of view, this is an extreme waste of time.

Today is another day, and i'll try again with the Win 8 updates..

Head to the below Microsoft link and you can download Windows 10 now. The tool will help you create either a bootable USB or DVD so you can make a fresh Win 10 install.

[microsoft.com...]

Thanks Philosopher, yes, I think we should all have a bootable USB or DVD, especially after my troubles with the restore disks failing.

I still have to find a less time-consuming way of restoring all my programs. Methinks it's just going to be a chore.

Even though an upgrade would be a lot quicker/easier, I just prefer to do a clean install and take the opportunity to "clean house" a bit...getting rid of crap I installed that I never used, bits and pieces of programs that didn't completely uninstall, etc. I was glad to find the MS tool that allowed for a clean install instead.

I just noticed on that link to Microsoft Windows 10 that I need to have Win 8.1, so i'll still need to continue with my looooong, slow process.

Make sure that you are running the latest version of either Windows 7 SP1 or Windows 8.1 Update.

The download from Win 8 to Win 8.1 is still running. My guess is that Microsoft's servers, and the Internet, in general is going to be running slow with all the updates going on.

Oh geez. I hadn't caught that. I never moved to windows 8 (thank God...all of mine are still on 7) so I didn't even pay attention to that. Good luck!

Thanks.
The upgrade to 8.1 must be throttled somewhere between me and the servers. Who knows, it may be the ISPs doing it. It's not yet a quarter of the way through the download and that's now been six hours already. I'm going to have to leave the laptop on overnight. Yawn!

I'm on off-peak now so downloading from the MS link above, looks like it's going to be 3.8GB in about 30 mins ... not one machine has updated as yet which I find a bit strange.

Finally, after leaving the machine on overnight, the download completed after about 24-hours, and Win 8.1 is now installed. Not a single program in sight on the machine. I'm now thinking of trying to clone the disks again. lol I must be crazy!

That doesn't sound like you chose to do an in-place upgrade from Win7 to Win8. Is it possible you did a clean install by mistake? In-place upgrades from Win7 to Win8 were supposed to be usable. I still did clean installs so I don't have experience. The migration from Win8 to Win10 is supposed to be better, but that's not going to help you if your Win8 install doesn't have any programs setup.

The new HD was a clean installed from Win 8 CD. Then, to get Win 10, i had to download and upgrade to Win 8.1 - That's the stage i'm at. I still haven't had time to put any of the programs back on it, so the idea of trying to clone, again, from my original Win 8.1 HD from the laptop, to the new HD now with Win 8.1 on it, may, or may not work. Cost, from a time point of view, it would be cheaper to get a new laptop.

And all this started in that the original HD was a bit crowded?

With Win 10 smaller than either 7 or 8, one must ask if some of that DATA might have been moved to a different location.

Then again, engine, there is value in trials and tribulations.... if not for you, then the rest of us!

(I have an Acer Vista laptop with a 160gb that otherwise qualifies which will get this treatment.... though I will have to spend actual money for the install)

A larger drive for me makes no sense as this is a client presentation machine and ... ahem... I can't have them see me boot into Vista! :)

Update.
The hard drive in this laptop was never big enough for long term. I thought it a good time to upgrade as hard drves are relatively cheap.
im still at it, trying to get windows onto the new hd. Clone wont work, so i resorted to a fresh install of win 8, which i have the key for, then it requires win 8 updates before upgrading to win 8.1, then it requires win 8.1 update. Just think about that torture. The process is slow as it wants to download and install each time.
Now, for some reason, the os key is reporting as invalid!

After all this several times, Ive pretty much given up with this upgrade to the hd and will have to live on the edge with the old hd with lack of hd space. Yes, i can put the data on external drives, but, of course, thats not an elegant solution, and relies on great care of the external drive.

I suspect i will end up buying a new laptop and start afresh.

I sympathise mate.