Replaced Dell SSD drive, can I restore or what?

[csdude55]

I bought Dell Inspiron 7500 2-in-1 Blacks a year or so ago, with their 4 year extended warranty. They came with Windows 10, and I updated them to Windows 11.

Recently, my girlfriend's tablet had an error on the SSD. I reported it to Dell, and they sent out a new replacement. That was good, but the support after that is lackluster and I'm in a stuck point.

First, the drive looked more like RAM, so that was totally unexpected! Taking the tablet apart was a pain, I was completely on my own to figure out what to do. So I'm super unimpressed with Dell on that.

I copied important folders to OneDrive, and a day later used Dell SupportAssist Recovery to create a backup. The drive was 500G and my USB was only 265G, so I couldn't create an image, just a regular backup.

After installing the new drive, I see that it had Windows 10 pre-installed.

I emailed Dell to ask if I could use SupportAssist to just restore the backup I made, and this was the answer:

Me: The drive is successfully installed now, and Windows went through all of the setup steps. I'm now downloading Windows 11.

Before replacing the drive, I used OS Recovery to create a backup on a USB drive. I couldn't do an image because the USB drive is only 256G, so it's just a backup.

After I install Windows 11, can I safely go back to OS Recovery and restore this backup from the previous drive?

Dell: No, you can not do that. It is not possible from our end.

What a pain! I guess it's a darn good thing I copied folders over to OneDrive, if the SupportAssist backup is useless?

Am I stuck just manually reinstalling every program and setting up everything again? Including 60+ rules in Outlook? Any other suggestions?

[jimji]

You took apart the new unit Dell sent you? I'm a little confused. Doesn't that invalidate a warranty? I mean, the extended warranty was transferred over to the new unit, yes?

Please excuse my questions, but I was studying your post and those questions came to mind first. And my questions aren't really offering assistance, are they? I don't mind if you want to ignore my questions.

[csdude55]

Dude, I was pretty unhappy with that aspect, too! I thought that the expensive warranty meant that they would send someone out to do the repair? But no, they expected me to do it on my own, with no tutorials or anything.

I triple checked with Dell about the warranty, too:

Me: I want to confirm that I'm expected to replace it myself? And this will NOT void her extended warranty?

Dell You may replace the hard drive on your own.

No, it will not effect the warranty.


That feels like absolute nonsense to me. I've worked online for close to 30 years, and I was a little wary about doing it myself! Taking off the back required removing several screws with a tiny screwdriver that I just luckily had on hand (including 2 that only half-unscrewed and didn't come out completely), and a plastic tool to pry it off starting at the hinge. There were about 20 tabs that had to pop out, which made you feel like you were just tearing it apart.

I can't imagine my dad or sister could have even come close.

Once you got to the inside, you had to figure out how to discharge static electricity from yourself, remove the battery and unplug it, then find the drive, unscrew a metal cover on top of it, pull it out, push the new one in properly, screw it back in, put the battery back in, and find the plug to push it back in place. Then put the cover back on, press it at each tab to pop them back in, then screw all of the screws back in.

I think that about 95% of the population would have had a heart attack at the first step.


Further: they sent a REFURB replacement drive! That ticks me off, they didn't tell me that. But after it was installed, I see her computer is now named "Precision Tower" or something like that :-O

Earlier in the year, a firmware update fried my computer and they sent a refurb replacement. Which I guess was OK, at least they told me that ahead of time. But what they DIDN'T tell me was that, even though I paid for a 4 year warranty, the refurb only had a 6 month warranty so I had to pay for a new extended warranty >:-( I wanted to complain, but they can't help unless I call. And honestly, I've never been able to understand their Indian accents, so it's just not going to happen.

I'm super, super disappointed with my Dell experience.

[jimji]

Oh boy! That is one heck of a surprise. They told you that you should do it yourself? And that taking it apart would not void the warranty. I thought there was usually a little seal thingy over some screw hole to stop that sort of thing.

I've been buying used units as of late and doing my own repairs, when needed, so I don't have any recent experience with a new unit and a warranty, but that sure is one heck of a surprise. All sorts of criminal thoughts come to mind about that and buying a new Dell and taking out good parts and then putting it back together with bad parts and asking for my money back, just for starters. You are living in a kind of safe market area of the planet, right? Not like maybe some nation where anything goes?

This thread now strikes me as very bad PR for Dell.

I don't even think I want to touch that 'refurb' trouble you had. I read that as also being a Dell thing? Wow, that company used to be a pretty neat company. I did some work for them some 15 or so years ago and that office and those employees seemed pretty sharp. This sure doesn't read like back then.

[not2easy]

I would have been looking for a how-to tutorial on YouTube. You can find how to handle most such fixes there.

[csdude55]

I worked with a company 20+ years ago and we dealt with Dell regularly. My experience then was that they were excellent to deal with. Today? Not so much.

I'm in the US, but you're right that it would be VERY easy to take advantage of their policy! But I'm guessing that they have less than $50 in parts, so they can afford a percentage of fraud and not even worry about it. Similar to self checkout machines: the savings outweigh the loss from fraud or theft.

When it comes time to buy again, though, I doubt that I'll buy Dell.

@not2easy, I tried that but couldn't find anything on my exact machine. It was OK for me because I had an idea of what to do and had usable tools on hand, but your average layman would have been lost.

[tangor]

You folks do know we live in the "Age of Disposables"? Right? :)

Glad you got 'er done. Sometimes, however, starting with a fresh install and reinstalling your programs, you'll do a better job (and leave less mess behind) than you did the first time. Been there, done that, way too many times!

[jimji]

You could call this house the house of disposables, and it drives my wife nuts. Her place over the hills is so much neater and she does the proper thing and disposes of things out to them garbage professionals. But I've managed to sneak a few "disposables" into her domain, too. A real domain, not that Net one.

Sort of reminds me of when I was in the hospital recently. They are all big on this recycling thing in society, but to me a recycle is I save it and use it for some other purpose later. And I kept demonstrating that knack to nurses and docs and other staff and sometimes they were very surprised at how I could reuse something that would have been in the garbage.

And I was stunned at the way they have to dump plastic stuff for the sake of germ control. Use a pair of those plastic gloves one time and then into the trash.

I think my first round of chemo a few years ago I wasn't paying attention and they also had me in a special section for germ control, so maybe I didn't see that much throwing away of stuff like this last time where I was in a normal ward environment most of the time.

Oh yes, and they sure do have a fantastic array of computer equipment in a modern hospital, don't they? Now that I think of it I think Dell had that contract.

Sorry, I got off topic. "Dispoables" right? I'm not so good at that disposable style.

There is something neat about opening up a machine and fixing it, though. If you have the right tools and finger ability to do it. I know some people who are zero good at that. Like a lady I know who hates this house because of the disposables all over the place. She can't fix nothing when it is a machine. But she cooks pretty darn good. I can't do that. But I sure can dispose of that good cooked stuff. Uh oh, sliding off-topic, again. Sorry.

[csdude55]

If I could just get her to drop Outlook, it would be a lot easier. With the new drive she's lost all of her Outlook settings, rules, and Calendar appointments, so I'm having to recreate everything from scratch. Worse, since Outlook is IMAPed to Gmail, it looks like a lot of Gmail labels have been mashed together and emails are all either out of place or totally lost.

And, of course, it's up to me to somehow magically fix it before she has a breakdown.

Spent almost 2 hours in a chat session with Dell today, just to get one minor glitch fixed. Very weird was that their chat support was busy and no agents were available, but I could message them on WhatsApp. Seriously, Fakebook?! It just goes to a number, why could I just text? Nope, it had to be funneled through Fakebook for some ungodly reason.

But that tech confirmed that the backup made via SupportAssist was useless, and trying to use it could mess everything up. So I don't even know why I did it.

[robzilla]

AFAIK the Recovery Assistant will only reset your computer to the factory install. Your files can optionally be set aside so you can fetch them later, i.e. copy them somewhere, but it won't return you to your Windows environment as you knew it, with all your apps installed and configured. The program does tell you this when you're doing the backup.

So it's a backup of sorts, but not what you were probably expecting. You needed an image (or a proper backup) for a full recovery, if the destination disk is too small you could try resizing the partition(s) of the source disk to make it fit, if you're not actually using that space of course. Macrium Reflect Free is great for this, I use it all the time to clone and image drives.

If you still have the other drive, you could still try that. I would put the old drive back in, resize it to <256gb, then get a cheap M2-USB adapter and clone it to the "new" drive.

Of course this cannot be expected of most consumers, the level of service offered here isn't great. It's been hit-or-miss with Dell for me. Once I had a few faulty monitors and they flew in a guy from China to check them out, and then replaced all of them with different models. But it's always a bit more complicated with hard drives and personal data.

[csdude55]

The Recovery Assistant thing had an option for Backup / Restore. When I went to Backup, it asked if I wanted to create an image; I said yes, but then it said that the USB was too small so I could only do a backup. So I created a backup instead.

Now, the USB has a series of unreadable files named archive-something.

One would think that the new drive would let me go back to Recovery Assistant > Backup / Restore and then restore from this backup. But apparently, no. So what good does the backup do? I have no idea.

Anyway.

We have things 75% back to where they were, except for Outlook. Apparently copying over the data files only saves the folders and emails, but not the account settings, rules, or calendar. Losing that calendar is a HUGE burden :-/ All I know to try is to reinstall the old drive, load up Outlook, export the calendar (assuming I can), then reinstall the new drive again and import the calendar backup? There goes half my day! And I just have to hope she doesn't find something else that she needs that makes me do it all over again.

I don't suppose you all know of something I can buy that will let me connect the old drive to the USB, do you? The drive looks like this (although the model may not be the same):

[drivesolutions.com...]
[drivesolutions.com...]

[csdude55]

One of these, maybe?

[amazon.com...]

[amazon.com...]

I'm not even sure what to call this type of drive... M.2?

Would there be any reason that I can't just connect the old drive to this adapter, then stick it in to the USB of the computer with the new drive and drag things over?

[not2easy]

Yes, those are intended to contain a drive (the specifications vary, look for one that has the size, speed, etc.) and put the old drive inside and connect via the appropriate port. That's why there are so many different configurations so read before buying and it can be fairly easy.

[robzilla]

Yeah, best to look up the exact model because there are some differences. It's M2 but you have different connectors and whatnot.

If your files are unencrypted you should be able to browse and copy them. But I would probably still go for the (resized) disk clone, then you'll have everything as it was.

[robzilla]

Actually it looks like that laptop has either a 2230 or 2280 type M2 SSD (the 30/80 is the length of the card) and both those USB adapters support those so should be fine.

[csdude55]

I got the adapter in (I went with the more expensive one, just because) and it worked fine. I had to have the Bitlocker key from the old drive, though, so thank goodness I'd already saved that! Or I think it would have been useless.

Either way, my last hurdle is the Outlook Calendar. I copied over all of the .pst files and was able to save the emails, but the account settings, rules, and calendar are all gone. The calendar was a big issue, she has EVERYTHING on there!

Now, logically, there has to be a file somewhere with the data on it, right? If it's not on the computer then it's in a cloud somewhere. And since she's using Microsoft 365, that makes sense. So I go to a chat session with Microsoft.

That poor guy. At first I was really irritated that he had NO clue what was going on, but after 2 hours I was feeling sorry for the guy. He was a level 2 tech, but clearly WAY over his head. He kept asking where was the machine where I exported the calendar? Dude, I've told you a thousand times that there IS no second machine, and I did NOT export it!

After we searched the old drive for all PST and ICS files with no luck, his reply was "I'm sorry, but the file isn't there". When I replied that there HAS to be a file somewhere, Outlook doesn't just pull it out of thin air... he was lost and had no idea what to do.

So I guess that today I'll be taking it back apart, reinstalling the old drive, export the calendar, reinstall the new drive, then import the calendar. Yay, that's a great way to spend 2 hours! But I have to return the old drive by today so I don't have much of a choice.

As for Dell? I emailed the tech guy 4 days ago and asked for an extension since the Recovery Assistant backup was useless and I had to order an adapter. So far, no reply.

This whole experience has been super frustrating and disappointing.

But now I have 2 identical drives and a USB adapter... since I'm going to reinstall the old drive, I'm VERY tempted to format the new drive and create an image from the old (now installed) drive to the new one (in the USB adapter). I'm nervous to do that, though, because if it fails for whatever reason then I won't have a third backup to restore the new drive.

[tangor]

As far as I know that info is in the .pst file.

Years ago had a client with a similar problem who had saved/moved the .pst and to load it on a different machine and then try to access.... could read/import the email but little else. Apparently the original install for the .pst is required to obtain/export SOME aspects of outlook, such as the calendar.

Wishing all good luck!

Meanwhile, I stopped using Outlook about umpteen years ago, so have nothing further to offer in the current instant.

[csdude55]

Same, I abandoned Office a looooong time ago! But I can't seem to get the girlfriend to let it go, so I'm still stuck with trying to constantly fix it. And the whole time, she's blaming my server or whatever :-/

Allegedly, the calendar data can be in a PST, ICS, or CSV. I went through every one of those, though, and no luck. I also tried OST files to be safe, but again, no luck. But like I said, it has to be SOMEWHERE! I'll probably find out that they store it in the freakin' registry or something... LOL