HDD To SSD Conversion

2023 Edit

The original info on this page is probably in excess of a decade old and, because of software and hardware changes, it’s out of date.

The cost of SSDs is now 20% of what they cost back then so it’s just easier to find a Chinese company that sells MB Star machines and just buy an SSD that’s preloaded with the MB Star software suite. They are usually available for a range of laptops so it’s as simple as swapping the drive over.

Xentry/DAS Is Slow

Yes. The Dell D630 (that you are almost certainly using) is an old machine and the Mercedes software is an over bloated piece of crap because it covers hundreds of other Mercedes vehicles that we don’t care about.

Apart from defragmenting the HDD on the laptop, your only other option to speed things up is a faster drive.

HDD Vs SSD

There is no denying that the hard disk drive (HDD) is an amazing thing but it uses metal platters (disks) and a head that moves over them to read the data. In other words, it’s a glorified vinyl record. In the grand scheme of things, they are slow and fragile.

The new solid state drives (SSD) use no moving parts, just memory chips. It’s a glorified USB memory stick.

They are much faster than the old hard drive type and, as there are no moving parts, they are although far more robust than normal hard drives. The down side to these is they are more expensive per GB, not available in as big a capacity as HDDs and (although the technology is coming on) there can be issues with corruption and data loss over time.

Putting Xentry/DAS On An SSD

Cloning your existing drive to a new SSD is a fairly simple process if you have the right software.

Bjorn B (BBE) contacted me to explain how he’d achieved this task.

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PC used: Dell D630 with software rev. V 2015.09

I bought a 500Gb SSD from Samsung (850 EVO) for the job.

The SSD came with its own cloning software, but as it had a number of things to avoid, I decided to go f
or using Acronis True Image (backup/recovery software) that I have used for years with excellent reults.

1. Did a full PC backup to a USB connected disk.

2. Made an Acronis recovery CD (option in Acronis).

3. Replaced HDD with SSD.

4. Booted the PC from the recovery CD with a standalone version of Acronis.

5. Did a full PC recovery from USB disc to the SSD.

6. Booted the PC from HDD with no problem.

The result was a boot time reduced by 50% compared to a HDD boot.

After boot I had a look at the Star ID’s, and found the following:

Hardware-ID was changed (used by DAS)
HW-ID was changed (used by Xentry)
Lan-ID was as before (used by WIS and EPC)

I tried to start the different modules and as expected, DAS and Xentry would not start.
WIS and EPC were starting ok.

Time for an update of the software keys.

I contacted the company I bought the MB Star kit from and paid for them to generate the new keys needed. The next day I received new keys + a new License.reg file. After applying these, Xentry/DAS was starting properly.

As an afterthought I think that an SSD of half the size would have done the job as there is quite a lot of unused space on each of the partitions. Also Acronis claims that it will do an automatic adjustment the partion sizes according to available space.

Additional Info

After reading Bjorn’s account of his procedure, I can only add 2 pieces of information.

With some simple blagging, it’s easy to get the new keys generated for free. One of my Dell D630 laptops failed so I put the drive in another one. Obviously the software wouldn’t work as they are coded to specific hardware numbers. I told them that my old laptop had failed and sent them the required hardware numbers. In a few days they sent new keys after asking me for my order number for that specific purchase of a drive that I bought from them.

Depending on the company you choose to buy from, they may be happy to authorise the software remotely to save you collecting the hardware numbers and then inputing the software keys. I bought mine from MBStarshop and noticed a piece of software installed on the hard drive called Team Viewer. This can allow other people with your Team Viewer information to access your computer and make changes to it.

I contacted them with my Team Viewer information and asked if they could sort the software keys out for me. I left the laptop powered up and connected to the internet and then promptly forgot all about it.

A few days later I checked and it was all done and working, just like magic.