Clone Single Partition from HDD to SSD

[Radeon962]

Well, I've been reading information here as well as all over the place and am confused. Some sites say to just backup and restore, while others say clone entire disk, while others say reinstall.

I would like to just try cloning my existing Win 7 Pro setup from a WD Black 640GB to a OCZ Vertex 2 60GB SSD.

My 640GB is setup with a C: 100 GB and D 540 GB. The C: drive has 32 GB of info on it that I want to move to a SSD. I do not want to copy anything from D over to the SSD as I would just get rid of the two partitions after and deal with that once I have the SSD running.

So simply... C: drive from 640GB to new C: drive on SSD

I have Acronis TI Home that I already use for backups, so that would make the most sense to use for me.

Any comments, direction, opinions or even reckless speculation would be appreciated as this has me frustrated.

Thanks, Bill

 

[videopho]

This will save me from posting another thread and hopefully to become a sticky.
Thinking of doing the same thing here as well.
Let's hope some SSD gurus come by and give us some insights.
Here is what I've done:
Using Acronis Image, I've already created an image from my boot drive (Win 7) which is a Hitachi HDD.
The image file is now residing in another HDD.
I DO NOT WANT TO RE-INSTALL WINDOW simply because that would be too easy to do but a pain in the rear to re-install all other apps.

 

[FishAk]

Remove all your personal data from your C partition. You can simply point W7 to the documents, music, ect on the other partition where you keep your data. Clean out your recycle bin, and all unnecessary crap.

If your C partition is still too large for the available space on the SSD, you will be forced to remove some programs. The goal is to get the used space of your C partition to less than, or equal to your SSD space.

Use your imaging/cloning tool (I like Macrium Reflect-free) to make an image file of your C partition.

Make a partition on the inside edge of your HDD that is at least 3 times bigger than the image file you just made. Set your Defrag tool to skip this partition, and label it with the work "Image", so you don't forget it's a special partition just for your images.

Delete the image file (not to the recycle bin) you previously made, as it's purpose was just to determine how big your image files will be for your C partition.

Defragment your C partition.

Create 2 or 3 images in your Image partition. You probably just need the one, but if it is faulty, and you don't have a backup image you will be SOL.

Install your SSD, set it to ACHI or RAID mode, boot to your OS, and make sure it's available in Disk Management.

Restore your image to the SSD from in Windows, or from the recovery CD of your image program.

Shut down and disconnect the HDD

Change boot order to the SSD, and boot to windows. If windows loads, all is good- if not, try another image, and if no image works, you probably did something wrong. Reconnect the HDD, and boot back to windows with the original setup till you figure out what's wrong.

If your OS boots fine, shut down, reconnect your HDD, and boot to some kind of disk like the Windows install disk, or DiskPart, so you can reformat or delete your your C partition on the HDD.

It is not advisable to boot into Windows with the same Windows version on more than one disk or partition, and Windows has been known to freak out, and stomp all over the boot loaders.

Once you have removed windows from the HDD, boot to the SSD and check for alignment.


In the Image partition you previously made, you will have room for 3 images. One image file should stay put and be a fallback position in case you get infected or otherwise royally mess up your OS install. After making changes to your OS/programs, you should create an updated image to reflect those changes. Check each new image, by restoring them to be sure they can be relied upon. When it's time for the fourth image, delete the second oldest one to make room for the last. By rotating images in this way, you can be sure to have a fairly recent version of your setup at all times should something happen. Worst case, is that you introduce a virus or fault that isn't detected before it's included in both of the last two image files, and you are forced to revert to the oldest (first) image to recover properly.

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

only thing I would like to add to that is make sure the partition is aligned to a 4k boundary after you have the image on the SSD. acronis TI 10.x home did not preserve alignment when I transferred my existing win7 partition to my intel 80 SSD. had to use paragons partition alignment tool to fix it up. win7s backup/restore should honor alignment however.

grab AS SSD benchmark from this thread, it will check alignment automatically:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=301841

EDIT FishAk already mentioned alignment.. missed that.. FishAk, thats a good post on migrating an existing install.

 

[FishAk]

Once you have removed windows from the HDD, boot to the SSD and check for alignment.

Macrium Reflect does keep alignment, bit it won't align the partition if it isn't aligned originally when saved.

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

yep saw you mentioned aliment and edited my post accordingly.

didnt know about macrium refect at the time but its in my tool kit now. OTOH because of that I did find the free (for a limited time) paragon alignmet tool to add to my tool kit. it was free if you downloaded their white paper. dunno if that offers still open.

 

[Radeon962]

Thanks for the replies.

I'll give it a try.

Bill