cloning a Win XP HD to a SSD

[Doomer]

I have a Netbook with Win XP Pro installed on a WD 320gig regular HD. I'd like to clone this drive to an 80gig Intel SSD. I'm only using 9.38gig so there's plenty of room on the SSD. Can this be done without problems or issues or would I be better off doing a fresh install?

 

[Magic Carpet]

Clone away. You should be fine.

 

[C2bcool]

Fresh install is always better. I would never clone anything onto an SSD. Not that it cannot be done successfully, but you run the chance of not getting the best performance out of the SSD.

 

[Doomer]

The install on the old drive is squeaky clean. Only programs on it are MS Office and Malwarebytes. I'll do a fresh install if I run into problems but it's so much easier to clone.

 

[Elixer]

I have a Netbook with Win XP Pro installed on a WD 320gig regular HD. I'd like to clone this drive to an 80gig Intel SSD. I'm only using 9.38gig so there's plenty of room on the SSD. Can this be done without problems or issues or would I be better off doing a fresh install?

You should be fine, however, there is one exception. The clone software must support SSDs, to make sure it aligns it correctly.

What it boils down to, is you have a 1MB offset at the start of the SSD to align it correctly.
You can do it yourself via making a 1MB partition at the start, then have a 2nd partition that uses up the rest of the space, then you can clone into that partition.

 

[Doomer]

Well hell, didn't work. Windows hung half way through boot. Doing a fresh install as I type.

 

[postmortemIA]

ummm, you should first have aligned the drive properly, XP setup is NOT going to do it.

 

[SolMiester]

The install on the old drive is squeaky clean. Only programs on it are MS Office and Malwarebytes. I'll do a fresh install if I run into problems but it's so much easier to clone.

If you only have a couple of programs installed, Id do a fresh install, id clone if it was the other way around!

 

[RU482]

ummm, you should first have aligned the drive properly, XP setup is NOT going to do it.

this....even with a fresh install, XP doesn't align correctly.
align it before, or after depending on free space and the tools involved.

/just don't run it for very long with improper alignment....wears the drive out faster and you'll have reduced performance

 

[John Connor]

Never aligned anything myself. I cloned my RAID to SSD with XP 64 and ran every SSD app there was on drive health and I'm good.

How the hell do you align a SSD anyways?

 

[corkyg]

If you use the right cloning software, it is done automatically.

Alignment tools exist for many brands and types of SSDs.

https://www.google.com/search?sourc...rlz=1T4GGLG_enUS316US316&q=SSD+Alignment+tool

 

[Elixer]

Never aligned anything myself. I cloned my RAID to SSD with XP 64 and ran every SSD app there was on drive health and I'm good.

How the hell do you align a SSD anyways?

It has nothing to do with drive health, though, having a unaligned SSD makes things worse for the health of the NAND.

I already mentioned how you would align it up in my post, or use one of the tools out there that will do this for you.