Have Intel 30GB SSD, want to upgrade size

[sygyzy]

Hi,

I have my Windows 7 OS on a 40GB (?) Intel SSD and I keep running out of space. Yes, I store Program Files and My Documents on a separate mechanical hard drive, but still some things force you to store them on the boot drive.

Anyway, how do I go about upgrading (1:1) clone the SSD to a larger one? I am quite familiar with traditional hard drives but SSD's have me really confused with all their caching and special rules about what can be cloned (Mechanical to SSD a no no?) and what can't.

Can someone, who actually has done this, tell me what process to use? What software would you recommend?

Thanks.

 

[F1shF4t]

If your 30gb ssd is aligned (If you created the partition using win7) then cloning 1:1 is a simple way to preserve alignment. I use the free version of HDClone to do that.

If its not aligned, then it doesn't really matter how you copy it. Some aps will allow you to align during copy, HDClone has an option for that but not sure if it works properly. (Well it works, just XP never booted after the aligned copy, so not sure if its just XP or the app)

HDD to SSD is fine, if the HDD is aligned even better.

 

[SickBeast]

Clonezilla is a Linux live cd that can do what you're trying to do (for free). I've used Linux tools to clone a hard drive before and they're great. Just be prepared to wait a few hours for it to finish.

 

[sygyzy]

My SSD is definitely aligned. I'll check out HD Clone and Clonezilla. Thanks guys.

P.S. I didn't know hard drives had a concept of alignment. I thought it was only for SSD.

 

[razel]

Check the Intel SSD site. Acronis is now available for your cloning needs. Win7 also has a built-in image backup.

 

[sygyzy]

I downloaded the Intel Acronis software. From the instructions, it looks like you actually clone it within windows, WHILE the OS is running. That is really confusing. I would think they'd want to drop to a DOS shell to do a full clone of a OS.

Windows 7 has built-in image backup? Can it clone ITSELF? That is, the drive it's currently running off?

 

[taltamir]

the reason for the 40GB discrepancy is conflicting definitions for GB, in an effort to resolve them a term GiB was coined (and MiB, etc)

basically when you buy a 40GB drive you are buying a drive with
40,000,000,000 bytes. Aka, the standard SI unit giga = billion.
Your OS, however, considers a giga byte to be 1024 (aka, 2^10) megabyte, a megabyte to be 2^10 kilobytes, and a kilobyte 2^10 bytes...

So to convert between the two take your 40GB and divide by (1.024)^3. you get 37.25GB in the GiB windows uses.

 

[razel]

From my experience, Acronis will sometimes reboot and during the windows boot, load itself and do it's thing. As for Win7, hit the win7 butt, type backup and try it. It will clone itself. You will obviously have to store the image somewhere then bootup using your win7 DVD or it can create one for you to perform the restore.