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Help requested on how to install my new SSD

G

geepondy

Member
I just purchased the Intel 120G from Newgg with the $200 before rebate sale. In my current win7 X64 setup, I have a one TB drive partitioned off into a 200G C drive where the OS resides and then the rest, 800G as a D drive storage. I also have a second 320G drive E that I use for storage.

When I install the new SSD, I imagine windows will want to add it on as an additional non primary drive. What I want to do is transfer all the contents of the C drive into the new SSD drive and have it become the boot drive. Then eventually I would like to recombine the two partitions of the 1 TB drive into one without losing my data but that is a secondary task. I do have Acronis True Image 2011 installed in which I currently backup the OS C drive into the E storage drive.

Can someone give me pointers on how to accomplish above tasks? Not sure if the Intel SSD will come with some nifty software that will accomplish that for me or not.
 
Guys as I've received no answers, is what I'm asking not possible? I have searched for SSD install guides and they all pertain to a clean install. Am I forced to do a clean win 7 install? I know with previous mechanical hard drives, usually WD's, they included software to transfer the OS partition from another drive and then make the new drive the primary drive.
 
Uhmm, read the Acronis instructions on backup and restoring? You do realize you can make a bootable USB drive and restore OS/boot partition backup to another drive?
 
I had just wondered if their might be a problem with Acronis because the drive is a different type and size then the one where the OS current resides in.
 
You should only have issues if the amount of stuff in the backup is physically more than the SSD can hold. Acronis will auto re-size the partition when you do a restore.
 
I wouldn't even try this. The amount of things that can go wrong just wouldn't be worth it (to me at least).

Just install fresh and go with it.
 
I would also suggest a fresh install. Here is what I suggest you do.
0. Turn off computer.
1. Unplug all HDD (the 1TB and the 320GB drives), windows tends to place the boot files on the wrong drives if more then one is plugged in.
2. Plug in the SSD, and ONLY the SSD.
3. Turn on computer, go into bios, enable AHCI.
4. Install windows 7 x64 on the SSD, use windows installer to create the partition / format.
5. Turn off computer and plug in the other two drives.
6. Turn on computer, go into bios setup, set the bios to boot from the SSD, and then let windows load.
7. Right click on "computer" and select "manage", go to disk management, reassign drive letters as you see fit (don't touch drive C though, which will be the SSD).
8. Copy any app data you wish to keep from the old windows partition. If you assigned it the letter drive F then it will be F:\Users\Yourname\AppData
it will be in 3 sub directories called local, locallow, and roaming. copy whatever is pertinent (saved games and config files of specific programs you want to keep).
9. Go back to disk management and remove the old windows partition from the 1TB drive
10. Expand the 1TB partition to the rest of the drive.
11. Reinstall all programs.
 
Well lets put it this way with Acronis, we have a few rooms with over 400 different laptop and PC's all running different hardware. This includes a large bank of 64 PC's for official MS WHQL certification. "Most" every Windows-based PC (including XP, XP64,Vista, Vista64, Win7, server 03, 08, etc, etc) is running SSD's (including competitor's SSD's) that have had the OS installed by restoring a backup images using Acronis without problems. For the ones that do have partition alignment issues after a restore, we simply use a software tool to re-align the partition. Most of the time, we don't even care about alignment for test machines. We actually want the stuff to be run in less than optimal conditions for much of the testing.

Why this method of image restores? Simply because it works, is time efficient, and is easy. We used to use Norton ghost initially, but ran into a lot of restored Win7/server issues. While they probably fixed them, Acronis just happened to work and continue working. If all the hardware except the drives is the same, then a "good" backup image (as in running checkdisk, ensuring the OS is running properly, and such on the hard drive before you back it up) of the Hard Drive to an SSD is never a problem. The only time we run into any big issues with these restores is if the backup image is put on new hardware with widely different specs like chipsets/processors.

If it was "my" hardware I'd suggest a full re-install, but Acronis will work just fine if done properly.
 
For items 9 and 10, I can remove the first partition and then combine it with the second partition so that the drive only has one partition covering the max capacity, without losing the data on the current second partition?

Also if I do a fresh install, my copy of win7 is an upgrade version. When I first installed it, winxp had resided on the partition where I had loaded it so even though at the time of install I had windows reformat the drive, I assume it detected the presence of XP. How is that going to work if I do an install with the upgrade version on a new drive?

taltamir said:
I would also suggest a fresh install. Here is what I suggest you do.

9. Go back to disk management and remove the old windows partition from the 1TB drive
10. Expand the 1TB partition to the rest of the drive.
11. Reinstall all programs.
Click to expand...
 
For items 9 and 10, I can remove the first partition and then combine it with the second partition so that the drive only has one partition covering the max capacity, without losing the data on the current second partition?
Click to expand...
yes, you will not lose data on partition 2, you will lose everything on partition 1 (the partition you are deleting) so copy the data off of it first.

Also if I do a fresh install, my copy of win7 is an upgrade version. When I first installed it, winxp had resided on the partition where I had loaded it so even though at the time of install I had windows reformat the drive, I assume it detected the presence of XP. How is that going to work if I do an install with the upgrade version on a new drive?
Click to expand...
I haven't done it with win7, but with the last upgrade edition i used it would ask me to insert an older windows disk to verify if no install was found.
 
I haven't done it with win7, but with the last upgrade edition i used it would ask me to insert an older windows disk to verify if no install was found.[/QUOTE]

Win 7 Upgrade discs work differently than earlier XP & 2000 v. where you just had to load the older disc when prompted. Now you have to pretty much go through the whole install of XP, at least that was my experience. You will not have to activate it. After installing XP, if you load the disc and reboot you should be able to do a clean install. Otherwise if you run the disc from within XP it will be an upgrade, and leave old files.
 
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