Moving Windows 7 Installation from 1 SSD to another?

[996GT2]

I am upgrading my 40GB SSD to an 80GB X-25M soon. Can I just clone my Windows installation using Norton Ghost to the 80GB SSD?

Any special options I should select in Ghost (like sector by sector backup)?

 

[SickBeast]

http://www.ehow.com/how_4924091_clone-hard-drive-linux.html

I recommend the "Clone with Gddrescue" guide on that page.

Ghost would probably work, but I've gotten used to using a Ubuntu livecd and ddrescue. It's fast, easy, stable, and it works. Oh, and it's free.

 

[SickBeast]

Let me know if you need help by the way. You can post on Anandtech from the livecd.

 

[razel]

I'm assuming your partitions are already aligned (will should be if you're on Vista/7) then you'd only need to worry about preserving alignment. Intel does offer for free download it's version of Acronis which will maintain your alignment. I'm sure Ghost will do this automatically. Sometimes just before you make the final changes you can preview in sordid detail the changes to be made. Just be sure that the starting positions or offets of each partition you have are the same or are aligned.

 

[SolMiester]

Just use Windows 7 image writer in the backup app, works fine!

 

[996GT2]

I'm assuming your partitions are already aligned (will should be if you're on Vista/7) then you'd only need to worry about preserving alignment. Intel does offer for free download it's version of Acronis which will maintain your alignment. I'm sure Ghost will do this automatically. Sometimes just before you make the final changes you can preview in sordid detail the changes to be made. Just be sure that the starting positions or offets of each partition you have are the same or are aligned.

I'm on Win 7 Pro X64, which is installed on my Kingston 40GB. If I clone it using Norton Ghost 15 to the Intel 80GB, will the partitions remain aligned?

Also, will the 100MB Win 7 partition be affected? I've read of some people's systems not being able to boot after cloning due to this partition.

 

[razel]

I'm on Win 7 Pro X64, which is installed on my Kingston 40GB. If I clone it using Norton Ghost 15 to the Intel 80GB, will the partitions remain aligned?

Also, will the 100MB Win 7 partition be affected? I've read of some people's systems not being able to boot after cloning due to this partition.

I'm pretty sure it will. You could try and let us know. Or you could use Win7's backup or Intel's Acronis both of which for sure not waste your time.

 

[RhoXS]

Last month I changed out my 80 GB G2 for a 120 Gb G2. I simply used DOS based Ghost 2003 to clone the drive. It was necessary to use the W7 installation disk to "repair" the new cloned drive so it would boot but this was a few minute no brainer task. Ghost also automatically expanded the 80 GB drive so the entire 120 Gb was available (some of the Windows based solutions do not do this). The new cloned larger drive works just as good and as fast as the original and I have been unable to discern any performance, stability, or other issues.

I like Ghost for a number of reasons. It is simple and intuitive to use. It runs under DOS so it boots from a floppy or USB device. Nothing has to be installed that will use up precious SSD space and nothing starts and runs in the background each time W7 starts up. Also, it has proven to be 100% reliable. Every time I try to "upgrade" to something like Acronis or EASUS products I quickly return to Ghost.

All this simplicity and ease of use does come at a price if you are not very careful. A simple mistake could cause you to inadvertently clone the new drive to the old one, catastrophically destroying your data. However, simply paying close attention to what you are doing and thinking about what you are clicking on (with the enter key) will prevent this error. Actually, I noticed this risk also exists with the bloated Windows based products.

 

[996GT2]

Just cloned my desktop's W7 installation to my new X-25M, and cloned my laptop's W7 installation over to my older 40GB SSD.

Both worked without any issues using Intel's migration software. Quick and easy.

My desktop's HDD rating went from 7.2 (with the X-25V) to 7.8 with the X-25M:

 

[stevech]

Using Intel's utility? Does it do anything special for SSD?

 

[kmmatney]

I just use any cloning program (Norton Ghost, Seagate Disk Wizard, etc..) and then run gparted to align the partitions afterward. The latest version of gparted allows you to align partitions to MiB boundaries, so alignment is a breeze (and its free).

 

[mpx999]

Block-by-block cloning does not preserve TRIM information! That's because TRIM can can only be send to the SSDs, but the invalidated block list cannot be read. Performance of your drive after simple block-by-block cloning can be thus affected.

Simple block cloning has it's advantages though, as it's the most reliable way to move your data (and it preserves alignment. So for drives that have TRIM utility (like Intel ones) I'd recomend do such cloning then run the trim utility. You can use some free software like Clonezilla or Live linux with dd command.


For SSDs that don't have trim utility you rather want to use software that moves (writes) only USED blocks of data to your new drive, rather than do a block level copy of the drive. This way your writes to SSD are limited to the real size of data, and thus SSD knows that unused blocks are free. Most backup software (like Acronis etc.) works this way, moving only used data. This is less reliable way of moving data to the new drive. Mostly works though. Although sometimes you may be forced to start from Windows DVD and use it's repair feature - that gives close to 100% success rate. You also need to check if partition alignment was preserved after such move.

BTW: Does anybody know if shrinking partition in Windows 7 trims the freed space? If so this might be solution to use after byte-to-byte cloning.