Safe to backup Win7 to VHD and move from 1 SSD to another SSD?

[LittleNemoNES]

Just wondering if I need to worry about alignment, etc

I want to move from a vertex 120GB to Intel G2 160GB
Ideally I'd like to use the windows backup to VHD and then restore it to the new drive with 0 loss in performance.

Thanks!

 

[Beautiful_Life]

You probably have to worry about alignment. My SSD wasn't aligned after restoring from Windows Backup. It wasn't aligned even after I did a clean install because I didn't manually delete all the partitions, re-partition and then format it.

It would be better if you just backup up your OS partition from your vertex then create a dummy 1mb partition with a 1024kb offset on your Intel, then restore your partition into the remaining space.

[empty 1024kb space aka the offset] [1MB partition, just leave it unformatted to be sure that the next partition will be aligned and restoring it won't mess up anything] [OS partition]

 

[LittleNemoNES]

thanks for the info. I will give it a try this weekend.

 

[RU482]

I gotta ask...Is there a backup/recovery software that works well with SSDs?

For example, lets say I manage 100s of identical computers. Some have HDDs, some have SSDs. All have the same OS (win7). Anything that makes them all play nice?

 

[Beautiful_Life]

I gotta ask...Is there a backup/recovery software that works well with SSDs?

For example, lets say I manage 100s of identical computers. Some have HDDs, some have SSDs. All have the same OS (win7). Anything that makes them all play nice?

Any backup software that can make an image of a partition alone and not the whole disk works best.

Your only problem is you'll have to partition all 100 computers first with an offset of 1024kb. A simple take that will take maybe 5-10 minutes. Maybe faster if you use a USB Vista or 7 repair disk, since diskpart is the best tool to use.

Then restore the partition into the newly created partition.

 

[Emulex]

why? if they are all win7 they are all aligned.

BESR 2010 works great for fleet backup

 

[Beautiful_Life]

why? if they are all win7 they are all aligned.

BESR 2010 works great for fleet backup

If you install Windows 7 on an totally unformatted and unpartitioned disk, then Windows 7 will partition and format it with the correct alignment, ie.1024kb offset.

However, if the image is an image of a disk, whose first partition starts at an offset that's not aligned, then it will restore the image of the disk to the SSD, bit for bit, together with the misalignment.

Even if you do a "clean" install on a disk already partitioned(even a single partition) that's not align, Windows 7 will either install on that misaligned partition and will keep previous Windows' file in the Windows.old folder. If there were no Windows previously installed, it will format the partition, but not realign it.