SSD and SATA Drives - Can you restore to either?

[itakey]

I currently run a few SATA hard drives and am rebuilding a computer and intend to use an SSD for the main OS drive. Does an SSD drive backup/image the same way a SATA drive does?

I use Acronis to make image backups and was curious if I could still use that with the SSD Drive? Also, could a backup from an SSD to restored to a SATA drive, and vice versa, or must it stay on the same type of drive?

 

[Coup27]

Yes.

Simply put an SSD will behave identically to a HDD, only faster. They both use the same SATA standard interface so are totally interchangable in how you are thinking, only one is a lot faster than the other.

 

[itakey]

Thanks for confirming this. I had someone a few weeks back at a networking event tell me this was not possible, so I'm glad I'm hearing otherwise 🙂

Anyone use a good imaging software they like? I've used Acronis for many years and its good on windows XP, but didn't know if there is something better in the Windows 7 Pro world.

 

[Coup27]

I used to use Acronis True Image 2010 and it still works fine today. Their newer versions are plauged with bugs and their support forums are bursting with complaints.

I also got a free full copy of Ghost 15 with my Samsung 830 series and that supports "cold imaging" as well so I have both programs. I've used both and they both work fine. Ghost does support GPT however where as my older Acronis doesn't. Ghost also produces much smaller image files so compression is much better.

If you were going to purchase a program, I would recommend Ghost 15. I have never used Windows' built in imaging tool.

 

[flexy]

Using Acronis Ti 11 and *basically* never had a problem with it, already backed up my system drive and restored it multiple times.

With ONE issue i had two days ago where TI told me a "backup was corrupt" (i almost jumped out the window since this was my ONLY backup)...but this error didn't make any sense anyway. I then manually "validated" the backup archive and then it said "backup is valid" and i could restore the partition without problems.

 

[Old Hippie]

SSD and SATA Drives - Can you restore to either?

I've done it many times.

There used to be some problems with alignment and many programs have resolved that issue but I can't speak for all of them.

 

[gramboh]

One thing to watch out for is that older versions of Acronis (dunno if the newest have fixed it) will not align the partition on the SSD properly.

I used a free version of Acronis (Seagate's Disc Wizard) to migrate my Win 7 partition to an SSD last week. For alignment, I used GParted LiveCD version.

Basically, I restored an image of my system partition onto the SSD using DiscWizard (aka Acronis TrueImage), then followed this guide for the alignment steps, then used my Windows 7 CD to fix the MBR issue created by realignment. Everything worked perfectly:

http://lifehacker.com/5837543/how-to-migrate-to-a-solid+state-drive-without-reinstalling-windows

 

[Elixer]

One thing to watch out for is that older versions of Acronis (dunno if the newest have fixed it) will not align the partition on the SSD properly.

I used a free version of Acronis (Seagate's Disc Wizard) to migrate my Win 7 partition to an SSD last week. For alignment, I used GParted LiveCD version.

Basically, I restored an image of my system partition onto the SSD using DiscWizard (aka Acronis TrueImage), then followed this guide for the alignment steps, then used my Windows 7 CD to fix the MBR issue created by realignment. Everything worked perfectly:

http://lifehacker.com/5837543/how-to-migrate-to-a-solid+state-drive-without-reinstalling-windows

While that may have worked fine for you, that is also extra steps that aren't really needed.
Just create a 1MB partition (unformatted) on the SSD *first*, then make a partition the rest of the size of the SSD, and you can clone into that area. Then you just write the bootloader, and your done.