Upgrading netbook's SSD to a 1.8" HDD: Imaging and performance measuring questions.

[CZroe]

Firstly, what's a good, free, imaging program that I can use? The netbook has no optical drive, though I do have a couple external USB drives. I need to first image an 8GB drive to a 15GB IDE drive via USB (I have the adapter), then swap the SSD for the blank 1.8" HDD, then image it back onto the 1.8" HDD. This means that I need something that can be made bootable via USB Mass Storage or USB optical drive to retrieve the initial backup from the external HDD and re-image it onto the blank internal 1.8" SSD.

Now, the 8GB SSD included in this netbook is known for being abysmally slow. It's only tolerable with a replacement file system driver (FlashFire) that caches writes into main system memory (the system frequently freezes for long periods with the drive access light lit solid otherwise). I'd like to test performance, without FlashFire enabled, with FlashFire enabled, and with the new HDD. What is a good benchmark for doing this comparison?

Thanks!

 

[razel]

If you're running Vista/7, use it's image backup and then you'll need to make a bootable Vista/7 USB. You don't need the full contents, just need to boot to the recovery tools, so you can do the image restore. If you have the full OS, MS provides you a DVD/USB bootable tool here:

http://store.microsoft.com/Help/ISO-Tool

Microsoft, at least, for Windows 7 also provided you the minimal recovery iso for download somewhere. I can't seem to find it right now.

For benchmarks, HDTach (good and fast for sequential read), AS SSD (for everything else), AS SSD can take forever if you're SSD is slow and tends to have a ~5% deviation during tests.

Since you're running a laptop, I just recently noticed how changing the power profile (power saver, balanced, high performance) reliably affects my HDTach sequential scores.

 

[RebateMonger]

If you're running Vista/7, use it's image backup and then you'll need to make a bootable Vista/7 USB.

Among Vista versions, only Vista Business, Ultimate, and Enterprise include image backup capability out-of-the-box. All versions of Win7 can do images.

Clonezilla (http://clonezilla.org) includes disk imaging and disk cloning ability and can boot from USB and can handle most hard drive controllers, including USB-adapted disks.

 

[Beautiful_Life]

You can do it this way. I'm assuming you have Windows 7. This is just the plan, for the exactly method how to perform each step just google it. You've 6000 post, I think you can figure it out well.

1. Partition your 15GM drive into 9GB and 6GB.
2. Use Windows Backup to create a system image and save it to the 9GB part.
3. Download Windows 7 recovery disk from MS or just create a recovery disk when you have finnish creating the system image. It will ask you.
4. Put all the recovery disk content into the 6GB part.
5. Make the 6GB part bootable. Just some simple diskpart commands and cmd commands.
6. Swap to your 1.8" HDD
7. Boot your PC, select boot from USB. If you did step 5 right it will boot into the recovery environment. Of course you should test if it does before swapping your HDD.
8. Select restore windows from image. Just follow the instructions on screen.

Viola you're done.

You can do this with any other free backup program as long as you can make a bootable media from it. Even if it only have the option to make a bootable CD, just make it using a virtual DVD drive, ISO recorder, whatever. Then extract the files into the 6GB part and make it bootable.

 

[CZroe]

Nope. Even though I own an extra copy of Win7 and it originally had Linux, it's stickin' w/XP (already ruined the original battery). Clonezilla will work fine. Thanks RebateMonger!

I'm also staying with XP for my ability to create a 1024x768 desktop on a 1024x600 screen and either pan around in it with the pointer or down-scale. That's been required for web browsing WAY too often.

 

[Beautiful_Life]

Nope. Even though I own an extra copy of Win7 and it originally had Linux, it's stickin' w/XP (already ruined the original battery). Clonezilla will work fine. Thanks RebateMonger!

I'm also staying with XP for my ability to create a 1024x768 desktop on a 1024x600 screen and either pan around in it with the pointer or down-scale. That's been required for web browsing WAY too often.

That's sounds really useful. How do you extend your desktop in such a way? Is there a name for that, I would really like to try to do it on Windows 7.

 

[CZroe]

That's sounds really useful. How do you extend your desktop in such a way? Is there a name for that, I would really like to try to do it on Windows 7.

Old ATI Windows 95 drivers used to have an independent slider for desktop area and screen resolution under the Desktop Properties Settings tab. It worked the exact same way... the screen would scroll as soon as the mouse pointer reached the edge of the screen. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any reference to this ability in Powerstrip or any video drivers today. I even made a thread here in 2008 asking if this functionality was still a part of Windows.

As for Powerstrip and other video utilities, all they'd tallk about was smaller desktop areas within a specified resolution (overscan compensation)! Regardless, I tried the Powerstrip nagware with my integrated Intel graphics and it worked-exactly like it did with the ATI drivers (PS just acts like I picked that resolution)! I was a bit miffed that I couldn't set a "cycle" keyboard shortcut to cycle through my preset desktop sizes and that the shortcuts all required three keys, but it worked well enough for me to ignore the 30-second "Tip of the Day" that I'm forced to endure at every boot with the unregistered version (I'd pay if they'd solve the shortcut problem and find a way to scroll when you get within 100 pixels of the edge).

About a year later I found this functionality integrated into "A1CTRL," an app specifically for controlling power management and such in an Acer Aspire one. It says that it's based on something like "EeeCtrl" I believe (same thing for EeePCs). Anyway, it, too, has some preset desktop sizes (800x600 native with pillarboxing within 1024x600, native 1024x600, and 1024x768), but there isn't any ability to switch modes with a keyboard shortcut. I keep them both installed because it does add a "downscale" option that the author says is only for downscaling 1024x768 to the native res due to Intel driver limitations (aparantly, it's a function built into the Intel drivers). The program no longer developed but is open source, so I plan to take a look at it to see if I can adapt it for my wants.

I also use it to compensate for non-anamorphic widescreen videos that I can't zoom/crop. For example, a youtube video with encoded letterboxing (horizontal black bars added to fit an old 4:3 aspect display) gets "shrunk down" in full screen just to fit the useless letterboxing. By making it think that I have a 4:3 1024x768 desktop area, it can go to full screen and I can watch the video portion in full screen with the correct aspect.