Getting a SS Hard Drive - how to clone old one?

SubJeff on 21/4/2011 at 01:20

My main HD is a SATA 500Gb drive (that Win7 has appropriated for it's own means in various ways) and I'm thinking of replacing it with a 250Gb SSD now that it seems to be having some issues - I get warnings that it's failing from Win7.

My questions is - how do I go about doing the migrate? I've always started from fresh but this time I want to copy everything over to the new drive so I don't have go through the dull process of re-installing everything.

What's the best way to do this?

Mingan on 21/4/2011 at 03:06

Normally to do this you make a ghost copy of your drive (using something like the pre-ancient Norton Ghost software), and then copy that to your new drive. Take the old one out. If all goes well, everything should work from the new drive, though I have no idea if Win 7 will like that.

Renzatic on 21/4/2011 at 03:50

Ghosting Win7 to another drive works fine. As long as he sets up the new partition as bootable, he shouldn't have any problems.

Though you'll need to turn off a few standard features when you jump over to the SSD, SE. Prefetch, superfetch, and scheduled defrags are the first you should kill off. You won't need them anymore. Also, (http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/windows-7/17239-enabling-trim-support-windows-7-a.html) you'll want to enable TRIM support.

I think that should be about it. Enjoy doing a full boot into Windows in about 20-30 seconds, you bastard. :mad:

Matthew on 21/4/2011 at 08:54

(http://overclock.net/ssd/887271-guide-move-your-old-windows-onto.html) This might be a helpful guide - it's the one I intend to follow in a couple of months.

Ostriig on 21/4/2011 at 12:45

Quote Posted by Renzatic

I think that should be about it. Enjoy doing a full boot into Windows in about 20-30 seconds, you bastard. :mad:

22 seconds to log-on screen, brah. :cool:

Just to make an comment on the thread you linked to - another and slightly more straight-forward way of telling whether a drive supports TRIM is by using SiSoft Sandra.

SubJeff on 21/4/2011 at 14:33

Thanks for the feedback guys.

The one I'm thinking of has TRIM support out of the box. The only disappointment is the max I can get is a 250Gb one. I'm going to have to do a lot of file moving before I go for this.

(http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-073-OC&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=1427)

SubJeff on 26/4/2011 at 16:42

Well I did some scan and repair stuff with Win7 and my drive seems to be find now. So I'm not going to be getting this SSD after all, not because I don't want one (I do!) but because that money is better spent on new tyres!

oh god when did I become so sensible

gunsmoke on 26/4/2011 at 18:42

I am tire geek (I go through them like mad) and with almost every class of passenger vehicle represented in my driveway, I have probably tried out most you are interested in. PM me if you want some advice when you narrow down what you are looking for in a set.

SubJeff on 26/4/2011 at 20:02

I already know what I want - Vredestein Ultrac Sessantas for the RX8. Unless you've a better idea. Basically a performance tire that isn't crappy in the wet as Rexs are prone to drifting in the wet. Not that I mind drifting but only when I want to iyswim :p