Drive Imaging with an SSD?

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sir_rob

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 27, 2003
Messages
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I am looking to image my new hard drive, but it is an SSD. I have read many times that SSD's cannot or should not be imaged. Is this true?
 
I don't see why it can't be imaged, I do a back up image of my 64Gb SSD boot drive once a week with Acronis True Image and have not had the slightest bit of trouble.
After all, when creating a image all you're doing is reading the drive !
 
According to some people, some versions of Acronis only see the SSD as a USB drive.
 
The issue is that Windows Vista and Windows 7 create partitions without misalignment with the SSD flash blocks, or RAID striping blocks. If you use another program, it might create the partitions the default way with 63 sector offset like Windows XP does. This is something you do not want on your SSD, as it shortens lifespan and lowers performance.

I guess at least some imaging/cloning apps would be able to write the partitions how Windows created them, and doing a raw byte copy would work too, for example using an Ubuntu livecd.

You may also want to leave some space on the SSD unused, by creating a partition smaller than the full capacity of the SSD. This prevents performance degradation, especially in the absence of TRIM support.
 
sir_rob said:
According to some people, some versions of Acronis only see the SSD as a USB drive.
Click to expand...

May be a specific issue or bug, but SSD are just SATA storage devices just like HDDs are - they should behave the same - only have different performance levels.
 
Thank you for the options. My real question is:

Is there any reason not to image an SSD and later restore the image onto the same SSD? (believe it or not, there are a lot of people saying not to do this)
 
sir_rob said:
Thank you for the options. My real question is:

Is there any reason not to image an SSD and later restore the image onto the same SSD? (believe it or not, there are a lot of people saying not to do this)
Click to expand...

Not really.

You can image backup your windows install, then sanitary erase and restore image to get full performance back.
 
Thanks for the info. I will image away!

BTW, My drive has garbage collection and trim, so hopefully degraded performance will not be an issue.
 
The only possible issue is, as already mentioned, partition mis-alignment if the program in question doesn't preserve the existing offset when re-creating the partition (which most apps will do)... I know Ghost will preserve the existing alignment, at both sides of the partition, even if you happen to resize the partition, which is very nice... Latest version (15.0) will even read and backup the Win7 SRP which most programs can't even see... I use 14.0 on my SSD w/o issue.

Whatever program you choose, it's a simple matter of looking at the partition offset (it's in System Info) after doing a restore and making sure it's still the same... If it is then everything's kosher.
 
Thanks for the info. Does the Win7 SRP actually do anything useful? It seems like some people try to get rid of it.
 
Not really, unless you use BitLocker, then it's absolutely essential since it sort of bridges the gap so that the encrypted drive is actually bootable; that's it's main reason for existing. If you install Win7 w/o it (as I did) the contents of the SRP are simply moved to a directory within C:/. To install Win7 w/o it you just format the drive manually beforehand (or you delete the partition within the Setup, after it's created, and you expand the C:/ partition)... You can always delete it after the fact as well (using a Linux live CD or something similar, then running a repair off the Win7 disc, might need to do so twice).
 
Does the Win7 SRP actually do anything useful?
Click to expand...
Not really, unless you use BitLocker, then it's absolutely essential since it sort of bridges the gap so that the encrypted drive is actually bootable; that's it's main reason for existing.
Click to expand...

Thanks Impulse....I wondered what that partition did. :)

I thought I screwed-up my first install of w7 when I saw that little partition so I eliminated it. Everything worked just fine but now I know it's supposed to be there and what it does.

Soo early in the morning and I've already learned something today!
 
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