Guide for cloning from a HDD to a SSD?

[RAD]

Is there a definitive [H] recommended guide for cloning over a primary drive from a HDD to a SSD?

I think I am finally ready (long overdue) to make the jump from a traditional HDD to a SSD for my boot drive / primary application drive. I'd rather not have to reinstall everything from scratch with a new OS and whatnot if I can avoid it.

Currently in my rig I am on Win7 64 bit, using a 300 gb velociraptor primary/boot drive and a 1 tb storage drive.

I'd like to take the 300gb boot drive and clone it over to a Crucial M500 480gb (or similar SSD).

What is the start to finish process for this? What do I need to be aware of to make it all go smoothly / avoid doing to prevent messing everything or anything up? Will cloning my primary to the SSD cause any problem interactions with programs installed to the 1 tb storage drive? Is there a better place than this sub forum to consult on this?

EDIT: Considering that I am clearly somewhat lazy (as I am looking into cloning rather than starting fresh) should I just look into something like the Apricorn kit to do the heavy lifting for me? I am assuming that will take care of any alignment set up rather than having to do it manually, right? If I go that route do I still need to do the little things like enabling Trim after set up, or will it handle everything?

 

[Chuklr]

...

EDIT: Considering that I am clearly somewhat lazy (as I am looking into cloning rather than starting fresh) should I just look into something like the Apricorn kit to do the heavy lifting for me? I am assuming that will take care of any alignment set up rather than having to do it manually, right? If I go that route do I still need to do the little things like enabling Trim after set up, or will it handle everything?

Hi, RAD,

I used the Apricorn kit and the EZ Gig cloning software to clone my 2 desktops and a laptop when I swapped out the HDDs for SSDs. It simple to use and requires just a few mouse clicks. It automatically aligns everything, as well.

After the cloning is done you just need to set the BIOS to ACHI, shut down the system, swap the drives, restart the system and you should be good to go.

If you are running Windows 7 or above you don't have to activate the TRIM as the OS will do that for you.

Hope this helps.

EDIT: You should download the most current version of the EZ Gig software from the Apricorn website.

 

[Meeho]

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1730076

 

[RAD]

...
After the cloning is done you just need to set the BIOS to ACHI, shut down the system, swap the drives, restart the system and you should be good to go.
...

Makes sense, thanks. Good to know it is fairly painless. This part I had a question about, though. After doing the clone, you make the bios change from within windows? How are you changing your bios from within windows? Or, do you mean you shut down, go to bios, make the change, then shut down again, then drive swap?

 

[Chuklr]

Makes sense, thanks. Good to know it is fairly painless. This part I had a question about, though. After doing the clone, you make the bios change from within windows? How are you changing your bios from within windows? Or, do you mean you shut down, go to bios, make the change, then shut down again, then drive swap?

Hi, RAD,

Yes, I "... mean(t) you shut down, go to bios, make the change, then shut down again, then drive swap ..." and restart the system. You will want to have your OS media handy in case windows wants the ACHI driver on the restart.

Hope this helps.

 

[RAD]

So just as a follow up... My shiny new toy arrived today and the clone worked perfectly.

Two small things:
1) I don't have a drive bay adapter for it, so the itty bitty SSD is just resting on one of the full sized bay slots. For ocd's sake at some point here I will have to get a bay adapter so it sits in there securely.

2) When I first switched my bios from IDE to AHCI, Win7 was crashing at the loading screen. Switched it back to IDE and did a little bit of googling and discovered a small registry change was needed, as well as a link from microsoft to automatically execute the registry change. After doing that AHCI mode works perfectly.

Here is the link of anyone else finds themselves in that boat: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

Just to make sure it is performing as well as it should, what is the preferred benchmarking tool for HDDs?