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OS migration to SSD

S

smidley

Weaksauce
Joined
Mar 3, 2010
Messages
114
Hey guys, I have a server running 2008 R2 on a regular SATA drive. I'm not sure if the BIOS is set to configure the drive as AHCI or not though.

On this drive, I have my OS and some applications loaded. Now, I just bought an SSD to replace this drive, and I need to know the best way for me to backup and restore to the new drive.

My current plan is to backup using the built in windows backup service and then install windows on the new drive and restore to it. Is that the best method? Or should I be using some sort of drive clone tool?

If my current drive isn't set to AHCI, and I restore using this method, will it mess anything up? I need the SSD to use AHCI obviously. Thanks for any advice.
 
Personally, I wouldn't backup and restore application program files or the OS. I'd install clean and only restore any important user created data.
 
I'm not a believer in the "fresh install" is a must for SSD migration like most folks. Using Windows backup-restore should be fine, but since it is a server OS, my guess is that you don't have that many apps installed making a fresh install fairly painless.

The biggest risk with a backup-restore is first getting it configured for AHCI. No matter what you do, first do an initial backup.
 
MrGuvernment said:
Acronis = image = done.
Click to expand...

I've had success with that for Win 7, but I'm fairly certain Acronis True Image Home will not install on Server '08 R2 - he'd need the much more expensive server version (but there is a free trial), plus the OP still has to tackle AHCI.
 
Given the AHCI issue i'd do what VR said and set that bios setting and do a clean install to make sure it's enabled in the windows install.
 
How big is your sata drive and ssd? I am guessing you will have to shrink the partition on the sata drive. I have done this before on win 7 installation using gparted, done a back up, then restored it. Then I just enabled ahci and made sure trim was enabled.

If you don't have a ton going on on the server I would almost do a fresh install.
 
doh ya, silly me, you can get a trial of their bacvkup and recovery workstation and server i believe or clonezilla...
 
I don't do fresh installs because it's an SSD, I do them because I never get attached to an OS load and all the installing / uninstalling of this 'n that is still messy after all these years. Plus you don't have to pre-align partitions on the OS since 2008 handles that.
 
be very careful copying images over to the ssd, you might misalign your data and get terrible performance
 
It's 2012 guys. I got my first SSD three years ago and managed to clone my 5 years old XP on it fine, aligned and all, so it should be fairly easy now !

And I don't know what his usage of Server 2008 is, but if you use it as a server OS (which it is, after all), with, say, a DNS, active directory, maybe exchange, let me say it takes hours to set up and is quite a pain.

First thing is to check in the BIOS if AHCI is active.
 
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