Two Part Question about SSD upgrade option

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cmdrdredd

Weaksauce
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Nov 5, 2006
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I have 2 questions regarding SSDs.

First off is it safe to do a true image backup of a mechanical drive and clone it to an SSD or do I have to do a clean install of windows all over again?

Second, I don't know which SSD to buy. I need at least 120GB (prefer 160GB), and would like to have TRIM installed from the start. What's the best value that has TRIM already on the firmware and is 120GB+ capacity? I suppose people would recommend buying an Intel drive but others are slightly less expensive and obviously still much faster than my velociraptor so it will be an upgrade anyhow.

Thank you in advance
 
There was a huge thread a while back about whether or not cloning a normal HD to an SSD would have a negative impact due to the SSD not being aligned properly if the cloning software didn't know how to handle an SSD. (Windows 7 does this automatically on a new SSD drive.)

Personally, I wouldn't do it, but some people have and claim it's a non-issue.

If I had a job right now I'd get an Intel X25 160GB for an OS drive, to me it's the best choice when looking at reviews still.
 
Ok so I will assume a fresh install is required to be safe. I figured Intel would be the best bet, just hoping to save some cash. Get what you pay for I guess. Thanks.
 
If you read the link, you'll see that Acronis handles full disk images just fine - partition alignment is preserved. However, if you only restore on partition, it will not be.

Also, you can fix partition alignment using gparted. You just move your partitions to the right, create a small temporary partition at the beginning of the disk to occupy the offset you want, then move the disks back left. Finally, delete the temp partition. Not too hard.
 
cmdrdredd said:
Then the question becomes, how do you backup an SSD? If you cannot then it becomes 100% worthless for me to even have an SSD.
Click to expand...
Check the link again, you just need to image/restore the whole drive (as opposed to individual partitions.)
 
You can image a regular HDD and restore the backed up image unto an SSD but it's tricky, and if not done properly it'll degrade the performance of your SSD due to a misaligned partition... You basically want to partition the SSD manually (and properly, tons of info on the boards about this), and then use any imaging software that lets you restore the image unto that existing partition w/o re-creating it (because most imaging software won't properly align SSD partitions right now).

If you have the time, it's probably just easier to start w/a fresh install, but if your current OS & apps install is gonna take you more than a couple of days to re-create I can dig up some links for ya so you can figure out how to do this and whether you wanna try it.

If you definitely need at 'least 120GB you've only really got two choices right now... An Intel 160GB X25-M G2 or an Indillix-based drive like OCZ's Vertex (120GB). The Vertex is smaller, and cheaper, it boasts better sequential write speeds and somewhat worse random read/write speeds but under real-world usage you probably won't notice the difference between it and the Intel one way or the other.

Most people end up deciding between the two based on budget and capacity (same for the 60GB Vertex vs 80GB X25-M which seems to be even harder to find than the 160GB at close to MSRP).

cmdrdredd said:
Then the question becomes, how do you backup an SSD? If you cannot then it becomes 100% worthless for me to even have an SSD.
Click to expand...

You can use drive cloning/imaging software w/SSD to backup your OS, I and plenty of other people have done it. You just have to be careful about the restore process so that your imaging software doesn't re-create the partition... The same kind of consideration you'd have to take to migrate your current install, only slightly less complicated since the backup image would at 'least fit perfectly unto the existing partition so you wouldn't have to do any partition re-sizing beforehand and such.

I'm not familiar w/Arconis, I know w/Ghost you can have it set so that it doesn't touch the existing partition, as well as w/Drive Image XML... I believe even the Windows backup tool can do it. Either way it's easier to do it right than to have to fix alignment afterward imo..
 
In Acronis True Image you can "clone a drive" and it basically recreates the partitions exactly as they are on the first drive on the new drive. I only have 1 partition, besides the one Windows 7 made for itself when I installed it. Anyway, it just seems easier and would only take a day or so to do a clean install and get my drivers back in. I'd probably just do that when I'm ready to do it at all.
 
Yeah, the partition will look exactly as it did in the original drive, but will it be properly aligned? That's the real question. The entire partition can look exactly the same but if it's mis-aligned and the offset is wrong it'll degrade performance. It's not hard to restore a properly aligned partition regardless of where it came from, just gotta be aware of what you're doing tho. You can even restore a C:\ partition by itself (w/o a SRP). from a system that originally had C:\ and the 100MB SRP partition.
 
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