Mechanical to SSD Migration - I know this has been asked but...

Alright everyone, I know there's a million threads out there about how to move your OS from a mechanical drive to a SSD, or any other drive, and pros and cons of each way. I already know most of the information regarding cloning and I'm going to go the fresh install route (which seems to be the preferred method) as I'm already concerned about the reliability of my new Corsair Force GT 128Gb - Note: thread is not about the drive, before you say anything... I know.

My current 1Tb Spinpoint is probably around half full. I know a lot of that is media and files, so I could probably shrink an OS partition down to about 200Gb before I have to start uninstalling programs. The problem is that after that, there's just so many programs left to uninstall that I might as well do the entire Windows install process completely fresh.

Anyway, from what I understand, if I install windows and boot from the SSD and then try to run a program that was originally installed on the mechanical drive OS, it will not work. I want to know why - I imagine it would be related to the registry and the paths created by the setup program during the installation, but is there any simple way to fix this without a complete re-install? I know I can just go through and re-install each program one at a time to the mechanical drive and then delete the old files, but I'm really hoping someone has a better way to do this that isn't cloning.

Any suggestions? Thanks!

Good news about the drive - if it works now, it'll probably keep working.

I think you're correct that a fresh Windows install will be easier. Generally it's the registry and paths, like you said. The only way to fix it would be to try to import the registry into a new install, but that's not really feasible. Even if you could, all the paths would be incorrect, and changing them (only the right ones, a few thousand out of a few thousand more) would be a nightmare.

You can make sure your port your Documents folder over, since that contains a lot of program-specific settings. A lot of other settings can be found in Users/<you>/appdata, and if you bring those over to the new install a lot of the reinstalled programs will recognize their old settings.

It's not as bad as you might think, and it's a good chance to get everything cleaned up and up to date.

I was cloning systems from hdd in raid to ssd and from ssd in raid to hdd in all ways and it was working with most drives ( I couldn't make it work only with Crucial M4 and Acronis B&R Home 10/11 ). So moving all system should work but it's never guaranteed.

Woomack said:

I was cloning systems from hdd in raid to ssd and from ssd in raid to hdd in all ways and it was working with most drives ( I couldn't make it work only with Crucial M4 and Acronis B&R Home 10/11 ). So moving all system should work but it's never guaranteed.

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You can clone both ways, thats pretty easy but what about alignment ?

A SSD without alignment filler is gonna be much slower than a SSD with alignment filler because of the extra IO's

Nittenti said:

You can clone both ways, thats pretty easy but what about alignment ?

A SSD without alignment filler is gonna be much slower than a SSD with alignment filler because of the extra IO's

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It's not that drive will be so much slower. Performance will drop but for daily work it won't make big difference. Probably while cloning to new drives ( 4k sector ) it will keep alignment but I didn't test it.
Of course best way is to reinstall system

It's not that drive will be so much slower. Performance will drop but for daily work it won't make big difference. Probably while cloning to new drives ( 4k sector ) it will keep alignment but I didn't test it.

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Proper alignment makes a very big difference; it's important to have the drive aligned. Most modern cloning software will handle this, though.

Thanks for all the responses everyone, pretty much confirms what I thought. My initial problem with cloning my drive is that I installed so many programs that I would have to create a new partition and spend almost as much time shrinking down the original one as I would just have doing the fresh install.

You can make sure your port your Documents folder over, since that contains a lot of program-specific settings. A lot of other settings can be found in Users/<you>/appdata, and if you bring those over to the new install a lot of the reinstalled programs will recognize their old settings.

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Will definitely give this a shot, thanks! Its funny how many little programs you use on your comp without realizing until you start thinking about how long it takes to re-install all of them

johan851 said:

Proper alignment makes a very big difference; it's important to have the drive aligned. Most modern cloning software will handle this, though.

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Johan,

Do I understand correctly that cloning a HD with Acronis, Ghost, etc. to an SSD does not work because you're trying to copy "platters" to "chips?"

RollingThunder said:

Johan,

Do I understand correctly that cloning a HD with Acronis, Ghost, etc. to an SSD does not work because you're trying to copy "platters" to "chips?"

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The OP is talking about doing some kind of partial migration of the install. Cloning should work fine, but his hard drive is too big.

For all the little programs, try http://ninite.com/

johan851 said:

The OP is talking about doing some kind of partial migration of the install. Cloning should work fine, but his hard drive is too big.

For all the little programs, try http://ninite.com/

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Wow, that was not what I was expecting at all so when I first looked at the website, I thought there was a bunch of ads and I was looking around for a link with a description of the software lol. Awesome app tho, thanks a lot for that.

[tangent]
It's so convenient, I don't know why I haven't stumbled across it before. Definitely wish I had it in the past, seems like an amazing time saver when you just get a PC up an running and are trying to test things and start realizing one program at a time all the little things you need. Didn't run it yet so I'm not sure exactly how it works but it would be cool to have a feature to add custom installs. I'm pretty sure the installers are manually maintained by the developers for the programs they support, but I have to imagine there could be a way to point at say a cnet hosted program because I think link is static for a program page and then the download link points to the newest file. Then the program could execute a macro specific to that site (i.e. cnet) to pull the install file - the rest works the same way assuming its just an exe.
[/end tangent]

Just a thought, I've been wanting to teach myself to code (past the basics) more and more lately - would love to be able to try to make something like this. Yours is the first helpful response I've got on the few threads I posted around the net about this. Usually, people don't understand what I'm specifically trying to ask and just say ghost or wipe. With the amount of people migrating to SSDs, I'm surprised that cloning is even a viable option if they didn't partition their drive when they first set up the OS in anticipation of a migration down the road. Alas, I thought about it at the time and never got around to it and here I am now lol...

Apparently it always downloads the newest version of each. When you get the app and run it it goes and downloads everything fresh. Then it install with all the advertising options and toolbars unchecked. It's nice.

I think a lot of people just get a big enough SSD or they reinstall. It's nice to reinstall every now and then anyway - it's probably not as bad as you think. One thing that makes it easier is having all of my documents, music, movies, photos, etc. on a secondary drive. There's really nothing of value on the OS drive, so I can wipe it whenever.

johan851 said:

Apparently it always downloads the newest version of each. When you get the app and run it it goes and downloads everything fresh. Then it install with all the advertising options and toolbars unchecked. It's nice.

I think a lot of people just get a big enough SSD or they reinstall. It's nice to reinstall every now and then anyway - it's probably not as bad as you think. One thing that makes it easier is having all of my documents, music, movies, photos, etc. on a secondary drive. There's really nothing of value on the OS drive, so I can wipe it whenever.

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Yeah that's true, I only am switching to an SSD once and then id be ready to clone and move my system anytime. Well thanks for the advice, guess its time to start installing lol

[UPDATE]

Okay so I finally got around to installing the drive and I have some interesting updates and a couple new questions. Overall the install went very well - I wanted to try to check the drives firmware first and update to the newest version before I installed windows but it was only recognized in BIOS. I tried diskpart and even using ubuntu live boot but nothing would see the drive. I think it may have been because it was not formatted at this point??

Anyway, I unplugged my mechanical drive and threw in the Windows 7 Boot Disk and it recognized the drive no problem. Did a fresh install, checked to make sure my alignment was good and trim was enabled. Speeds were lower than what the drive is capable of, but considering most people with Marvell controllers can't even get this to run, I'll take 375 mb/s read 175 mb/s write (from ATTO) for $150 any day .

Anyway, I've been kinda lazy with reinstalling and organizing files, but I merged my old desktop with my new one and of course with it came all of the now broken shortcuts to my old windows; or so I thought. Just out of curiosity I clicked on StarCraft and unbelievably it actually loads up. Tried another program or two and same result. Now when I look in my installed programs, I don't see them nor do I have any start menu shortcuts. Nonetheless I'm pretty happy about this, I was under the impression that they wouldn't work.

I still am missing things like save files, but if I copy my appdata folder over to the SSD, I think I may be able to get that all back. Is there anything wrong with this? Also, is there anyway to get programs to show back up from control panel?

Some may work, especially older programs with less registry hooks. Copying appdata over is mostly ok - most programs should deal with that fine. Some programs will behave oddly, though, so it depends on the implementation. I would selectively copy folders from appdata that you want.

The problem is that some programs may only work partially, since some of the data is there but other things (namely the registry) is gone. It's hit or miss. If you don't mind going through each program and trying to patch it back together then go nuts. In most cases it's easier to reinstall.

cloning ftw....go for it...

I just did a complete migration, OS and storage....OS from 74gb raptor to Vertex 3 120gb and storage from two HD 250gb 7200 SATA spinners (consolidated both to one drive first) to a new Velociprator 10k 600gb Sata III 6gb....obviously, the Sata to Sata I had no worries...

the Sata to SSD went just as easily despite huge trepidation on my part, it was easy to mount as just a new drive plugged into rig and the check firmwares (it was up to date), then format as per OCZ's instructions...and as stated earlier here, some of the newer cloning programs align the data to fit the different alignment structure of an SSD, worked for me...and the new gen3's have ironed out most, if not all the problems experienced previously with earlier gen SSD's....

Pretty slick, no OS reactivation, no Office reactivation, even right down to cookies, all registry hooks and tags came over, it was like the rig got a shot of steriods with almost immeditate results, took about three hours, including tinkering in the box with HD's and reformatting yanked storage drives after the clonage....quick and painless...saving old OS drive for now, ya never know....I had just done an OS reinstall in September and it was tight, just didn't want to take the time to redo again....bleh

SSD's rip, I just hope I got a good one....554 read, 491 write, ATTO...

Laterzzzzz.............