Moving OS from HDD raid to SSD

[c627627]

You can't clone a running OS.
You would have to reboot into OS 2 to clone OS 1 and vice versa. Or of course boot from CD/USB.

Symantec System Recovery (it replaced Norton Ghost), Acronis, TeraByte Image are also alternatives.

 

[medo145]

Do you know which of those support going from hdd to ssd with proper alignment?

 

[c627627]

As far as I know, unless you format the drive under Windows XP, it should be properly aligned if you format it under Windows Vista/7/8.

Then simply reimaging the drive should result in proper alignment.


Any newer drive image program should not mess up the alignment.

 

[madcratebuilder]

The transfer software that ships with the Samsung 840 Pro is reported to be the best available. I've done one system transfer with it and it went very smooth.

 

[c627627]

I guess the question is: which newer imaging software would not align SSD when simply restoring an image onto an SSD formatted under Windows Vista/7/8?


I've only seen alignment problems on SSDs which were formatted under Windows XP.

 

[medo145]

The transfer software that ships with the Samsung 840 Pro is reported to be the best available. I've done one system transfer with it and it went very smooth.

the samsung software does not appear to be bootable, I'd like to be able to do this without involving another os.

 

[shadowdr]

One question, Does your install include the hidden partition? If the raid install has the partition then so will the SSD. I have run into issues where the hidden partition is not recognized by cloning software. If your install does not have one then you should be good to go. In any case you will need cloning software that can do partition to partition copies and not full drive copies. Some of the software that I tried did not recognize the hidden partition correctly and wouldn't boot but I accomplished the task after some trial and error with different softwares. There will probably still be a few issues that may arise, like needing to re activate after moving from raid to non raid OS but it is doable.

 

[c627627]

I recently tested two on a new Windows 8 Laptop. It had like four hidden partitions (!). So the one lone C: Drive on it was divided into five parts, four of which were hidden.


Norton Ghost most definitely could not handle the new stuff. That's why they released Symantec System Recovery 2013 which replaced Ghost.

This handled it: TeraByte Image. However, I found out the hard way that even if the drive is half full and you make an image of it, you still need the same size drive or larger to restore the original image.

In other words, if the drive is a 640GB drive and you only used up half of it, you still cannot reimage to a 500GB drive. You still would need a 640GB or larger drive to restore the image.

 

[medo145]

I get the feeling that these numbers could be better.


edit:
figured it out, wrong port, this looks better

 

[shadowdr]

Very sweet scores on that 840, beats my aging M4's in all but the 4K times. I see that you had the boot partition and it aligned correctly,. What software did you use for the copy?

 

[medo145]

I ended up using a bootable CD of acronis true image plus 2013, went to tools and then clone drive. Picked easy mode and it did the rest.

Are there any changes I should make to windows now that it is running from a ssd.

 

[c627627]

When I switched from mechanical to SSD, I also used a simple clone transfer like you (really any modern software can handle it) and other than making sure you don't have anything set up to defragment the drive, since this should not be done on SSD, you should be set.

I made the mistake of formatting under Windows XP which messed up the alignment but I think you should be OK since you didn't do that.


SSD should provide you with a noticeable performance boost. SSD drives large enough to fit an OS on are relatively cheap. I am surprised why so many people still use mechanical.


We had a guy get very upset in another thread over us recommending he use SSD for his OS partition instead of mechanical. He thought mechanicals were 'fast enough'
As you should see, SSD loads things noticeably faster that benefits are apparent immediately.

 

[medo145]

Well my C drive was comprised of a raid 0, 3 x 70 gigs from 1tb drives. basically harvesting the fastest sections of the mechanical drives. I believe it gave me around 250MB/s. Not as slow as a single HDD and, but not as fast as this SSD.

 

[c627627]

I even noticed increases in speeds "you can feel" going from Generation 1 to Generation 3 SSD.

Let alone the stuff they have out now. I guess I am just surprised that people spend time looking at their system performance, meanwhile they're still running an OS off of a mechanical drive, even though as you are finding out, it is an easy and quick and inexpensive switch. Good luck with your new system!

 

[Jkicak]

just as an FYI on a fresh install on my work computer of windows 7 (used windows 7 disk to delete all partitions and create new) spinning disk my alignment is not compatible with an SSD.

diskpart says that the offset is 229mb on the main partition.

 

[medo145]

Original alignment might be different for raid vs single drive. Was the drive used previously for other OSes?

Have you checked the instructions, from this page link

1 Hit the Start menu .
2 Start up Msinfo32.exe when it pops up
3 Head to Components > Storage > Disks. Look for your drive and find the "Partition Starting Offset". If this number is divisible by 4096 (that is, if dividing it by 4096 reveals a whole number and not a decimal), your partition is correctly aligned.

Not sure if it makes a difference, but my original install was done using Win7 64bit retail disc.