Cloning HDD to SSD

[VaultDweller]

I'm picking up an SSD for my laptop in the near future to replace the 5400rpm drive - probably with an OCZ Agility, but we'll see what prices look like at the time.

I recently did a clean install of Win7 RTM on the laptop and just finished installing and configuring all my apps, so I'd much rather clone the current drive to the new SSD with Clonezilla.

Are there any possible issues I should be aware of with this? Should I expect SSD-related optimizations in Windows 7 to still function just fine, etc?

 

[taltamir]

bad idea. aligning the partitions for a spindle disk and an SSD differs, this will result in lowered performance. Also you MUST first shrink the partition to be smaller than the new drive for it to even work. and will need to do the process in a desktop.

 

[VaultDweller]

As to the three points you've made:

1. Please clarify, as I'm not sure why this would be an issue. Windows 7 uses a fixed offset for the first partition (1024 KB I believe) regardless of what type of drive is used, so the current alignment for my HDD is fine for SSDs as well. Or are you saying that Clonezilla will change the partition alignment?

2. This is not an issue, the current OS partition is smaller than the new drive to begin with (30 GB currently vs 60 GB SSD)

3. No, this can be done from the laptop. Clonezilla, as well as most commercial cloning tools like Acronis TrueImage, can save images to and restore from SMB shares. Even if I did have to do this in a desktop, that would not be an an issue. The time required to toss a couple drives into one of my desktops is almost non-existant compared to the time required to get my laptop up and running again after a fresh install.


Another thought has just occurred to me: I have Windows Deployment Services already set up on my DC and I've never even used it. I can just build an install image from the laptop and deploy from that.

 

[Isura]

1. Most disk image software modifies the alignment, that's the main issue.

2. Clone/restoring a partition image is problematic. It changes the alignment in most image programs. Cloning the whole HDD (the system drive = HDD) preserves the alignment in some programs.

Some good information. Not sure if Acronis/True Image etc have fixed the problem.

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=244950