Already posted on the overclockers forum just interested in your opinions Hi Fellas, not been around for a while so bit out of touch. I currently run a Win7 64bit q6600 sys on a 320gb spinpoint, and like many am interested in faster boot up times. I am curious is there a way to migrate the Op sys to the ssd with out a complete reinstall or do i have to suck the mob. I must add that my version of Win 7 is the upgade version. Your ideas will be appreciated. Tim
Easy to do my friend, i clone disks using acronis or norton ghost. Here is alink to the 30 day trial of ghost http://us.norton.com/downloads/trialsoftware/download.jsp?pvid=ghost15. Just make a backup of you current disk and clone over, dont worry about partition sizes as it will auto adjust. Alternativly download the Hirens toolkit disk and there will be progs on there that will easily do the job.
Of course, the above is assuming that your have your SATA controller set to AHCI mode, which is what it should have been since day 1 to get greater performance out of your HDD, thanks to Native Command Queue which get's enabled. For SSD, you need AHCI, to have TRIM support, to reduce significantly the ware and tear of the SSD, so that it doesn't degrade in performance rapidly. AHCI mode also provide full SATA speed, and eSATA support. If your system SATA controller isn't set to AHCI, then you can cross your fingers with a registry hack, or re-install Windows (recommended), else it won't boot.
Oh and your data of the HDD needs to fit in your SSD. You also may be interested in this thread: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=215380 While it won't do miracles, it might satisfy you and save money in not needing an SSD. Also, I suggest to sleep your computer instead of turning it off.
If you MUST clone, use gparted. It is a 4 step process. 1. shrink your partition to LESS than your target ssd by at least 256mb. 2. create a new partition on your ssd, selecting to MiB which will ensure correct alignment 3. do a partition to partition copy 4. reboot with a windows dvd / usb stick and enter the recovery console to recreate the mbr / bcd files with bcdedit. enjoy your properly aligned clone.
In my opinion, fresh install is the best, clone w7 from HDD to SDD will slow the SDD performance. Just back up all your datas and files and use w7 file transfer is better.
Cloning does not affect performance if done correctly, as I outlined in my previous post. The trouble is the majority of cloning software is designed for hdd > hdd so does not account for the need for alignment to MiB instead of to cylinders. The misalignment is what kills the ssd performance, not the cloning per se.
