Cloning from HDD to SSD

Steveocee · 9 Nov 2011 at 12:21

Hello, I have browsed through but there isn't a definite answer so here goes....

Is it OK to clone using either Acronis or Win7 backup utility from a HDD to an SSD?
Do you lose any performance?

I'm currently using a WD Velociraptor 80gb as a boot drive and whilst I find it reasonably quick, I have an SSD itch that needs scratching.

I'm aware of the things like auto defrag that need turning off and trim needs to be on but can it damage the SSD restoring a disc image onto it or would the controller take the image and distribute it according to its own image?

Thanks

andy_mk3 · 9 Nov 2011 at 12:26

I wouldn't clone it, if Win7 is installed on an SSD from fresh it will work much better.

Steveocee · 9 Nov 2011 at 12:32

andy_mk3 said:
I wouldn't clone it, if Win7 is installed on an SSD from fresh it will work much better.

My issue is that clean install isn't a great solution.
I had a one-time borrow my mates Office install disk (which he has a business code for) so it has limited uses.

My itunes library, as daft as it sounds the music is on a different drive but my problem is that it doesnt copy over playlists or * ratings and i've spent hours restoring them since i rebuilt and added the WDraptor

I was hoping that somebody may have Acronis'd it and had a working solution.

tooth · 9 Nov 2011 at 12:49

Eh, get office from elsewhere, backup your itunes folder from your documents, do a fresh install.

Steveocee · 9 Nov 2011 at 12:54

tooth said:
Eh, get office from elsewhere, backup your itunes folder from your documents, do a fresh install.

last 2 times I've attempted that I've lost all my ratings. I know it's really not issue of the century but i have over 80gb of music and my whole library runs off smart playlists that use the main denominator as the * rating.

It's taken me 4 weeks to rate everything since last install and I really don't want to do it again. It seems that the ratings aren't held within the itunes media folder, I dont know why but it seems to not copy them over.

Tooks · 9 Nov 2011 at 14:06

I've migrated an HDD to an SSD for my setup, and used Acronis True Image Home 2012.

Just make sure you use the boot cd option that TIH offers, so that it clones without ever going into Windows and it should be fine.

The only issue I had is that I had to reactivate Windows 7 following the clone, but as mine is a retail version, that was the work of seconds. Flight Simulator X was more problematic as I forgot to de-activate it before the clone, but a reinstall sorted that.

My iTunes library was completely unaffected as well. MSOffice didn't need any reactivation on my setup.

I say go for it, what have you got to lose anyway? If it doesn't work for whatever reason then you will have to reinstall anyway, so worth a go first?

Steveocee · 9 Nov 2011 at 14:08

Tooks said:
I've migrated an HDD to an SSD for my setup, and used Acronis True Image Home 2012.

Just make sure you use the boot cd option that TIH offers, so that it clones without ever going into Windows and it should be fine.

The only issue I had is that I had to reactivate Windows 7 following the clone, but as mine is a retail version, that was the work of seconds. Flight Simulator X was more problematic as I forgot to de-activate it before the clone, but a reinstall sorted that.

My iTunes library was completely unaffected as well. MSOffice didn't need any reactivation on my setup.

I say go for it, what have you got to lose anyway? If it doesn't work for whatever reason then you will have to reinstall anyway, so worth a go first?

Excellent, Thankyou so much, will go for it. Activation is no problem.

Thanks

Wucked · 9 Nov 2011 at 17:05

Aren't there alignment issues around cloning from HDD to SSD? Or does the latest batch of cloning software actually handle this now?

Tooks · 9 Nov 2011 at 17:33

Wucked said:
Aren't there alignment issues around cloning from HDD to SSD? Or does the latest batch of cloning software actually handle this now?

There were in earlier versions, but it was sorted from the 2011 version onwards apparently;

http://kb.acronis.com/content/2699

Acronis products support Solid State Drives (SSD) with certain limitations
Description

The following Acronis products have full Solid State Drive (SSD) support:

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11
Acronis True Image Home 2011
Acronis True Image Home 2012
Acronis Disk Director 11 Home

All other Acronis products support Solid State Drives (SSD) with certain limitations:

You can perform all the same operations with SSDs as with regular hard disk drives;
There are no special partition alignment mechanisms required to keep the partitions offset which is optimal for SSD drives. In other words when you restore an image to an SSD drive, it will get the default 63 sectors offset instead of 64kb (or a multiple of 64kb) offset recommended for SSD drives even if this offset was in place when the image had been created. This may result in a drop of performance on certain models of SSD drives after the restore;
Support for SSD drives is also planned for the next version of the Acronis Backup & Recovery product line.

Certainly, I have no issues whatsoever with my M4 SSD, cloned from a 1TB HDD to the SSD using TIH 2012. Pefrormance is as it should be.