ghosting from hdd to ssd, is it possible/recommended?

skanky

skanky

skanky

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i will be upgrading a mate's hdd with an ssd in a few days.

is it possible to use either symantec ghost (not the home "norton" version but rather the corporate version) or acronis true image to make an image of the drive then restore it back onto a ssd?

i've used ghost before and am confident in its usage (acronis has been a bit flakly as a full image back/restore tool) but never attempted it on a ssd so dont really know what to expect there.

as nothing else in the system will change, im hoping that once restored, windows will download any extra drivers needed for the ssd but does it keep its "alignment" --that being the most important thing as i know the win7 installer process automatically aligns a ssd properly.

the worst case scenario is i restore, it doesnt work then i have to do a win7 install but have better things i'd rather be doing that a full rebuild :)
 
I always like to do a clean install for Windows to remove the build up of junk in the Registry etc. On the OCZ 2E a full install of Windows 7 Pro 64 bit took under 10 minutes. I know you have programs, updates etc. but worth it for a clean install on the new SSD. I had the added advantage of just running a second copy of steam from the old hdd with all my games still on it and working fine, so no need to download/install them all again. Just put a new steam install on the SSD with just the games I want to load quickly.
 
I ghosted a Symantec Ghost v15 back up from a 60gb Vertex 2 to an Agility 3 60gb over the weekend, no problem, and alignments still ok. You can't do a drive copy from within Ghost because of the in-use page file, but if you dump an image onto another drive and then use it to restore from it works fine (or did for me anyways).

best of luck:)
 
I always do a fresh install if I get a new HDD, its better for getting rid of the crap thats
built up like the other guys said.
 
check what type of format you've done as most software packages charge allot more to support dynamic disk formats paragons sepcial ssd migrate op sys prog does not support it acronis does not.
 
am in the process of restoring the image, worst case it doesnt work and i do a clean install. the current install less than a month ago, hence i dont think it would be cluttered too much in that time so willing to take the risk.

lurkio: that was pretty much the process i went for, except i didn't reinstall on the new hdd before restoring the image and i restored the entire image including the 100mb partition, im hoping/praying the backup stored the correct parameters. :)

used true image 2011 via booting using usb, picked all the options that suggest it would copy the image directly like sector by sector copy etc ..wont know for a couple of hours though :/

thanks all for the opinions though.
 
skanky said:
am in the process of restoring the image, worst case it doesnt work and i do a clean install. the current install less than a month ago, hence i dont think it would be cluttered too much in that time so willing to take the risk.

lurkio: that was pretty much the process i went for, except i didn't reinstall on the new hdd before restoring the image and i restored the entire image including the 100mb partition, im hoping/praying the backup stored the correct parameters. :)

used true image 2011 via booting using usb, picked all the options that suggest it would copy the image directly like sector by sector copy etc ..wont know for a couple of hours though :/

thanks all for the opinions though.
Click to expand...

You most likely have to check your alignment and see if its ok
My bet is it wont be
 
it actually aligned correctly, verified using diskpart.

i'm actually impressed as the system was set in windows that the 100mb partition had no drive letter and the main parition was C: but when restoring in acronis, even though i opted to do a full disk+signature restore, it reported the 100mb as C: and the main space as D: ..erk!

however on reboot all was well!
 
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