Migrate HDD Win8 to SSD....

kevpuk

kevpuk

kevpuk

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Planning to migrate my Win 8 installation, which is currently on the HDD of my Acer M3 Ultrabook to an SSD. Currently, the OS is 'assisted' by a small 20GB mSATA SSD using Intel RST et al.

I am replacing this small mSATA SSD with a shiny Plextor M5M unit, and want to establish the most straight-forward and painless OS/software migration....from what I understand, Win8 can image itself quite well - will this do the job? If not, am I best of using something like Easeus Free Backup or Macrium Free?
 
You can image it no problem but there's a couple of things you need to do:

Ensure AHCI is enabled in the BIOS (This has been pretty much the default for the last few years so I'd be surprised if it's not enabled.)
On first boot run the Disk Optimisation Utility, this should set everything up for running the OS on an SSD.
Ensure scheduled defragging is disabled (never defrag an SSD though you may want to defrag your current system before the migration.)
Ensure TRIM is enabled
Make sure your pagefile isn't ginourmous, you might want to manually specify a size rather than leaving it as system managed.
I'd also turn off search indexing as it's not really required on an SSD but open to correction on this one.
 
Antar Bolaeisk said:
You can image it no problem but there's a couple of things you need to do:

Ensure AHCI is enabled in the BIOS (This has been pretty much the default for the last few years so I'd be surprised if it's not enabled.)
On first boot run the Disk Optimisation Utility, this should set everything up for running the OS on an SSD.
Ensure scheduled defragging is disabled (never defrag an SSD though you may want to defrag your current system before the migration.)
Ensure TRIM is enabled
Make sure your pagefile isn't ginourmous, you might want to manually specify a size rather than leaving it as system managed.
I'd also turn off search indexing as it's not really required on an SSD but open to correction on this one.
Click to expand...

Pretty sure I have the current setup using AHCI - Windows 8 is an upgrade from the Windows 7 the laptop came with (free from Acer) and I had all sorts of fun trying to get the SSD caching working IIRC.
Will run a defrag first, good tip, and always have scheduled disabled on my desktop which runs via SSD.
How can I check TRIM is enabled? Also, not sure where the Disk Optimisation Utility resides....

Minstadave said:
Used Macrium reflect earlier in the week, nice and easy, can recommend :)
Click to expand...

Good, thanks - nice to have a recommendation. Seems the general consensus is Macrium or EaseUS
 
kevpuk said:
Pretty sure I have the current setup using AHCI - Windows 8 is an upgrade from the Windows 7 the laptop came with (free from Acer) and I had all sorts of fun trying to get the SSD caching working IIRC.
Will run a defrag first, good tip, and always have scheduled disabled on my desktop which runs via SSD.
How can I check TRIM is enabled? Also, not sure where the Disk Optimisation Utility resides....
Click to expand...

Open CMD prompt and enter:

fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify

If you get 0 then it's enabled.

To get to disk optimisation it should just be a case of hitting the Win key and typing disk optimisation, should be the first result though I don't have access to a Win 8 machine at the moment to check.
 
Great, thanks :)
I suppose all I need to do now is to make sure that the partition on the HDD that currently has the OS on does not confuse the system on booting to the SSD. Safest thing is to disable the HDD, I would imagine?
 
Ah, that might be interesting. If you're doing a direct clone the boot sector on the SSD might still point to the HDD OS, you might have to retarget the os path using bcdedit.

It also may just work if you set the SSD as the primary boot drive in BIOS.
 
All done...Macrium (free) clone and then USB PE to fix boot issues....sorted :)
As for turning off defrag - the Disk Optimisation seems to affect all drives; by this, I mean if I turn it off, it turns off globally and not just on the SSD :(
Any thoughts? I am hoping Win8 is clever enough that I can leave it on, and it won't do anything to the SSD?
 
Leave Disk optimisation on, as long as windows has identified it as an SSD (if it hasnt try running the windows performance index test) it will send a TRIM command instead of running a defrag on that drive.
 
Thanks, I think all is rosy in the world with the laptop now - wow, what a difference, too! Nearly as nippy as my desktop now, which is good news.
 
Macrium Reflect does this without any issues... I have been doing it today a lot... if you have any issues let me know :)

Stelly
 
Cheers - I did actually use Macrium Reflect (free) in the end - very decent job done, and the PE creation thingy (I used a USB drive) sorted out the MBR/booting issue I initially faced after cloning.
Previously, the 500GB HDD installed was using a 80GB~odd partition as the system drive. I cloned this using Macrium onto the SSD (I went for a Plextor PX128M5M). The laptop would not boot like this, but disabling the SSD in BIOS and booting via the HDD partition allowed me to create a bootable Macrium environment. Fired up with that, after re-enabling the SSD in BIOS, and it sorted things out nicely......then booted via SSD, checked all was fine and finally removed the HDD OS installation and extended the space back into one partition on the HDD.
Great piece of software - would be happy to buy a version, but can't help but think the price is a bit steep! Especially seeing as the free version seems to suit my requirements so well - that said, will keep an eye out for a coupon or similar, as would then purchase!
 
kevpuk said:
Cheers - I did actually use Macrium Reflect (free) in the end - very decent job done, and the PE creation thingy (I used a USB drive) sorted out the MBR/booting issue I initially faced after cloning.
Previously, the 500GB HDD installed was using a 80GB~odd partition as the system drive. I cloned this using Macrium onto the SSD (I went for a Plextor PX128M5M). The laptop would not boot like this, but disabling the SSD in BIOS and booting via the HDD partition allowed me to create a bootable Macrium environment. Fired up with that, after re-enabling the SSD in BIOS, and it sorted things out nicely......then booted via SSD, checked all was fine and finally removed the HDD OS installation and extended the space back into one partition on the HDD.
Great piece of software - would be happy to buy a version, but can't help but think the price is a bit steep! Especially seeing as the free version seems to suit my requirements so well - that said, will keep an eye out for a coupon or similar, as would then purchase!
Click to expand...

Might want to try emailing them on the contact us on the website they might be able to give you a 20% off coupon :)

Stelly
 
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