Windows 7 installation transfer

[muon]

Been looking over the net but it doesn't seem an answer exists for Windows 7. I currently have Windows 7 pro installed on a 40GB SSD. I want to copy this across to another 64GB SSD. Points I am aware of:

- windows 7 installs perfectly on SSDs without the need for disk alignment
- transferring a mirror image onto a HDD from another HDD is simple enough with lots of existing software, but not sure about an SSD

This transfer will only be temporary, I simply cannot currently have my PC offline for more than an hour (properly set up), but will reinstall Windows soon anyway.

What's the best way to proceed?

Thanks.

edit: Also there's the built in system image program within Windows I can potentially use.

 

[TrojanWhore]

shouldn't present any problems, as the way windows and your motherboard see the drives is almost identical. only references I have seen to people having problems are trying to shrink partitions onto it or something.
Built in tool should be capable, although many would recommend Acronis True image (I think thats what its called).

you should probably enable AHCI from windows first:

Activating AHCI
If you installed Windows 7 previously with your motherboard set to AHCI mode instead of IDE mode your settled. If your motherboard runs in IDE mode though you really want to set it to run AHCI instead, since it’s faster. Some claim you need to reinstall Windows to archieve this, but that’s not true. Thing is, you need to do two very simple things to activate AHCI.
1. Activate AHCI in Windows first!
There’s a brilliant guide on how to activate AHCI in Windows from Microsfot here! Since it’s written in danish, I’ll just re-write it here in english. So here’s how to activate AHCI in Windows, which needs to be done first before you activate it in your BIOS.
1a. Close all your open programs in Windows.
2a. Click Start (the windows logo in your taskbar) and type regedit in the searchfield.
3a. Open regedit, and do a search for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci
4a. Right click on the “Start” entry it found under Msachi, and select “Properties”
5a. The value will most likely say “3″. Change that value to “0″ (zero).
6a. Quit regedit, and reboot your PC. AHCI has now been activated.
2. Activate AHCI in your BIOS
When your PC boots up, press Delete, F2 or whatever your BIOS prompts you to press to enter setup. When you’re inside your BIOS, go to the harddisk configuration menu. Now go to where it says SATA Setting or similar, and it will probaly stand as “IDE”. Simply select “IDE” press enter, and choose AHCI from the drop-down menu. Once it’s set to AHCI, press escape, save and exit.
Your SSD will now run in AHCI mode, and gain some speed. Notice, that it is very important to activate AHCI in Windows before you activate it in the BIOS. If you do not activate it in Windows first, you’ll simply get a blue screen upon loading Windows. If that happens, just go to your BIOS and set SATA mode back to IDE, then boot Windows, and activate AHCI as described above, reboot, and jump back into BIOS and activate AHCI as described.

source, with some other info on SSD image restoring (from HDD, but if that works, SSD to SSD should be fine)
http://sonic-media.dk/?p=103



Edit: just re-read your post properly (sorry, tired) and obviously a large amount of what I said probably won't apply, as I expect you're already in AHCI mode on your current SSD, but I'll leave that up in case it helps somone else!

 

[muon]

Yep its an AHCI installation already. But thanks for the additional opinion. Hopefully it will work for the brief time i'll be using it.

 

[muon]

If anyone comes here after a websearch, here are the results of using Windows Backup and Restore. The drive is a 64GB C300 rated at 265/75 on a SATA2 connection.

Obvious problem is that the C:\ partition hasn't utilised the entire disk, however it is easily fixed using the Disk Management module. Otherwise the system seems to be as fast as expected for the drive and the benchmark corroborates that.

 

[EniGmA1981]

you've probably just transfered the partition, right-click on computer in the start bar and click manage, then go to disk management and see if you can expand the partition to fill the drive...