Cloning an HHd to an SSD - any gotcha's?

island911 · 12-15-2011, 08:47 AM

I've read this 2-year old thread on cloning hard drives (good thread) but was wondering if the SolidState Drives present any special needs.

. . .any cone tools better than others?

MysticLlama · 12-15-2011, 09:41 AM

It depends.

If using the built-in Win7 imager, it can be rough if you're going from a bigger drive to a smaller drive, the partition will have to be shrunk first, etc., and if there are unmoveable files it's a pain.

Using something 3rd party it'll probably work just fine.

If you're going to something the same size or bigger, I'd just use the built-in one, it's free and easy.

EarlyPorsche · 12-15-2011, 10:34 AM

I put a SSD in my MBP about 3 years ago. Best upgrade ever. Pretty simple to clone over. I did a literal clone and didn't install any of the included software since I wanted to avoid having any of that on in the background. Go for it.

island911 · 12-15-2011, 12:12 PM

No doubt the SSD's are worthwhile - I've put them in/upgraded 4 PC's here. --happy happy joy joy.

this time I'm looking to upgrade a Tablet PC (for my niece) which had it's OS upgraded from Vista to 7. The Duo-touch drivers can be finicky - installed wrong and you have a hardware/firmware mess- So, I'm thinking that the cloning is the way to go.

Rob, Just this morning I made the tablet purchase (should rcv it Monday) with a 120Gb HHD. So sounds like I should go with a 128Gb SSD for least hassle? (not a 64) but since it's not the exact same hardware, won't Win7 imager still no-go?

MysticLlama · 12-15-2011, 01:42 PM

It'll work fine with the built in stuff. I've used it to go from spindles to SSD and from SSD to larger SSD.

The easiest way is to just write the image to the network or a USB drive, then boot Windows from the CD, recovery disk, or a copy of the Win7 install disc on a USB key.

It was a bigger spindle drive to a smaller SSD that gave me fits, even though I wasn't using that much space. Had to disable services, delete some stuff, disable the page file, etc., bit of a hassle.

Going with a 128 would make it the easiest.

It *might* want you to reactivate, but that's a toss up, I've had it happen to me about 50/50 out of probably 10 reimages of different machines. A couple of them included other hardware changes too though.

The most surprising one was that I imaged my big PC at home and upgraded the motherboard, processor, RAM, power supply, and vid card, and restored to a bigger SSD and after a few reboots to find everything, it worked great. The built-in tool now strips some of the base level drivers and boots auto with VGA mode so it works near every time.

island911 · 11:10 AM

update - WTF?

So I've been struggling with this SSD (Super Talent) for days - it's running slow!

First, I imaged the OE HDD using WD's Acronis, cloned to the new SSD, and it ran slow.

I ran chkdisk - slow

I dumped that install, ran format (NTFS quick) ran a fresh install of Win7 x64 (SP0). . .and it's slow.

Is the disk bad, or am I doing something wrong? (or both?)

edit: I'll add that it's curious that, just sitting, the task-manger shows the CPU bouncing along the bottom at 0-5% usage (bigger spikes at times) but the HDD/SSD indicator light is almost always lit.

Scott R · Scott R's Garage

Is the BIOS set to ACHI for the HDD controller?

island911 · 12-22-2011, 11:39 AM

the BIOS does not say, or have a setting that I can see.

It is the latest BIOS version. And it does list/recognize the drive as an SSD.

azasadny · azasadny's Garage

I use Acronis to image drives but I've never imaged to an SSD drive yet... Should be no problem...

Scott R · Scott R's Garage

Quote:

Originally Posted by island911

the BIOS does not say, or have a setting that I can see.

It is the latest BIOS version. And it does list/recognize the drive as an SSD.

Well if it's native in ATAPI mode and you can't change it you're going to have issues with this drive, and others as well. What are you putting this in? - Did I miss this above?

island911 · 12-22-2011, 12:00 PM

It's going in a Dell XT tablet (circa 2008/9)

...I believe that these computers were available with SSD's from the factory. (Dell)

island911 · 12-22-2011, 12:04 PM

Yep. they shipped with SSD's per http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/latit/en/latit_xt_specsheet.pdf

Scott R · Scott R's Garage

Quote:

Originally Posted by island911

It's going in a Dell XT tablet (circa 2008/9)

...I believe that these computers were available with SSD's from the factory. (Dell)

The drive in the XT is a PATA/IDE drive, your new SSD is likely SATA. The XT was offered with a SSD option that was also an SSD PATA drive.

Something like this:

OWC OWCSSDMLP040 40GB Mercury Legacy Pro SSD 2.5"... in stock at OWC

MysticLlama · 12-22-2011, 03:24 PM

PATA and SATA aren't pin compatible.

If it's plugged in, that's not the problem.

I have heard some issues with block level cloning tools where they have an offset block size or something and they write funny to the SSD, thus file level cloning should work better.

It shouldn't be lit all the time though, that's odd. It's possible that it's just having a reindex/realign fit where it reorganizes stuff and may sort itself out in a day or two.

Try downloading a disk benchmarking tool and do a couple of quick tests. If it gets reasonably high numbers it's unlikely to be a hardware/driver issue.

island911 · 12-22-2011, 06:17 PM

Yeah, this is a 1.8" form-factor w/ ZIF 40-pin PATA connector . . I didn't think those even came as SATA. --but your (Scott) post gave an 'ah sheet" moment. -whew.

Rob, it would usually hang on the WEI (windows experience index) hard drive test(and time out). I got one test to complete and it delivered a 5.5 (the HDD gives 4.5). . . So, Maybe it's just a bunch of crazy background process running. But again, the CPU is hardly working.

I'll try installing SP1, see if that helps. :-/

MysticLlama · 12-22-2011, 07:34 PM

I used this last time to get some numbers.

CrystalDiskMark – hard disk benchmark software

Treat it like a dyno, use the same program on the computer with an issue and one of the ones that's working as expected.

If the numbers are in the same ballpark, it could be CPU or software or something else. If it's way slower, I'd suspect BIOS settings, some weird file system problem from the cloning, or a driver problem of some sort.

Also, if it's not too hard to swap back and forth, you could even try the benchmark on the new drive vs. old drive to see the performance difference on the same hardware.

Just redownloaded it and ran it as a reference point. This is an Intel x25-m in a 3-4 year old Dell D630.

island911 · 12-22-2011, 09:02 PM

Safe mode = no 'disk thrashing'

I suppose that means that a bit (or byte) of hardware is causing issues.

...although, shut down from safe mode seemed to take forever.

MysticLlama · 12-22-2011, 09:08 PM

Possibly.

Still could be just reorganizing pages and such. Leave it on overnight with the power down settings turned off and see if it's better tomorrow. An easy thing to try.

I've had clean Win7 SP1 installs lately have high CPU use sorting themselves out and indexing for 2-3 hours before they settle and are happy.

MysticLlama · 12-22-2011, 09:10 PM

Also, this is one of the reasons I've been using the Win7 imager where possibly lately, it clears out some drivers and preps the system a little better and seems less finicky.

Might want to check for new firmware for the SSD too, they are still new tech with constant new controllers and have lots of updates.