New SSD query

I'm wondering best way to go about updating a system to use an SSD. Plan
is to replce the existing 1Tb WD drive with an SSD (likely a 120Gb maybe
240Gb), making it "Drive C" and the bootable system drive. The existing
hd will be reassigned as a data drive "D". I'd leave it unattached once
transfer complete for first boot to insure it's "safe" to proceed
further, e.g. wipe old drive and reassign.

The existing drive does not have near 120Gb on it and anything that can
be simply copied can be easily across network or using external drives
which should cut it down even more so (I'd guess approx 40Gb).

I'm wondering it Windows Backup & Restore will do this or would I be
better trying Acronis or Micrium OR should I make an image unsing all
three and then see what happens LOL.

The concern, of course, is going to the smaller disk size.

Oh, SSD likely comes with some software also but have no idea yet what.
I'm looking at one of the better rated Samsung drives, little pricier
but reviews seem more positive.

pjp wrote:
I'm wondering best way to go about updating a system to use an SSD. Plan
is to replce the existing 1Tb WD drive with an SSD (likely a 120Gb maybe
240Gb), making it "Drive C" and the bootable system drive. The existing
hd will be reassigned as a data drive "D". I'd leave it unattached once
transfer complete for first boot to insure it's "safe" to proceed
further, e.g. wipe old drive and reassign.

The existing drive does not have near 120Gb on it and anything that can
be simply copied can be easily across network or using external drives
which should cut it down even more so (I'd guess approx 40Gb).

I'm wondering it Windows Backup & Restore will do this or would I be
better trying Acronis or Micrium OR should I make an image unsing all
three and then see what happens LOL.

The concern, of course, is going to the smaller disk size.

Oh, SSD likely comes with some software also but have no idea yet what.
I'm looking at one of the better rated Samsung drives, little pricier
but reviews seem more positive.

The System Image on Windows 7 is not intended for a "clone plus resize".

To do that, you'd need to shrink the source disk to suit the dimensions
of the new destination device. And the "shrink" in Disk Management, has
problems with certain metadata, which prevents shrinking of more than 50%.
So at a guess, a 1TB drive, using a Windows built-in approach, you
could get it down to 500GB before the clone attempt. Any decent third party
partition management software, can re-dimension the source disk, so it's
ready to be cloned.

Macrium Reflect Free can clone. And it can clone while resizing one partition.
As long as the "oversized" partition is the last partition, it should work OK.
If the Big partition was a central one, it wouldn't know what to do.

+-----+-------+-------+----------------------+ +-----+-------+-------+-------+
| MBR | Small | Small | Big and nearly empty | -- | MBR | Small | Small | Small |
+-----+-------+-------+----------------------+ +-----+-------+-------+-------+

Since the 1TB disk was prepared by the Windows 7 OS installer disc,
the alignment should be good (1MB alignment, instead of traditional
63 sector alignment). So that part should be OK. Some tools explicitly
recognize the SSD as a flash device, and change the 63 sector source alignment
to suit a megabyte-aligned destination. You probably don't need anything
special there. Acronis would likely do that for you, if that was
a problem.

In short, you should be able to cook up something.
If your source disk was created some other way, it may require
more extensive surgery. The free software that comes with the
SSD may be able to help.

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

HTH,
Paul

In article , says...

pjp wrote:
I'm wondering best way to go about updating a system to use an SSD. Plan
is to replce the existing 1Tb WD drive with an SSD (likely a 120Gb maybe
240Gb), making it "Drive C" and the bootable system drive. The existing
hd will be reassigned as a data drive "D". I'd leave it unattached once
transfer complete for first boot to insure it's "safe" to proceed
further, e.g. wipe old drive and reassign.

The existing drive does not have near 120Gb on it and anything that can
be simply copied can be easily across network or using external drives
which should cut it down even more so (I'd guess approx 40Gb).

I'm wondering it Windows Backup & Restore will do this or would I be
better trying Acronis or Micrium OR should I make an image unsing all
three and then see what happens LOL.

The concern, of course, is going to the smaller disk size.

Oh, SSD likely comes with some software also but have no idea yet what.
I'm looking at one of the better rated Samsung drives, little pricier
but reviews seem more positive.

The System Image on Windows 7 is not intended for a "clone plus resize".

To do that, you'd need to shrink the source disk to suit the dimensions
of the new destination device. And the "shrink" in Disk Management, has
problems with certain metadata, which prevents shrinking of more than 50%.
So at a guess, a 1TB drive, using a Windows built-in approach, you
could get it down to 500GB before the clone attempt. Any decent third party
partition management software, can re-dimension the source disk, so it's
ready to be cloned.

Macrium Reflect Free can clone. And it can clone while resizing one partition.
As long as the "oversized" partition is the last partition, it should work OK.
If the Big partition was a central one, it wouldn't know what to do.

+-----+-------+-------+----------------------+ +-----+-------+-------+-------+
| MBR | Small | Small | Big and nearly empty | -- | MBR | Small | Small | Small |
+-----+-------+-------+----------------------+ +-----+-------+-------+-------+

Since the 1TB disk was prepared by the Windows 7 OS installer disc,
the alignment should be good (1MB alignment, instead of traditional
63 sector alignment). So that part should be OK. Some tools explicitly
recognize the SSD as a flash device, and change the 63 sector source alignment
to suit a megabyte-aligned destination. You probably don't need anything
special there. Acronis would likely do that for you, if that was
a problem.

In short, you should be able to cook up something.

Well wife came home with a 120Gb SSD. Here system disk is currently
using 210Gb. Thankfully there's two obvious data folders take up 130Gb
of space can be easily offloaded to an external drive and then once
deleted off the system drive the drive is down to 80Gb so should fit on
the SSD provided the Acronis included boot disk does it's job properly.

Does the Windows Backup & Restore basically expect the same hard disk
size in system when trying to recreate a disk from the backup?

pjp wrote:
In article , says...
pjp wrote:
I'm wondering best way to go about updating a system to use an SSD. Plan
is to replce the existing 1Tb WD drive with an SSD (likely a 120Gb maybe
240Gb), making it "Drive C" and the bootable system drive. The existing
hd will be reassigned as a data drive "D". I'd leave it unattached once
transfer complete for first boot to insure it's "safe" to proceed
further, e.g. wipe old drive and reassign.

The existing drive does not have near 120Gb on it and anything that can
be simply copied can be easily across network or using external drives
which should cut it down even more so (I'd guess approx 40Gb).

I'm wondering it Windows Backup & Restore will do this or would I be
better trying Acronis or Micrium OR should I make an image unsing all
three and then see what happens LOL.

The concern, of course, is going to the smaller disk size.

Oh, SSD likely comes with some software also but have no idea yet what.
I'm looking at one of the better rated Samsung drives, little pricier
but reviews seem more positive.
The System Image on Windows 7 is not intended for a "clone plus resize".

To do that, you'd need to shrink the source disk to suit the dimensions
of the new destination device. And the "shrink" in Disk Management, has
problems with certain metadata, which prevents shrinking of more than 50%.
So at a guess, a 1TB drive, using a Windows built-in approach, you
could get it down to 500GB before the clone attempt. Any decent third party
partition management software, can re-dimension the source disk, so it's
ready to be cloned.

Macrium Reflect Free can clone. And it can clone while resizing one partition.
As long as the "oversized" partition is the last partition, it should work OK.
If the Big partition was a central one, it wouldn't know what to do.

+-----+-------+-------+----------------------+ +-----+-------+-------+-------+
| MBR | Small | Small | Big and nearly empty | -- | MBR | Small | Small | Small |
+-----+-------+-------+----------------------+ +-----+-------+-------+-------+

Since the 1TB disk was prepared by the Windows 7 OS installer disc,
the alignment should be good (1MB alignment, instead of traditional
63 sector alignment). So that part should be OK. Some tools explicitly
recognize the SSD as a flash device, and change the 63 sector source alignment
to suit a megabyte-aligned destination. You probably don't need anything
special there. Acronis would likely do that for you, if that was
a problem.

In short, you should be able to cook up something.

Well wife came home with a 120Gb SSD. Here system disk is currently
using 210Gb. Thankfully there's two obvious data folders take up 130Gb
of space can be easily offloaded to an external drive and then once
deleted off the system drive the drive is down to 80Gb so should fit on
the SSD provided the Acronis included boot disk does it's job properly.

Does the Windows Backup & Restore basically expect the same hard disk
size in system when trying to recreate a disk from the backup?

Yes. If you made a backup of the 1TB drive, System Image is not going
to like restoring that to the SSD as a target, That's something you'd
use a third-party tool for (resize during restore). The System Image
is as plain an application as you can get. The feature is there
basically to cover you against a disk failure.

With certain exceptions, one thing that is nice about the
System Image, is if you look in the folder it is held in,
it's a VHD file. Which means there is one large file per
partition. And that file can be loaded into virtual machines,
or mounted as a lettered file system. I've used that capability,
to backup my laptop, then insert the .vhd file into VPS2007 and
examine the laptop image in a virtual machine. That's good if I
want to see what files are on the laptop, without actually
starting the laptop up.

An exception case, is the file format of the backup when the
backup is written directly to DVDs. I tried doing that here,
and it took ages to do. And when I extracted the file off the
thing, the extension may have said .vhd or .vhdx, but the
internal format was wrong. And no other tool could read that
file. So in terms of backups to DVD, find something else. I
want file formats, where I have multiple tools to work with
them. And the .vhd files from System Image onto a hard drive,
meet that requirement. I was surprised to find the DVD version
of backup file format, was so strange.

Since there is also a file by file backup scheme, that's another
opportunity to back stuff up. But I just like imaging here,
as I'm too lazy to sit around moaning about what folders to include :-)

Paul

On 6/7/2014 1:02 PM, pjp wrote:

I'm wondering best way to go about updating a system to use an SSD. Plan
is to replce the existing 1Tb WD drive with an SSD (likely a 120Gb maybe
240Gb), making it "Drive C" and the bootable system drive. The existing
hd will be reassigned as a data drive "D". I'd leave it unattached once
transfer complete for first boot to insure it's "safe" to proceed
further, e.g. wipe old drive and reassign.

The existing drive does not have near 120Gb on it and anything that can
be simply copied can be easily across network or using external drives
which should cut it down even more so (I'd guess approx 40Gb).

I'm wondering it Windows Backup & Restore will do this or would I be
better trying Acronis or Micrium OR should I make an image unsing all
three and then see what happens LOL.

The concern, of course, is going to the smaller disk size.

Oh, SSD likely comes with some software also but have no idea yet what.
I'm looking at one of the better rated Samsung drives, little pricier
but reviews seem more positive.

Samsung SSD has all instructions and software with SSD or d/l from their
site.

Easiest to use one of the USB to SSD/HDD external adapters to fill the
SSD from the existing boot HDD. Samsung software will do the disk
assignment of SSD to C: and existing HDD as required. If current HDD has
multi partitions will take care of assigning drive letters (old C: to
another letter)

Then open computer and mount SSD - need mounting bracket for SSD if
going into a desktop and cable to connect old HDD left in D/T as data drive.

Whos SSD?
If Samsung and you buy the kit, it comes with cloen sw on CD and USB
cable (cable is USB to SSD only as the SSD requires little power, there
is no external power for the SSD required) that will do a clone. I did
that and it worked perfectly. The kit was only $10 more. Mine was a
laptop with 1T to a Samsung 500G SSD.

In article , says...

On 6/7/2014 1:02 PM, pjp wrote:

I'm wondering best way to go about updating a system to use an SSD. Plan
is to replce the existing 1Tb WD drive with an SSD (likely a 120Gb maybe
240Gb), making it "Drive C" and the bootable system drive. The existing
hd will be reassigned as a data drive "D". I'd leave it unattached once
transfer complete for first boot to insure it's "safe" to proceed
further, e.g. wipe old drive and reassign.

The existing drive does not have near 120Gb on it and anything that can
be simply copied can be easily across network or using external drives
which should cut it down even more so (I'd guess approx 40Gb).

I'm wondering it Windows Backup & Restore will do this or would I be
better trying Acronis or Micrium OR should I make an image unsing all
three and then see what happens LOL.

The concern, of course, is going to the smaller disk size.

Oh, SSD likely comes with some software also but have no idea yet what.
I'm looking at one of the better rated Samsung drives, little pricier
but reviews seem more positive.

Samsung SSD has all instructions and software with SSD or d/l from their
site.

Easiest to use one of the USB to SSD/HDD external adapters to fill the
SSD from the existing boot HDD. Samsung software will do the disk
assignment of SSD to C: and existing HDD as required. If current HDD has
multi partitions will take care of assigning drive letters (old C: to
another letter)

Then open computer and mount SSD - need mounting bracket for SSD if
going into a desktop and cable to connect old HDD left in D/T as data drive.

Are you suggesting it easiest to first put the ssd in the provided usb
external adapter enclosure first and then clone it? Then once the clone
is done remove it from the usb enclosure and replace the existing hard
disk with the ssd? Boot and if all is well put the old hd back in as
secondary, clean it up and use it for data/

I would have instead put it into the desktop as an internal second drive
to do the cloning. Yes, does seem easier if it'll do it to an external
enclosure first.

In article , says...

Whos SSD?
If Samsung and you buy the kit, it comes with cloen sw on CD and USB
cable (cable is USB to SSD only as the SSD requires little power, there
is no external power for the SSD required) that will do a clone. I did
that and it worked perfectly. The kit was only $10 more. Mine was a
laptop with 1T to a Samsung 500G SSD.

Yes, Samsung. Appears to have boot disk for Acronis included. Other
thread suggests I should just temporarily put it in the provided
external enclosure, then clone existing hard disk to the (now) external
usb drive then once done swap it into system replacing existing hard
disk. Boot and if all is well put old hd back in as secondary drive.

I've just got a couple of folders to move first to shrink existing disk
down in size (I've an empty 2Tb for that) and then time to play

On 6/8/2014 2:33 AM, Charlie+ wrote:
On Sat, 07 Jun 2014 22:07:36 -0700, OldGuy wrote as
underneath :

Whos SSD?
If Samsung and you buy the kit, it comes with cloen sw on CD and USB
cable (cable is USB to SSD only as the SSD requires little power, there
is no external power for the SSD required) that will do a clone. I did
that and it worked perfectly. The kit was only $10 more. Mine was a
laptop with 1T to a Samsung 500G SSD.


There is lots the Samsung people dont tell you about their software - be
careful, here is a message I had direct from them in reply to my queries
after difficulty with their software that came with a 840 EVO SSD 120GB.
I think OldGuy was quite lucky! If you do a fresh install then it would
be a plain sail.... basically their software is fickle and flaky.

QUOTE-
"Thank you for your email.
Actually the Magician software is not able to well recognize the SSD
when connected via Sata-USB cable, so it doesn’t matter how many
different cable you use it will never be recognized correctly and it
will never work correctly.

The Magician software can be used only when the SSD is connected
directly to a Sata port with no Nvidia, Marvell or AMD Sata controllers:
with these kind of controllers it may not work properly.

The newest version, available from the link below
http://www.samsung.com/global/busine...downloads.html
should work correctly even with the above controllers.
( I add an edit here - I was already using the latest software! So may
not apply!)

The Magician can also not work correctly if the SSD is recognized in
Device Manager as SCSI device instead of Sata drive, so it is possible
that on the Desktop PC the SSD has been recognized as SCSI drive. In
these cases, the best solution, under Windows 7 or 8, is to uninstall
the Sata driver in device Manager and reboot the PC so that Windows can
install its own driver which usually recognize the SSD correctly.

About the Data Migration I agree, there are some issues going around
with this software and Samsung is working to improve it.

If you still have issue with the SMART values, please send me a
screenshot of the values and the attached file filled in so that I can
double check what is going on.

Have a nice weekend ahead."
END QUOTE-
Their last paragraph refers to the fact that by the time I got the
transfer done (used Acronis!) the SSD had clocked up 1104 CRC errors in
the SMART table! C+

The USB Sata debacle was one of my problems with Samsung and other SSDs
A couple of other issues also arose.

Seems that the drivers for some AMD/ATI chipsets didn't work well with
the SSD firmware update programs. (Revert to the windows drivers, do
the firmware update, then back to the AMD/ATI driver!

Next issue. I have one Win7 older desktop that has had somewhat of an
extended and checkered life. For some likely convoluted reason,
replacing the boot drive with an SSD drive resulted in a "recovered"
window 7 system. Basically, the hidden system partition isn't there.
As a result, the windows backup scheme usually fails. Some of the third
party software also fails. Perhaps that software is using windows
internals that are the culprit. I've used both macrum and acronis older
versions. as well as whatever Samsung and other SSD mfrs included with.
SSDs.

On 6/7/2014 11:39 PM, pjp wrote:
In article , says...

Whos SSD?
If Samsung and you buy the kit, it comes with cloen sw on CD and USB
cable (cable is USB to SSD only as the SSD requires little power, there
is no external power for the SSD required) that will do a clone. I did
that and it worked perfectly. The kit was only $10 more. Mine was a
laptop with 1T to a Samsung 500G SSD.

Yes, Samsung. Appears to have boot disk for Acronis included. Other
thread suggests I should just temporarily put it in the provided
external enclosure, then clone existing hard disk to the (now) external
usb drive then once done swap it into system replacing existing hard
disk. Boot and if all is well put old hd back in as secondary drive.

I've just got a couple of folders to move first to shrink existing disk
down in size (I've an empty 2Tb for that) and then time to play


Basically, that is how my PC was setup late last year.

The PC came with a 1 TB WDC hard drive (a "spinner"), drive-C. The PC
guru who set it up for me installed a 100 GB SSD, which he installed as
drive-D. He installed Acronis True Image Home 2010, for which he had a
multi-user license and which he used to clone drive-C to drive-D. He
then swapped the two drives so that drive-C is now the 100 GB SSD and
drive-D is the 1 TB WDC spinner. After booting from the new drive-C, he
reformatted what became drive-D.

I use drive-C for Windows and application software (about 60% full) and
drive-D for data (about 20% full). I don't think I will ever approach
50% full on drive-D, but that was the factory-installed hard drive from
Dell.

Because he had a multi-user license, the PC guru left Acronis installed.
I use it for my weekly backups.

--
David E. Ross

The Crimea is Putin's Sudetenland.
The Ukraine will be Putin's Czechoslovakia.
See http://www.rossde.com/editorials/edtl_PutinUkraine.html.

On 6/8/2014 2:34 AM, pjp wrote:
In article , says...

On 6/7/2014 1:02 PM, pjp wrote:

I'm wondering best way to go about updating a system to use an SSD. Plan
is to replce the existing 1Tb WD drive with an SSD (likely a 120Gb maybe
240Gb), making it "Drive C" and the bootable system drive. The existing
hd will be reassigned as a data drive "D". I'd leave it unattached once
transfer complete for first boot to insure it's "safe" to proceed
further, e.g. wipe old drive and reassign.

The existing drive does not have near 120Gb on it and anything that can
be simply copied can be easily across network or using external drives
which should cut it down even more so (I'd guess approx 40Gb).

I'm wondering it Windows Backup & Restore will do this or would I be
better trying Acronis or Micrium OR should I make an image unsing all
three and then see what happens LOL.

The concern, of course, is going to the smaller disk size.

Oh, SSD likely comes with some software also but have no idea yet what.
I'm looking at one of the better rated Samsung drives, little pricier
but reviews seem more positive.

Samsung SSD has all instructions and software with SSD or d/l from their
site.

Easiest to use one of the USB to SSD/HDD external adapters to fill the
SSD from the existing boot HDD. Samsung software will do the disk
assignment of SSD to C: and existing HDD as required. If current HDD has
multi partitions will take care of assigning drive letters (old C: to
another letter)

Then open computer and mount SSD - need mounting bracket for SSD if
going into a desktop and cable to connect old HDD left in D/T as data drive.

Are you suggesting it easiest to first put the ssd in the provided usb
external adapter enclosure first and then clone it? Then once the clone
is done remove it from the usb enclosure and replace the existing hard
disk with the ssd? Boot and if all is well put the old hd back in as
secondary, clean it up and use it for data/

I would have instead put it into the desktop as an internal second drive
to do the cloning. Yes, does seem easier if it'll do it to an external
enclosure first.

I did what I suggested for a Samsung SSD. Their instructions give a d/l
location for the software needed and you need no other for the project.

In article , says...

On 6/8/2014 2:34 AM, pjp wrote:
In article , says...

On 6/7/2014 1:02 PM, pjp wrote:

I'm wondering best way to go about updating a system to use an SSD. Plan
is to replce the existing 1Tb WD drive with an SSD (likely a 120Gb maybe
240Gb), making it "Drive C" and the bootable system drive. The existing
hd will be reassigned as a data drive "D". I'd leave it unattached once
transfer complete for first boot to insure it's "safe" to proceed
further, e.g. wipe old drive and reassign.

The existing drive does not have near 120Gb on it and anything that can
be simply copied can be easily across network or using external drives
which should cut it down even more so (I'd guess approx 40Gb).

I'm wondering it Windows Backup & Restore will do this or would I be
better trying Acronis or Micrium OR should I make an image unsing all
three and then see what happens LOL.

The concern, of course, is going to the smaller disk size.

Oh, SSD likely comes with some software also but have no idea yet what.
I'm looking at one of the better rated Samsung drives, little pricier
but reviews seem more positive.

Samsung SSD has all instructions and software with SSD or d/l from their
site.

Easiest to use one of the USB to SSD/HDD external adapters to fill the
SSD from the existing boot HDD. Samsung software will do the disk
assignment of SSD to C: and existing HDD as required. If current HDD has
multi partitions will take care of assigning drive letters (old C: to
another letter)

Then open computer and mount SSD - need mounting bracket for SSD if
going into a desktop and cable to connect old HDD left in D/T as data drive.

Are you suggesting it easiest to first put the ssd in the provided usb
external adapter enclosure first and then clone it? Then once the clone
is done remove it from the usb enclosure and replace the existing hard
disk with the ssd? Boot and if all is well put the old hd back in as
secondary, clean it up and use it for data/

I would have instead put it into the desktop as an internal second drive
to do the cloning. Yes, does seem easier if it'll do it to an external
enclosure first.

I did what I suggested for a Samsung SSD. Their instructions give a d/l

Well all went smooth as silk.

I first had to copy and then delete a couple of folders on existing hard
disk so size wasn't an issue. Restarted using provided cd, choose Clone
Hard Disk and picked which etc., 20 min later turn pc off, swap data
cable to new ssd leaving it off old one. PC rebooted and all seemed fine
so 2nd shut down to reconnect old hard disk, restarted, go into HD
Management console and delete the partitions off the old hard disk,
create one new one, format, reassign some drive letters and copy
original stuff off the temp external back to the old drive. She knows
some things are now on drive "D" rather than "C" and she's experienced
enough it shouldn't be a problem.

I have to laugh at the "simple" (their words) install instructions, put
drive in case, connect wires, restart pc. Not exact wording but close
enough (in 12+ languages so small a type ...) LOL