Putting W7 image on a SSD.

[MrNeil]

Getting a SSD soon but can i re-install a image i created on my hard drive to a SSD ??

Many thanks

[Agent]

Yes.

Format the SSD with the Windows 7 disk (important to make sure it's aligned properly)
Copy the data over using one of a million imaging programs
Boot

[Phage]

Or even use W7 backup image and a repair disc.
Or if the old HDD is too big for the SSD try W7 easy transfer.

[scaryjim]

Make sure your boot partition will fit on the SSD. The built in Windows imaging/recovery programs require that the new disk is at least as large as the old boot partition - for for example you can't make an image of a 320GB boot disk and restore it to a 128GB SSD. There's a few partitioning tools out there that can shrink your boot partition to the size of your data, if needs be.

[brookheather]

I recommend using something like Partition Wizard which will clone your hard drive:

http://www.partitionwizard.com/

[Ferral]

Hmmmmmmm

Think I can safely say now after smashing my head off the wall for 4 hours last night I actually managed to sort things out this morning, exact same thing.

Thanks to a bit of research and one of our long term members Kalniel got is sussed.

First off and most importantly is that you have to make sure that when creating the image via backup and restore that the drive you are going to use is equal to or higher volume to the one you currently use.

My problem was that I was using a 320Gb drive and my new SSD is 120Gb.

Now even though the backup was only 45Gb roughly Windows was looking for a 320 or higher volume drive and just decided to throw a fit and not work. So I used Partition Wizard which is dead easy to use to partition my 320Gb drive down to 60Gb and left the rest of the space unallocated. I then created a new image of the now 60Gb drive.

Plugged in my new SSD again and disconnected my 320Gb, started up with the boot disc (Use a CD as its only about 100Mb) and once loaded in select the top option (bottom option is system restore). On the next screen use restore system from image then it will find your backup, just keep clicking next & ok and it will put all your stuff back the way you had it.

After it is done and you are back in to Windows use Partition Wizard again to open up the rest of your space on the SSD and you are sorted.

[Zak33]

/\ he learned that the HARD way.... trust me..

[Ferral]

/\ he learned that the HARD way.... trust me..

grumble grumble grumble....4 hours, migraine when I got up strangle close friend, cant be chewed!!!!

Now it is a case of wow supercool running great and no issues, wouldnt even think I had changed the hard drive! Literally the longest part was creating the new C: drive image, rest was done in less than an hour.

[Agent]

Were you backing the partition up Ferral? If so, then I can see the issue, but when going from HDD > SDD. you should be backing the *data* only and then restoring that.

There should be no need to worry about shrinking / altering partitions before making a clone. Not only that, but if you're actually cloning the *partition* and not the data alone, you might want to check to make sure it's alligned still. So many applications screw up the alignment when you write a partition to a SSD. Worth checking.

[Ferral]

Its working 100% with no issues thankfully. I wanted the whole lot with no messing (settings, bookmarks and all files and directory structures) as I did a clean install a few weeks back as I got the ramnit.a virus, didnt have a backup at the time so it took about a week to get everything set back up the way I wanted.

I backed up to my 1.5Tb drive which is my D: and it has all my games and media on it, separate entity.

When I created the image it was looking for a 320 or higher drive to restore to. Hence why I used Partition Wizard to knock things down to size. Only program I had an issue with was Opera saying it was corrupted so ran checkdisc and it had it fixed within 5 minutes.

[Agent]

Just because it's working doesn't mean it's aligned. You really need to make sure it is on a SSD.

Run 'msinfo32' (just type it in the search box when pressing the Windows key)
Go to components, then disks and find your drive.
Find "partition starting offset"
Divide this number by 4096

If you do not get a whole number (256 for example) then your SSD is not aligned and we need to fix it If it is, hurrah, it's fine!

[Ferral]

I have 1048576

Divide that by 4096

I get 256 exactly

So looking good, however, there I have a gap in my knowledge with regards to alignment so would you explain that please and how to sort it out if there was something wrong

Just noticed that I have Partition Starting offset twice under that drive the top one has the above figures the bottom one however is a little higher and when divided by the 4096 I get a 5 digit number, no point places though.

105906176 / 4096 = 25856

[teppic]

The alignment problem is down to older partitioning software creating the partition boundaries based on HDD sectors (each being 512 bytes), and would create the first partition at sector 63 (i.e. 63x512 = 32,256 bytes from the start of the drive). Since SSDs use 4096 byte 'sectors', the partitions wouldn't align. Windows 7 and newer partitioning tools will do it on 4096 byte boundaries, which suits both older drives and SSDs.

[kalniel]

It's really hard to misalign under windows 7 - pretty much anything you do it will still make sure it's aligned, especially if you're using microsoft tools themselves. You're still fine ferral

[Ferral]

It's really hard to misalign under windows 7 - pretty much anything you do it will still make sure it's aligned, especially if you're using microsoft tools themselves. You're still fine ferral

Yeah its spot on Kal, thanks to your suggestion this morning I had it sorted pretty quickly, the Windows disk management was a mess about and wouldnt let me go below 160Gb but the Partition Wizard program just had a slide bar and was done in about 2 minutes, made life so much easier. I then connected the SSD back up to the PC, booted back in to Windows and formatted it with the same software, then it just took the image and away it went absolutely spot on.

[Agent]

Yeah, on Win 7 it's going to be fine 99% of the time. The issue happens when the drive has been formatted previously (even as early as Vista). Even if you install a new OS on to a drive and you don't specially format it, the alignment won't change, thus being wrong for a SSD.

It's always worth checking the alignment given it takes a few seconds and will have a massive affect on the SSD if it's wrong