Anything I need to know when migrating from HDD to SSD?

[dannyboy75]

Hi all,

With my 38th birthday looming in a few weeks (urgh) I've asked the family for contributions towards an SSD. I've been waiting for the larger drives to come down in price a bit, and decided to take the plunge with the cashback offer that Samsung are doing until 28th.

So I went for an 840 (non-pro) 500Gb. Have never really been tempted to use a small SSD for OS and HDD for everything else, mainly because everything currently sits on a single 500Gb Seagate, and I can't be bothered to reinstall Windows. So I'm planning to do a straight clone of the HDD to the SSD, using Acronis TI. Is there anything I need to know before I do this though, or anything that should be done differently with an SSD in the equation?

thanks

Danny

[Agent]

It's very easy.

Format the drive in W7 or above so it'll align the partition correctly.

Copy the data over using your favourite tool. Older versions of some tools will require you to copy only the *data* and not the partition. Some clone tools are still not smart enough to know about alignment and will blank the partition and copy one that doesn't align to your SSD.

Modern versions of Acronis don't have issues with this, so:

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11
Acronis True Image Home 2011
Acronis True Image Home 2012
Acronis Disk Director 11 Home

..are all fine. See: http://forum.acronis.com/forum/24224

I've used reflect many times without an issue: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
It's free and is well recommended for SSD transfers.

No matter what you use, as long as it's a recent version, it's a trivial transfer.

You won't need to do any changes in Windows, it should just pick it up. You can check TRIM is turned on (it should do it automatically) by putting the following into the command window:

fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify

If you get a "0" returned, all is well. If you get a "1", then let us know

The only other thing that comes to mind is to make sure you enable AHCI in the BIOS, but the chances are this is the default setting anyway.

[AETAaAS]

In my experience, nope. Migrating is usually painless. If you are getting a Samsung, they usually provide migration software even on the non-Pro models. I would use that, because I am not sure what Arconis TI is like. I know sometimes migration makes systems run slow because they copy cluster for cluster (or some low level address system) rather than file for file which can cost performance and I don't know to what detriment this is on an SSD. (I used XXCopy because it uses the latter system and it worked quite well when I was migrating and even writes the boot)

So in short, try using Samsung's own software if you can or try XXCopy, its free.

Then... be ready for the SPEEEEDDD

[ik9000]

Anything I need to know when migrating from HDD to SSD?

Yes. you will never, ever look back. Welcome to the light my friend

[dannyboy75]

Thanks for the replies guys. I have Acronis TI 11, so hopefully that should be OK, although maybe I'll try the Samsung software if that does come with the drive.

Agent - Thanks for the tip regarding TRIM too. Had no idea about that so I'll check it when it's all up and running.

Then... be ready for the SPEEEEDDD

you will never, ever look back. Welcome to the light my friend

Heh, I do feel like a kid at Christmas waiting for this new toy to arrive. The frustrating thing is it'll be here next week (had to order it before the promotion ends), but I'm not allowed to use it until my birthday in mid-July

I get the impression it's gonna be worth the wait though

[dannyboy75]

One other question I just thought of - is it still recommended to run your pagefile on a separate HDD? Or is that deemed unnecessary in these modern times of 16Gb system RAM?

Am pleased with my new choice of tech forums btw, should've signed up here yonks ago......

[ik9000]

no don't do it. Not with decent sized SSD. The penalty will outweigh any "benefit"

If you're talking about running it off a separate SSD then maybe, but even then I would think hard about it first.

[AETAaAS]

I used to have the pagefile on a separate magnetic drive because I was worried about the possibility of the heavy writing costing me drive longevity, this was back when an OCZ Agility 60GB was something to behold. And of course, a 8GB pagefile really was an expense on such a drive.

But since then, I have completely disabled the pagefile, and have had no stability issues . To give context to this; I have been running systems with 8GB RAM for a long time now, with Chrome, games (such as Dirt 3, BF3, Minecraft w/ 1.5GB allocation), Windows Media Player, Handbrake and a bevy of applications running at the same time. While watching the RAM monitor on my G15, never saw it go above ~75%. So I decided to try turning it off and see what happened. Nothing, however I should apply the caveat; "your mileage may vary"

[dannyboy75]

Interesting, I'll certainly keep the pagefile on the SSD then, or might even try disabling it altogether. I kind of resent losing 16Gb of disk space to it anyway

[SuperJag86]

Well if you still wanted to keep a pagefile you could always make it something like 2-4Gb?

[NecronomicoN]

Well if you still wanted to keep a pagefile you could always make it something like 2-4Gb?

Why are you bumping old threads? Not really worth a report, but it is ponderous.

[Agent]

20 posts in a day from 0 is rarely anything other than going for Scans postage offer. Posting on new information in old threads is a classic sign of this, even if the posts are not blatant spam.

[dannyboy75]

Well since my thread has been bumped now, I might as well update it. My birthday was Saturday, and I finally got to install the SSD on Sunday. The difference in speed compared to my old 7200rpm Seagate is epic, there's no other word for it

[karl751]

Yeah they are great, although a fresh install would probably make it noticeably faster

[deejayburnout]

Disable the page file.

I have 8gb ram and disabled it on my 60gb SSD and have never looked back. Never had 1 warning due to lack of mem.

My SSD was the best thing I have bought in the last few years.