Win 7 transfer to SSD

lesthegringo · 31 August 12, 13:18

I'm looking at putting a SanDisk SDSSDX-120G-G25 120GB Extreme SATA III 6Gb/s 2.5in Internal Solid State Drive into my desktop, which is a i7, Intel DH67CL mobo with 12GB RAM running Win 7 64bit.

It's mainly to use with Photoshop and video editing - it's not a gaming rig.

My worry is that I will have the same hassle moving Win 7 across to it that I had last year when I changed the CPU and Mobo.

What would I need to do to move windows 7 onto the SSD?

Tkrau · 31 August 12, 16:03

Probably what you don't want to hear, but you'd be better off with a fresh 7 install, especially if it's the same install that you had when the CPU/'board swap was done. The OS will be looking for certain hardware that is no longer present and could well be cranky 'cause of that.

redi · 2 September 12, 08:37

^ What he said. It may work, but chances are that Win7 will need some very different drivers for the SSD from the start to make it work properly.

maeckie · 2 September 12, 10:27

sure there is a way to do it:

you can sysprep your install and capture an image and apply it to your ssd.

but not without knowing what you do

lesthegringo · 3 September 12, 09:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by maeckie

sure there is a way to do it:

you can sysprep your install and capture an image and apply it to your ssd.

but not without knowing what you do

Sorry, do you mean I need to know what I am doing, or that you need to know what I do on the PC?

maeckie · 3 September 12, 10:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by lesthegringo

Sorry, do you mean I need to know what I am doing, or that you need to know what I do on the PC?

all i need to know is to know what i´m doing

ok, you should already know a bit about winpe and waik tools like imagex.
it´s not a "i´m just a win-user"-task, you should be having some experience handling those internal windows-tools.

short steps:
first you need to install the waik
then you need to prepare a bootable winpe-disk or ufd according to your cpu-architecture
sysprep your install
start winpe and capture it via imagex
then apply it to the new disk via imagex

DurgeDriven · 3 September 12, 21:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by lesthegringo

What would I need to do to move windows 7 onto the SSD?

Trueimage will make the backup then restore it to your SSD in about 10 minutes.

mrpowcz · 4 September 12, 05:41

I tend to reinstall OS every time I do some big hardware upgrade, despite it may not be necessary at some times.

Because I kinda enjoy it

.

There's nothing like fresh system. No matter how careful I am there is always something useless, too many apps etc. after many months of using so reinstall is only a good thing.

Frankly I don't understand people who keep backing up their OS all the time, are scared to death of losing OS and run the same OS for many years.

Reinstall can be fun, and the main things like drivers are all done within 1-2 hours. Then its just playing with it and slowly installing tons of programs and 3 months later asking yourself Why the hell did I ever need this?.

I back up important data every week of course, really important data are backed up at least on two drives, but OS? Meh, who cares about that

DurgeDriven · 4 September 12, 13:46

You make too many assumptions.

gears · 4 September 12, 14:04

First of all, if you want TRIM enabled for your new SSD, you must turn on AHCI in the BIOS.

If it wasn't turned on during your last Windows install, then you're going to want to do a fresh install on your SSD. Do not do an image.

Turning on AHCI after an install is not recommended and rarely works properly.

mrpowcz · 4 September 12, 16:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by DurgeDriven

You make too many assumptions.

If that was directed at me, I don't make any assumptions, I don't know how you're managing your data/os.. I was just stating how I like to do it.

If I was directing it at anybody, could be my older brother who once stubbornly kept his XP install for more than 3 years, despite upgrading pretty much whole pc lol and had an unstable system which turned to cost him much more time to maintain than do a fresh install which is over in 2 days at most

.

mrpowcz · 4 September 12, 17:04

Oh and yeah as gears suggests, do not forget to tun on AHCI so you can have TRIM and maybe even more importantly, make sure your SSD will be properly aligned.
If you just move over your old OS, your SSD will definitely NOT be correctly aligned.

To do that, simply let W7 installation to do it itself, if you first use software like paragon (which other than that is great software) to make your own partitions it will result in incorrectly set aligned sectors which will decrease performance AND life of your SSD.

There are also some guides how to do it with other sw
http://www.overclock.net/t/1226963/h...hdd-partitions
http://lifehacker.com/5837769/make-s...ve-performance

maeckie · 4 September 12, 17:33

working with a os-image and making backups are 2 pair of shoes.
if you want to move your os, like the op wants, then using an image is the way to go.

you can apply a 10gb-image from a ufd in 5-6 minutes

at that point your still sitting at your windows-install, counting along the percentages of the copied files..

but everybody how they want it : )

mrpowcz · 4 September 12, 22:30

Sure making the image of os is easy and quick but still its not really recommendable when moving from mechanical hdd to ssd, since there are things mentioned above like ahci/trim so it might not work 100% perfect.

Tkrau · 4 September 12, 23:31

The time to image the drive is after the new config is established, stable, etc...that way, the next time you want to do a fresh OS install, you can use the image to get your config back quick and easy.

DurgeDriven · 5 September 12, 00:18

Sorry.

I have used AHCi very long time to hot-plug external sata drives into a back-plate that came with a Gigabyte motherboard I once had.

Never occurred to me most have never enabled it.

It is very handy you can get rid of the remove device thingie as all my bare drives are for archive only there is no problem with write-caching plus it gets rid of all the sata controllers in devices.

You can also disable hot-plug on any sata controllers you like. say the SSD, your primary Sata backup and your DVD leaving you a few to hot-plug.

So AHCi should not be thought of as something you do with just SSD.

As I said KISS, With SSD and Sata for that matter keep a small OS partition and do a 3 monthly zero write for SSD ( for heavy use ) 6 months ( light use )
To restore that near perfect image then takes barely 10 minutes all up for me.

When your "Well worn re-installed with many apps I did not need SSD3" does not run 7.9 WEI anymore when you do fresh install W7... do a zero write with PMagic ....and that is why you want that near perfect image so you back up and running in minutes , not hours.

Then if you go on and play with many apps as mrpowcz you can knock yourself out and wreck the partition ( I have on more then one occassion ! ) .

With Trueimage you can go back to your "near" perfect sim image in 3-6 minutes.

Full 120GB SSD backup would take 20 minutes and 30GB+ space.
Why I run a 30GB OS only they take 2-3 minutes to backup and are 7GB in size that will fit on a 8GB flash.

======================================

So for me the dilemma of OP I would at least try this.

1. Clean house on your Sata.
2. Do a image in case step 3 fails
3. You can edit registry to allow install of AHCI drivers 50-50 in my experience.
4. If it works okay after test and checking everything I would do a new image for the SSD.
5. If it failed to install I would just restore the first image.

Back to square one but it is worth a shot.

DurgeDriven · 5 September 12, 00:44

BTW

If you use Intel Storage or single SSDs and Satas like me
Disable Intel Storage features.

You can smirk about TuneUp

it is the only thing I ever use on my sim tower for maintence and settings.

TrueImage and TuneUp are my fav. tools of all time.

VLC, AfterBurner , NVInspector, Batch Run, Fraps, Joy2key, Foxit, Notepad+ and PhotoFiltre come close second.

gears · 5 September 12, 01:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by DurgeDriven

Sorry.

I have used AHCi very long time to hot-plug external sata drives into a back-plate that came with a Gigabyte motherboard I once had.

Never occurred to me most have never enabled it.

On most motherboards it's set to IDE by default, not AHCI. So it must be enabled by the user.

If it was not enabled before the OP installed his OS, he should not use an image, but rather do a clean install with AHCI enabled.

It's really that simple.

DurgeDriven · 5 September 12, 05:48

Fair enough I agree that is the logical way to do it.

But being the sort of person that likes to try things with different chipsets
I would have a go at enabling AHCi through the registry, install drivers,
reboot to bios enable AHCi.

Like I said 50 - 50 success the limited amount of times I have attempted it.

If you can't make a image of your OS/Drive first don't try this, although I thought that was pretty self explanatory.

If the OP did not have image software to begin with makes the whole thing rather redundant.

Still handy info for someone else maybe in a similar predicament which I am sure there are a few, as suggested by the thread below actually.

Quote:

I am receiving a lot of emails from users who bought a SSD drive................

GUIDE - Enabling AHCI mode AFTER Windows 7 Installation

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=313676

DurgeDriven · 5 September 12, 06:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrpowcz

Oh and yeah as gears suggests, do not forget to tun on AHCI so you can have TRIM and maybe even more importantly, make sure your SSD will be properly aligned.
If you just move over your old OS, your SSD will definitely NOT be correctly aligned.

To do that, simply let W7 installation to do it itself, if you first use software like paragon (which other than that is great software) to make your own partitions it will result in incorrectly set aligned sectors which will decrease performance AND life of your SSD.

There are also some guides how to do it with other sw
http://www.overclock.net/t/1226963/h...hdd-partitions
http://lifehacker.com/5837769/make-s...ve-performance

The effects of trim are varied, you can only load so much rF2. lol

Some people with certain chipsets can get better performance in IDE

I scoff on this wear it out baloney, off course it does happen eventually but in the big scheme of things it is pretty irrelevant.

Most SSD have 5 year warranty now and prices are dropping so ? you do as you have always done, when the next u beaut SSD comes out you buy a bigger one and plonk everything on it.

I zero-write my SSDs and use images I get 7.9 WEI with Corsair3 , it searches reads and writes like greased lightning. between a Fresh W7 and my image there is no difference, i tested everything...trust me ....but ? you telling me I need aligning.

lesthegringo · 6 September 12, 07:06

Blimey, I started something with this thread, didn't I.....

mrpowcz · 6 September 12, 07:59

Trim may not be so important, but alignment quite is, the main issue with wrong alignment isn't the wear, its slower speed.

Left proper, right wrong:

But of course its still lightning fast even if one does everything wrong lol, compared to 7200rpm hdd.

DurgeDriven · 6 September 12, 18:38

You can check alignment in system information with a calculator.

Divide the Partition/s Starting offset Value/s into 4096 and if it/they come out whole numbers you cool.

(SEE PIC)

My advice was same if someone asked me to save the drive doing the same procedure.

I would at least try what I outlined first.

First step, doing a image and trying to edit registry for AHCI does not take that long
so if it does not work no biggie, even if PC wont reboot you restore the image....

If AHCI installs okay go on and make a fresh image and restore it to the SSD.
Then you can check alignment in system information and calculate ( SEE PIC)

If alignment is not okay you can boot GPARTED and align.
Depending how many SSD partitions and size it could 30 minutes or so.

So while I agree a fresh W7 with AHCI enabled beforehand is the BEST and EASIEST way to go
it is not impossible to get around it either.

You stated that you have fun installing programs that by your own admission end up bloating the OS with too much and you do a fresh install. ( I got no problem with that done it 1,000s of times )

Well I have just as much fun in trying to do what defeats others before they start.

DurgeDriven · 7 September 12, 10:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrpowcz

Trim may not be so important, but alignment quite is, the main issue with wrong alignment isn't the wear, its slower speed.

But of course its still lightning fast even if one does everything wrong lol, compared to 7200rpm hdd.

I never said Trim or alignment are not important for wear or speed, off course you right.

I just got the sense some posts were more about my idea was bad or wrong and using trim and alignment as a defence were a little off track.

1. Enabling AHCi on a Windows install is very easy to attempt and imho worth a shot esp. with Intel chipset.

*** WARNING Only if you have made a image of your existing OS first of course ...... lopl

2. You can align a partition very easy with GPARTED anytime you like.

You worry about speed.... a single cell SDD loses speed the more you use it
and all the alignment in the world will not help it. If you keep doing the same baselines tests month after month you will see this.

The only way as I say in other threads is to do a Zero Write with PARTED MAGIC erase tool that will have a worn SSD back to its peak performance in no time.

Then of course you need Trueimage or another cloner to restore your OS.

Once a image is done on a aligned partition ( TrueImage 2011-2012-2013)
it will never shift.

I have to align my SSD before a Backup as I still insist on using XP Master Boot Record so I have no 100mb space on my W7 drive/s. lopl

That is why TrueImage, GParted and PartedMagic have probably become second nature to me that and from from mucking around with XP/Vista/ubuntu/vmware with dual/quad boots........

( those days are done for me )

lesthegringo · 12 October 12, 12:52

Well, finally did it, took about three hours in total, most of which was imaging the old C drive. No problems at all, works fine. Win7 boots a lot more rapidly, Photoshop Elements works a lot faster, so far so good!

DurgeDriven · 12 October 12, 22:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by lesthegringo

Well, finally did it, took about three hours in total, most of which was imaging the old C drive. No problems at all, works fine. Win7 boots a lot more rapidly, Photoshop Elements works a lot faster, so far so good!

Good

Just to refresh.

As long as you do a "standard" W7 install no matter if you enable AHCi or not your SSD will be correctly aligned. The 100 mb space W7 partitions does this.

AS I tried to POINT OUT:

1. You cant defrag a SSD.
2. ALL SSD slow the MORE BLOCKS are WRITTEN .....IE: over time they get slower.
3. The only way to bring the drive back to default performance is a ZERO WRITE
4. How do you do a ZERO WRITE ...............With PARTED MAGIC.

But to do that you are going to need the best image software first.

TRUEIMAGE.

With new SSDs Trim is a very small consideration at the best.

All I ever said case closed.

Tkrau · 13 October 12, 16:10

Sorta on-topic, sorta not - I recently was given an Apple MacBook Air, which is completely flash-based. The boot time is about 3 seconds total...I could get used to this kind of speed.

DurgeDriven · 14 October 12, 07:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tkrau

Sorta on-topic, sorta not - I recently was given an Apple MacBook Air, which it completely flash-based. The boot time is about 3 seconds total...I could get used to this kind of speed.

Nice

W7 on thumb drive I install from power-up to desktop in under 7 minutes.

What a change from the old days, plan a day to do a re-install. lopl
and Dos, win3.1, 95b , 98me/se ... at best a few 100MBs installed.

sjchmura · 14 October 12, 12:43

While a commercial package, Paragon Drive Alignment 3.0 is flawless and 100% brainless vs. GPART.

You can sometimes get it for free with 1 day deals or as part of their larger Home 2012 HD solution (which also alows TrANSFER of win7/win8 to new hardware, fixing of drivers, etc.)

Just a thought.

peterr89 · 18 October 12, 23:01

Hello, if you want TRIM enabled for your new SSD, you must turn on AHCI in the BIOS
http://www.centplay.com/affiliate/id_139/

DurgeDriven · 19 October 12, 03:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by sjchmura

While a commercial package, Paragon Drive Alignment 3.0 is flawless and 100% brainless vs. GPART.

You can sometimes get it for free with 1 day deals or as part of their larger Home 2012 HD solution (which also alows TrANSFER of win7/win8 to new hardware, fixing of drivers, etc.)

Just a thought.

Gpart new version is very easy to use, one click now to align ....and it is free.

Paragon does not zero-write drives

In the end after heavy use a zero-write with PMagic ( free) will be more important then anything else once when you finally notice your SSD is slowing. all the format, trim and alignment will do squat.

Quote:

Originally Posted by peterr89

Hello, if you want TRIM enabled for your new SSD, you must turn on AHCI in the BIOS.

Trim will be enabled but it does not mean it is working.

ie: Don't forget iaSTor ( Intel Rapid Storage Technology ) for Sandy/Ivybridge.

Some people wrongly assume the storage drivers are only for Raid.

31 August 12, 13:18	#1
lesthegringo Join Date: Oct 2006	Win 7 transfer to SSD I'm looking at putting a SanDisk SDSSDX-120G-G25 120GB Extreme SATA III 6Gb/s 2.5in Internal Solid State Drive into my desktop, which is a i7, Intel DH67CL mobo with 12GB RAM running Win 7 64bit. It's mainly to use with Photoshop and video editing - it's not a gaming rig. My worry is that I will have the same hassle moving Win 7 across to it that I had last year when I changed the CPU and Mobo. What would I need to do to move windows 7 onto the SSD?

13 October 12, 16:10	#27
Tkrau Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: Central California	Sorta on-topic, sorta not - I recently was given an Apple MacBook Air, which is completely flash-based. The boot time is about 3 seconds total...I could get used to this kind of speed. Last edited by Tkrau; 14 October 12 at 16:45.

18 October 12, 23:01	#30
peterr89 Join Date: Oct 2012	Hello, if you want TRIM enabled for your new SSD, you must turn on AHCI in the BIOS http://www.centplay.com/affiliate/id_139/ Last edited by peterr89; 13 November 12 at 03:41.

31 August 12, 16:03	#2
Tkrau Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: Central California	Probably what you don't want to hear, but you'd be better off with a fresh 7 install, especially if it's the same install that you had when the CPU/'board swap was done. The OS will be looking for certain hardware that is no longer present and could well be cranky 'cause of that.

2 September 12, 08:37	#3
redi Superator Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: On a thin crust covering a huge ball of hot molten stone whizzing through space Age: 40	^ What he said. It may work, but chances are that Win7 will need some very different drivers for the SSD from the start to make it work properly.

2 September 12, 10:27	#4
maeckie Uploader Join Date: May 2009 Location: Berlin,Germany Age: 38	sure there is a way to do it: you can sysprep your install and capture an image and apply it to your ssd. but not without knowing what you do

4 September 12, 05:41	#8
mrpowcz Join Date: Feb 2010 Age: 23	I tend to reinstall OS every time I do some big hardware upgrade, despite it may not be necessary at some times. Because I kinda enjoy it . There's nothing like fresh system. No matter how careful I am there is always something useless, too many apps etc. after many months of using so reinstall is only a good thing. Frankly I don't understand people who keep backing up their OS all the time, are scared to death of losing OS and run the same OS for many years. Reinstall can be fun, and the main things like drivers are all done within 1-2 hours. Then its just playing with it and slowly installing tons of programs and 3 months later asking yourself Why the hell did I ever need this?. I back up important data every week of course, really important data are backed up at least on two drives, but OS? Meh, who cares about that

4 September 12, 13:46	#9
DurgeDriven Join Date: Jan 2011	You make too many assumptions.

4 September 12, 14:04	#10
gears Donated Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Higgs Boson Age: 45	First of all, if you want TRIM enabled for your new SSD, you must turn on AHCI in the BIOS. If it wasn't turned on during your last Windows install, then you're going to want to do a fresh install on your SSD. Do not do an image. Turning on AHCI after an install is not recommended and rarely works properly.

4 September 12, 17:04	#12
mrpowcz Join Date: Feb 2010 Age: 23	Oh and yeah as gears suggests, do not forget to tun on AHCI so you can have TRIM and maybe even more importantly, make sure your SSD will be properly aligned. If you just move over your old OS, your SSD will definitely NOT be correctly aligned. To do that, simply let W7 installation to do it itself, if you first use software like paragon (which other than that is great software) to make your own partitions it will result in incorrectly set aligned sectors which will decrease performance AND life of your SSD. There are also some guides how to do it with other sw http://www.overclock.net/t/1226963/h...hdd-partitions http://lifehacker.com/5837769/make-s...ve-performance

4 September 12, 17:33	#13
maeckie Uploader Join Date: May 2009 Location: Berlin,Germany Age: 38	working with a os-image and making backups are 2 pair of shoes. if you want to move your os, like the op wants, then using an image is the way to go. you can apply a 10gb-image from a ufd in 5-6 minutes at that point your still sitting at your windows-install, counting along the percentages of the copied files.. but everybody how they want it : )

4 September 12, 22:30	#14
mrpowcz Join Date: Feb 2010 Age: 23	Sure making the image of os is easy and quick but still its not really recommendable when moving from mechanical hdd to ssd, since there are things mentioned above like ahci/trim so it might not work 100% perfect.

4 September 12, 23:31	#15
Tkrau Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: Central California	The time to image the drive is after the new config is established, stable, etc...that way, the next time you want to do a fresh OS install, you can use the image to get your config back quick and easy.

6 September 12, 07:06	#21
lesthegringo Join Date: Oct 2006	Blimey, I started something with this thread, didn't I.....

6 September 12, 07:59	#22
mrpowcz Join Date: Feb 2010 Age: 23	Trim may not be so important, but alignment quite is, the main issue with wrong alignment isn't the wear, its slower speed. Left proper, right wrong: But of course its still lightning fast even if one does everything wrong lol, compared to 7200rpm hdd.

12 October 12, 12:52	#25
lesthegringo Join Date: Oct 2006	Well, finally did it, took about three hours in total, most of which was imaging the old C drive. No problems at all, works fine. Win7 boots a lot more rapidly, Photoshop Elements works a lot faster, so far so good!

14 October 12, 12:43	#29
sjchmura Join Date: Oct 2012	While a commercial package, Paragon Drive Alignment 3.0 is flawless and 100% brainless vs. GPART. You can sometimes get it for free with 1 day deals or as part of their larger Home 2012 HD solution (which also alows TrANSFER of win7/win8 to new hardware, fixing of drivers, etc.) Just a thought.