How to "move" Win 7 to a SSD?

There is a program called norton Ghost, which will make an image of the drive and clone it to another hard drive. I dont know how well it works if you're transferring an image from a large drive to a smaller one, but as long as the SSD has enough space it should work. You can remap a drive letter without losing data within windows itself using the disk manager.

On another note, I run win7 on 2 comps that have OS drives larger than 1tb with zero problems. i think your issues lie elsewhere

I dont know what brand your SSD is but you should probably closely follow this guide http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...mp-Utilities-*

You should do a clean install for the SSD because you probably need to get into ahci mode as well. I would read that thoroughly so you know what you want to do ahead of time. Once you get windows installed and assuming your other drives are still hooked up the data will be accessible. you dont have to do anything to see those drives. also there is no way windows 7 has issues using large drives for an OS drive. I dont know what performance issues you were having but its probably not because of those drives.

From what I understand the partition alignment of HDD and SSD is different. Therefore a simple cloning process should be avoided. Here is a link for starters.
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Axel

I did something similar. It's often better to just do a fresh install of windows anyway.

Just do a fresh install of win7 to the SSD. Install applications to the SSD as well . It shouldn[t hake over about 30 GB for win7 and most common applications. You don't need to do anything to the other drives. The video data is still on them ok.

Then in media center setup, you just need to tell it where to record new programs, as well as where to look for the video you already have installed on the large TB drives. Obviously, you don't want to store video on the SSD.

Ben

On second thought, ignore my clone post above. Your comment about bugginess tells me that something else is not quite right. For me Win7 has been the most stable OS ever. I would use this opportunity and start over with a clean install and directly onto the SSD.

For the initial install I would unplug your current OS drive to avoid that W7 recognizes it and creates a boot manager prompt, which you will not need later on. Once W7 is installed, connect the HD drive again and update links and drive letters where needed.
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Axel

You are going to have to get into your bios first because you want AHCI mode if you can.

- Enable AHCI mode
- Make a bootable Windows 7 usb from your cd (use this tool - http://wudt.codeplex.com/). The install is a LOT faster
- Install your SSD on the 1st SATA port on the motherboard (this is not strictly required but it helps because the bootloader will choose disk0 by default)
- do a clean Win7 install
- update Windows and all device drivers
- if its an Intel SSD, make sure you get the Intel tools and drivers
- benchmark the SSD

Since you are doing a clean install now is also a good time to configure your most needed software (antivirus, utilities, office etc) and then take an image (using Windows Backup or any 3rd party tool) to take an OS image.

You can also use built in imaging in Windows 7

I came across these instructions on overclockers.net

Goto Control Panel > Backup and Restore > Create a system image.

Also create a System Repair disc

For those moving to a larger hard disk it will create an identically sized partition but once you boot into your new installation you can easy have the Disk management "extend" the drive space. (REALLY IMPRESSED MS!)

All you have to do is open Windows Explorer > Right click on 'Computer' > Manage > Disk Management > Right click on the partition that holds the OS > select EXPAND... > then select next. INSTANTLY makes the space ready.

I agree.. I use the native image backup with W7 to do my backups and it works great! You can either put the image on disk(s) or on another HDD, which can be accessed with the install or repair disk.

I bought a Kingston SSD for my main PC and it came with a CD of Acronis disk cloning software. I was able to migrate from my standard hard drive to the SSD with no problems. There are lots of other partitioning and cloning programs available that should do the trick as well.

One thing you need to be aware of with Win 7. If you use a partitioning program to copy the Win 7 partition your PC may not be able to boot. Win 7 creates a separate small partition (usually around 100MB) with system information that is required to boot the Win 7 partition. I'm not clear as to what it actually does but I do know that you need to copy both partitions if you expect Win 7 to work. Your best bet is to do a complete drive copy from the existing drive to the SSD. That way you are ensured that the system partition gets copied to the new drive correctly.

I had a similar setup. 1 OS and 2 data drives



Here is what I did on my setup without altering the original boot drive.
1)Check that the OS drive has less data than the target SSD, uninstall apps as necessary.
Leave at least 2X the amount of RAM free on the SSD, that is if you have 4Gb ram,
there must be at least 8Gb free on the SSD, for things like the hibernate file and the crashdump space.
2)Move swap file and temp directory to data drive if you have not done so
3)Backup OS drive onto another drive.
4)Add SSD, create and format partition.
5)Set SSD partiton to active
6)Restore backup from (3) onto SSD drive
7)Reboot using the SSD as boot device.
8)You may have to reactivate Win7 as the boot drive has changed.


The default Win7 partition alignment works quite nicely for an SSD
Step 2 above reduces the amount of data you have to store on the SSD and
the mount of wear and tear on the SSD due to writing.

In general SSDs need freespace on the drive to reduce the amount of writes
per SSD memory cell. Manufacturers leave about 7%, I add
another 10-15% to that on a 120Gb SSD that would mean a data partition of 100Gb.

This is optional but it helps to prolong the life of the SSD.

The common MLC memory cell can be written/erased about 10,000 times
before it expires.

Also check to see if your motherboard supports AHCI, if it does
enable it and Win7 will use TRIM to consolidate the writes/deletes to the
SSD reducing the amount of write/rewrites to the SSD.

Implicit in the comment above is to include the TRIM feature in when selecting
the SSD. Most newer models on the market already support this.

No it doesn't do that if you don't let it. It won't even try to do it if you properly prepare your HDD first.

Yea, I was about to say I never saw a partition anywhere!


To the OP, the only thing that is going to stand in your way is if the original partition has unmoveable sectors, preventing you from shrinking it to the size of the SSD. I was in this situation, even after disabling hibernation and the swap file. I backed up and restored a few times, and that rearranged the unmovable sectors so the partition would fit on the SSD. It was a pain, though...I should have just reinstalled windows.

I've installed Win 7 Pro, Home Premium, and Ultimate and I have to admit that Pro was the only version I can recall that set up this extra partition. When I tried to reinstall Win 7 64-bit Premium on several occasions and it did not include the extra partition, it simply failed to continue with the installation. I don't know if this is normal or not. I'm just passing along my experience.

I'm not sure what you may be doing to prepare your hard drive first but I've done it using a bare drive as well as deleting an existing partition and letting Windows create and format a new one. I'm not sure if I was presented with an option to add the extra partition or not but I do recall an info window that popped up indicating that Windows may add the partition with system info included. I don't believe it indicated that this would definitely occur but that it might. I only know that when it failed to include it the installation would simply halt.

Here's the lazy way, but it's probably not recommended by most. It's an option you can consider though.

http://www.silverstonetek.com/produc...HDDBOOST&area=

What exactly does this HDDBOOST does?

Do?

It's makes the SSD act like a cache. You keep the old hard drive in the system and place the SSD in the HDDBoost and it connects between the old hard drive and the motherboard.

Yes do
thats kind of a waste of SSD just to use it as cache.

If you're going to go with SSD for increasing speed (why else), then it does what it's supposed to in increasing the speed of your system.

Right.
The content it normally puts on than drive will be dumped onto C.

Having installed Win7 dozens of times over the last year, I don't think "properly prepare" is the right term.
In fact, I can only recall 2 scenarios where "it won't even try": when it is already there (reinstall) or the drive is borderline big enough.

If you just bought a new drive, HDD or SSD, and try to install Win7 on, from Starter to Ultimate, it will ask to create the (hidden) 100MB partition.

Diogen.

You left out the scenario I always use when installing win 7. I format the drive first, and partition it (if not a SSD).

If you don't do that, then you have to not agree to create the hidden partition.

I can't think of any reason to have a hidden partition. Am I missing something?