Strategy for Implementing an SSHD

[BobH]

After putting it off for months - years even - I finally pulled the string on a Crucial 250GB solid state hard drive. It has not yet been delivered; so I have not yet installed it or ported windows to it. Viewing properties on my C: drive shows that I've got 229GB out of 238GB available as it is currently configured. About 92GB of that is in my User account which I will not put on the SSHD; so I should have plenty of room.

I've read some web pages relating that, with care, it is possible to clone the existing Win 7 install to the new SSHD. It seems a straightforward process, but I've never done any disk cloning before and don't know what it will entail or if my skills are up to mark. I would do a full back up of the existing internal drives and disconnect the external drives before beginning the SSHD install. In fact, I think that I will rename the externals (6 of them) Z, Y, X, W, V, and U before dismounting them. That way I should prevent any conflicts when I re-mount them. I would also purge my existing C: drive of the User directory then defrag it before attempting to clone it to the SSHD. The new SSHD after cloning should have 229-92=137GB in use leaving almost 50% of the SSHD available for growth from upgrades and software additions.

Can those of you who have done this critique my approach and/or suggest a better strategy for the upgrade? I would prefer not to have to reinstall Win 7 HPE as I doubt I'd ever recover my settings and tweaks.

TIA

[viking33]

Bob,
If you Google "migrate from HDD to SSHD" you will get lots of good info but the general consensus seems to be simply plug in my SSHD and use Acronis to clone from my current HDD to it then switch the boot drive from one to the other.

[stuck]

When I needed to upgrade a failing HDD to a SSD I choose to go for the clean slate, install from scratch option.

However, as well as a Win 7 DVD I had a DVD holding all of the hardware drivers I needed. Also, I didn't have that many apps to reload so the install didn't take that long. I think the longest part of the process was waiting for Windows Update to patch it up to date.

End result was clean, lean and very mean. The laptops boots from cold in a matter of seconds.

Ken

[PaulB]

When I replaced my HDD based C: drive with a SSD, I did a complete reinstall of Windows, much like Ken did. If you follow Viking Bob's suggestion, you will find a lot of information and tutorials on the Web that addresses HDD to SSD migration, so I'm fairly certain that what you propose will work.

The only concern I have is moving the Users accounts directory off the C: drive. I know that some of these System directories have a 'move' function (Pictures, Music etc.), but not all do (AppData). There appears to be conflicting information on the Web about the feasibility of doing this. Do any Loungers have any experience with this?

[StuartR]

I also installed an SSD in my laptop, and took the opportunity to completely reinstall Windows.

The only concern I have is moving the Users accounts directory off the C: drive. I know that some of these System directories have a 'move' function (Pictures, Music etc.), but not all do (AppData). There appears to be conflicting information on the Web about the feasibility of doing this. Do any Loungers have any experience with this?

I just move Documents and Favorites, and leave other stuff on the C: drive. I then do daily backups of my data, and weekly backups of C: - I'm not too fussed if AppData loses a few days of data when I have to restore it.

[BobH]

Thanks for the input, folks!

I've read some more on migrating from an HDD to a 250GB SSD. I found this one by Lifehacker to be very thorough but there are still some things that are not clear to me. Because I've never cloned a drive, I'm uncertain about whether the process uses the physical disk or partitions on a disk. What must I do about the System Reserved space, if anything? Will the cloning process take it over to the SSD?

Here is a screenshot of my Disk Management screen (I dismounted the external HDDs and the several thumb drives I use so as not to confuse any issues. What you see is that I have 2 physical drives internally installed in the system.):

Disk Mgmt.png

After reading the Lifehacker page, I believe that the clone process acts only on the defined partition, not on the physical disk. Am I wrong in this? The answer will dictate how much data manipulation I have to do in the process. Obviously, the existing C: drive plus the System Reserved space are too large for the SSD; so some pruning and reallocation will be required as the Lifehacker article states.

I plan to wind up with the SSD and the existing Disk0 physically installed when I'm done. I can then wipe both Disk0 and Disk1 and use them to temporarily store data from the 1TB drive that I will use for backups during transition. After that is done, I plan to wipe the 1TB drive and install it in the Disk0 slot. I will install the 2 drives currently installed internally in an external multi-drive cabinet. As I understand it, I can place the Documents, Pictures and Music folders on the HDD by remapping them from the SSD folders.

That's the overview of the plan. I will, of course, do some defrags before, during and after to clean things up a bit.

Does this plan sound reasonable? I would prefer not to have to do a clean Win 7 install. I always shoot myself in the foot when I do so.

Does anyone have suggestions for a strategy for using the hard drives after the migration? Should I partition the 1TB drive or not? It will contain all my data (and a whole bunch of refuse that resides on my current partitions that I've never faced up to dealing with. Seems this will be the motivation for finally doing a little housecleaning, eh?

Thanks for your patience in getting this far.

[StuartR]

What software are you using to clone the disk? I would expect cloning software to be able to clone either a disk, or just some partitions.

Looking at your disk layout, what I would do to clone this is first shrink the C partition so that the system reserved + C size comes to the same size as the new SSD (or slightly less). Then clone these two partitions.

[viking33]

Bob,
Using Acronis TI, you have a choice of the entire HD or just partitions.

Clone.JPG

[PaulB]

Bob, unless you do a full re-install of Windows on your SSD, you will have to clone the System Reserved partition to the SSD. This TechNet article explains what the System Reserved partition is and how to install Windows without creating it. Once it is created however, it cannot be deleted. Fortunately it is only 0.1 GB in size.

[BobH]

What software are you using to clone the disk? I would expect cloning software to be able to clone either a disk, or just some partitions.

I have downloaded the free version of EaseUS TODO Backup. I took a look at the clone functions and it seems that it does the whole disk, not just specified partitions. If further investigation proves this true, I will look for other software. I have a licensed copy of Acronis from several years ago but have experienced problems using it for backup and restore functions and do not plan to use it.

I'm open to suggestions.

Looking at your disk layout, what I would do to clone this is first shrink the C partition so that the system reserved + C size comes to the same size as the new SSD (or slightly less). Then clone these two partitions.

Not sure what you mean by shrink. Do you propose that I pull my Documents, Pictures and Music from C leaving just the folders there? Are there other bits you would recommend I move to another drive?

[BobH]

Bob, unless you do a full re-install of Windows on your SSD, you will have to clone the System Reserved partition to the SSD. This TechNet article explains what the System Reserved partition is and how to install Windows without creating it. Once it is created however, it cannot be deleted. Fortunately it is only 0.1 GB in size.

I was not aware of the System Reserved space allocation when I did the install of Win 7. I think I will just clone it to the SSD along with the reduced C drive.

Thanks for the info.

[jonwallace]

Back in January I suggested clonezilla

The link takes you to the online manual.

[StuartR]

When I said shrink the C: partition I meant reduce the size of the actual partition. After completing this operation you will have less free space in this partition, and there will be some unallocated space on the drive.

Here is some further information on how you might do this, but if you get a different cloning tool then this may have a partition manager that can do the job instead.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... ac85c57709