I am fixing to use Macrium Reflect for first time. I am getting a new SSD drive to replace an old SSD as my primary Windows 10 drive. Can I just restore the image to the new drive right out of the box? Or does the new drive need to be formatted? Also, are there any cons to using the intelligent sector and using compression when making an image? I know processing time might be slightly longer - but is there any other downside? Specifically I am worried if either compression or using intelligent sector could corrupt or loss data.
I format and create a partition, then restore the system from the image. The intelligent sector and compression does not threaten anything, by default the medium compression level is still on. Data damage will not be.
There's no loss when using Reflect's lossless compression methods except some time to do the compression. Intelligent Sector imaging will image every sector the Windows OS is using/knows about. If you have hidden DATA on your disk (like Rollback RX snapshots or some horrible stuff like that) or some horrible stuff like that, you must use Reflect's FORENSIC imaging mode to image every sector on the disk. Almost all of us use Intelligent Sector mode when imaging. When restoring your smaller SSD image to a larger disk, you must STOP at the 2nd screen (the Restore Summary) and use the "Advanced Options" LINK in the lower left corner to access a window that will allow you to increase the size of the partition you are restoring to the new disk size. If yo don't you'll wind up with a fully BOOTable System with the same partitions are the original SSD and a bunch of unallocated disk space. It should be fine...
It is the same size SSD. Samsung 830 256GB to a Samsung 860 Pro 256GB. My current one has a 10% unallocated buffer (either setup by Samsung Magician or by me during initial format of the old drive - I forgot which) as a maintenance-wear leveling area. Should I still STOP on the 2nd screen and use the advance screen or will the same unallocated area serve the same purpose on the new drive?
On second thought, do I even need to set-up 10% unallocated area on the SSD? Samsung SSD's supposedly have the longest wear-life and my current drive, per CrystalDiskInfo, has had only 14,276 GB written to it and it has been in use for slightly over 7 years. I do not plan to change my usage, so around 2 TB per year written, I assume I would never wear out a SSD. So would it be okay to have no unallocated space on the new one or do SSDs need some unallocated space even if sparsely written?
SSD manufacturers already "over-provision" their drives at the 7.5-10% level so you really don't need to add any more. If what you quote above is for your "old" SSD, why are you replacing it?
Thanks for help. I am not sure if the 860 Pro is over provisioned. I know the Evo is - it is an advertised 250 GB drive that has 256 capacity with Samsung stating that 6GB is fully reserved. The Pro uses true MLC memory, whereas the Evo uses TLC (branded as 3 bit MLC) and Samsung states to overcome the lower endurance of the EVO drives' memory, it reserves space on them but I find no similar disclosure for the Pros, so I assume none is reserved. Anyone know On why I am getting a new one: I recently had a problem with Windows Defender and tried to restore a Windows created image from a few months ago. I have done that numerous times with no problems, but this one gave me a 0x80070057 error. I tried many solutions but none worked and had to go to a 2.5 year old image from when I first got Windows 10. It worked and I got back to where I was after a night of updates etc. I do not want to risk that again, so I am going to start using Macrium - I like the more control it gives you over imaging than the native Windows procedure. I want to do an initial restore for experience with Macrium. I do not want to risk it on my current drive in case of a problem - shy from recent old image and updating. So with Prime day discounts, I decided to get a new SSD to use it and then just use it going forward. I'll keep my old SSD as backup with it unused - I wont hook SATA nor power cable to it. After I get more comfortable with Macrium, I might use the old SSD as a data drive. By the way, do SSDs lose any data if not powered for long time - will it not be backup if left unpowered for many months?
A 500 GB Samsung 970 EVO SSD has a 5 year, 300 TB of writes warranty. So you are well short of 60 TB of writes per year.
