IDE to SSD

I bought myself a Christmas present. I decided, since I was going to replace my current harddrive anyway, I was going to finally get a SSD. I have only ever used IDE drives before so I have a couple questions, but first a little background:

I decided to get this SATA II drive and this SATA I drive. I figured I can use the SSD to store my OS and the othe can store all my other files including multimedia. HP support told me my motherboard supports SATA. I know I will also need a nerw power supply, as mine only supports 250 watts. I've ordered a 400 watt one. Also, I ordered this bay converter.

I currently use Drive Snapshot an my imaging application (because it's that awesome). Will I have any issue restoring my old IDE harddrive image to the new SSD? Are there any differences I need to be aware of with an SSD? I already know not to defrag it, not to secure erase on it, and not to have a swap file stored on it.

Any help would be appreciated.

n8

 

What version of Windows do you use? XP? Vista? 7? Also I would download SSD Tweaker as it will tweak all the settings for Windows to ensure your SSD works at optimal level except the page file which you would manually have to set to another drive yourself.

 

I use Image for Windows/Image for DOS/Image for Linux.

I have already asked Terabyte's Tech Support in advance of ever getting an SSD drive. I asked about "SATA300 to SSD". I would "assume" that EIDE to SSD would be the same. In my case, I would have to make an Image of the current SATA drive using an option called "Align at 2 KiB" (whatever that means). The Restore to the new SSD drive would require the selection of the "Align at 2 KiB" option.

I have never used Drive Snapshot so I do not know if it requires any special settings. I am just "guessing" that maybe it needs a special setting.

 

I found some information on SSD's and alignment that may be of help.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...h-stuttering-and-increases-drive-working-life.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?79848-THE-BASIC-GUIDE-amp-FAQ-ABC-for-OCZ-SSD

 

My apologies. I should have mentioned that I'm using Windows 7 x64. I have two partitions that are relevant to Windows 7; the regular one and the "system reserved" partition, which I believe stores the bootloader? How should I handle that? I can image both, but I don't know if I can partition a SSD and if I can if I should just restore the images like I regularly would?

 

I'm assuming you're going to use an EIDE to SSD converter to use your SSD drive, this seems like a bad idea and you won't be able to benefit fully from SSD technology [aside from the fact that some motherboards cannot recognise drives when a convertor is used]

My advice would be to get rid of the mobo and do a full system upgrade.

Finally, make sure you limit your SSD to read operations as much as possible, move your browser/email/windows cache onto the mechanical drive and as many programs as possible that repeatedly write over the files, reason is that SSDs can only handle so many read/write operations before that sector is worn out, and that sector has to be marked as "unavailable", you're overall storage space will start to decrease after 3-4 years time because of this if you do not look after your SSD

 

From everything I read about installing SSDs it's always much better to reinstall Windows rather than do an image restore, has the potential to save a whole lot of after-the-fact angst, especially with being sure that AHCI is operating. Plus you have the option to do away with the reserved partition if you want.

There are great guides on the SevenForums website such as How to Optimize an SSD / HDD When You're Ready to Reinstall the Operating System

Plus there are guides about what parts of W7 can be eliminated so as to make installing on a smaller SSD more practical. Lots more installation tutorials here:
http://www.sevenforums.com/installation-setup/

Mushkin support folks recommend SSDTweak that was created by a user on the OCZ forums.

[Getting ready to do a similar dance 3x myself.]

 

Thank you all very much for the advice. I was able to successfully migrate my images to the new hardware, and it was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. Here's what I did.

1. I installed the new hardware, which was very easy to do BTW.
2. I booted into a PE so that I could use an external partitioning utility.
3. Using partition wizard, I created one partition on the SSD and four on the 2TB drive.
4. Then, using Drive Snapshot I restored my system image to the SSD. The new drive was not properly aligned, so I had to reimage with IFW (using the 2k option) and reimage the drive with IFW (using the 2k option and the align option).
5. Then I had to tweak it, using SSD tweak and other tweaks.
6. I uninstalled BCWipe
7. I moved the swap from C:\ to the other drive
8. I moved the Sanboxie sandobox from the SSD to the other drive.
9. Now everything works perfectly, and it's aligned.

 

I must ask, I'm not experienced with partitions whatsoever, so what do you mean by "aligning" the drive?

I've recently purchased a PCI SSD for my Christmas after saving a long time, the reason behind PCI was avoiding all the hastle of SATA cables. After doing some research on how to go about installing fresh (which is my plan) I found that I may have some issues such as drive recognition, and found out how to solve them.

During this research I learned about turning off the various functions such as Indexing, Superfetch, defrag, etc. But, I've yet to hear about "aligning" the drive.

What exactly is it, and why do I need to do it? (If I need to do it on a PCI SSD with a fresh Win7 install).

 

You do not need to align. n8chavez had to align his SSD drive because some drive backup software does not keep alignment when restoring an image. Because you are starting fresh no need to worry about that.

 

That is correct. As I understand it, Windows 7 (and Vista) automatically align correctly when installed. This is not the case with XP.

Elapsed - See this page for more information on SSD alignment.

 

Thank you both - 1 less thing to worry about

 

n8chavez

Windows 7 is meant to optimize SSD automatically but leaves Superfetch on which isn't a big deal with lots of RAM.

Type fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo c: into a cmd.exe box for more info.

It maybe worthwhile, formatting, reinstalling several times and trying bigger NTFS cluster sizes than the standard 4K. You should get more performance upto a point at the expense of tiny space. There has to be more performance bacause they are many more average files bigger than 4K in Windows. My suggestion is try the other 8K 16K 32K and 64K sizes and record your speed in each. This is why it is optimal saving your large files on another drive with a larger cluster size.

You can format with a certain cluster size at the start of Windows 7 install with diskpart.

benchmark
http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskMark/index-e.html

Those SSD sandforce controller's are fast!

 

I read somewhere before that there is a special mode for Windows on SSD (I don't know if it activates automatically, i guess not) which limits the write cycles of windows of some functions.

 

Taken from: Link For Source

The link in the quote contains lots of relevant information also!!
You should check if those are disabled, if not, do it manually