HDD to SSD migration: mirror or clone HDD or reinstall everything fresh

Status
Not open for further replies.

hyongx

Solid State Member
Messages
6
Hi,
My question is basically in the title. I am considering upgrading from a single HDD, which is my OS drive, to a SSD. This is for a laptop with a single drive bay.

I know it is possible to clone and copy , or mirror, the old HDD image onto the new hard drive. However, has anyone done this?

Do you have any information about a performance difference between hdd mirroring, or reinstalling everything?

I know that win7 supposedly treats a ssd differently than a HDD, but I have a ton of programs installed, most I use regularly, and it would be a pain to go through and reinstall every single program. Mirroring the old drive sounds better for that reason. However, if there will be a noticable performance difference, or stability difference, then I would probably go the painful, fresh install, route.

Any ideas? Thanks.
 
I have used CloneZilla before. You install it on a bootable CD or USB (I used USB w/ YUMI). You go through a bunch of settings then pick a drive...and it clones it and saves it on a different drive, so you will need an external drive to save the image on. Then to put it on the SSD, replace the disks, boot into CloneZilla (which is free btw), and point it to install on the SSD, and you're done. Depending on how large your disk is, it could take quite a while. Mine was 33gb (an old laptop) and it took most of the day...

Be warned, I only did this on the SAME EXACT HARDWARE, so I could test Ubuntu on it...I am NOT sure if this will work when changing hard drives.
 
With Acronis Home Image, it works so well.
I cloned my OS Drive and reinstalled it on an SSD and it seems to work well until now.
Still in the testing phase, on my test PC, but it looks good so far.
 
I'm personally with Slaymate on this one. I've recently changed HDDs (little different but hey :L ) and it's probably less hassle to go with a fresh install. Plus then you don't get a backlog of unwanted files etc.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom