Can I AlienRespawn from HDD to my new SSD, or should I do fresh install.

I have a Corsair 128 SSD and I am waiting for my AW 17 to ship in. I did not have them install an SSD because I have one and they are pricey. Am I able to just create the AlienRespawn and put that on my SSD and then format the HDD for storage, or do I need to do a fresh install since it was originally on an HDD. It is windows 8. Thanks

 

Pretty sure you will have to do a fresh install, but don't quote me on that.

 

I've read a couple of people that have done it that way without problem with win 7, I would hope win8 not to be any different (unless UEFI is a default now and the drive may not be 'seen' without switching to compatibility mode. From what I've seen windows figures out it is on SSD and does things like disable defrag.

Easy thing to try though, just change the boot order in the BIOS or you may end up with a dual boot if you do have to install from scratch

 

Fresh install if you don't want to break your sdd.

Explanations : when you install win8 on a ssd, it applies some ssd tweaks, that idsn't applied when you're installing win8 on a mechanical hdd

 

Fresh install works better when moving from HDD to SSD.

 

Fresh install all the way. Also remember, respawn cd will install on same size drive as it was created from. Unless you shrink e partition size first and then create recovery disks.

 

Ok then next question is. I do the full install but I want all the cool alienware stuff that is added. How do I get this. Does the system come with system software cd's?

 

These two posts should help you out.

HOW TO: Clean Windows 8 Install (Driver Install Order) Guide for Alienware Systems

HOW TO: Restore the Alienware 'Look and Feel' after a clean install of Windows

Edit: Posted the wrong link for the second hyperlink, should be fixed now.

 

Thanks dude, saving this for sure.

 

No problemo! Hope you enjoy your new beast.

 

As already mentioned, fresh install is the way to go. It's more work and can be annoying at times, but the end result is, well, cleaner.

 

AlienRespawn works, but restoring from an HDD to SSD isn't the best route to take.

 

If your system came with a 256gb boot ssd and hdd from factory . An alienrespawn from hdd to ssd shouldn't be a problem right.

 

It wouldn't be HDD to SSD then. The 256GB Boot is an SSD.

 

For sure but isn't the recovery image stored on the hdd to begin with incase your boot drive is jacked up . Or is the alien respawn recovery image stored on the 256gb ssd also.
Sorry just curious and trying to understand.

 

I'm pretty sure it was on the SSD. The SSD that came with my system had like 90GB's used up (150GB~ left) upon first booting it up, and the 750GB HDD had 700GB available. The 256GB mSATA Boot was also partitioned to cache the HDD with 32GB's. So, if you plan to do AlienRespawn, make sure to remove that partition or else you will have issues with Intel Rapid Start Technology the next time you "restore" an SSD without any HDD to cache.

I'm experiencing this now... I blindly went in and just made a recovery USB and then formatted everything. Intel Rapid Start Technology keeps spitting errors at me now upon a restore. A quick uninstall of that application solves the issues, though.

 

Thanks for clarifying that for me as I have never had computer with ssd so all is pretty new to me.