Cloning HD to SSD ?

Hi all,

I am planning on cloning my OS Hard Drive to an SSD.

I know a lot of people recommend a clean install but it is a PITA and I have heard of many people cloning without any issues.

I have a couple of questions:

1) Which cloning software would people recommend that will optimise (as best it can) for the SSD ?

Which is better, free programs like Clonezilla and EASEUS or paid for like Acronis ?

Which software would people recommend that will handle the SSD best.

Anyone recommend software they have used ?

2) When to clone ?

Is it best to do it before starting the m17x for the first time (ie boot into the cloning software and clone to SSD before using Windows for first time) or should I boot up into the installed HD, go through the first time windows setup/use, make sure everything is working and then clone ?

Thanks

 

Why does this not surprise me?

My experience is recent Acronis True Image is better (don't need any other Acronis stuff), strictly booted via the CD that one gets with box or oem purchase; so long as boot record is MBR (aka msdos) and partitions are only NTFS and/or FAT32/16.

The free Clonezilla is more limited especially if target disk is not at least as big as source disk.

Get the new laptop settled in for roughly 2 weeks and avoid putting anything private on it during that time. That way if there are warranty problems you can send the laptop back to Alienware with no worries.

 

Thanks for the feedback.

The HD is 500Gb and the SSD is 500Gb so there shouldn't be any sizing issues.

I don't know if I can hold off two weeks plus I understand that Alienware should have any issues with warranty if the only upgrade is an SSD ?

I was thinking of booting up, testing a few things, running some benchmarks and if all is OK, adding and cloning the SSD

 

Do a clean install. It's worth the time. And you should have no issue with warranty if you swap out the HDD for SSD. But do a clean install.

 

I have a further question as most guides I have read refer to cloning the HD to SSD and then removing the old HD to keep as a backup.

As my laptop supports two drives, I want to keep the old drive as a data drive.

If I clone, I assume that I will initially have two bootable disks in the laptop, one the new bootable OS SSD and the old bootable OS Hard Drive.

Before wiping the old drive I will want to confirm that the new SSD is working correctly.

Assuming I change the boot priority in the Bios to the new SSD, will it matter if there is also another disk (the old Hard Drive) connected that is bootable ?

 

There shouldn't be, but it happened to me before that Windows popped a message saying that the second drive was identical to the drive it booted from and it has to disconnect it to avoid conflicts (or something similar) so the drive wasn't accessible. The drive was still working just fine and there were no changes to the data on it though, I just couldn't access it. Besides, if you don't want to take the chance, you can just remove the other drive and store it away for some time until you deem the SSD is performing fine.

 

Thanks for the advice. When I am happy with the SSD, how do I re-connect the old HD to reformat it if Windows won't recognise or let me access it ?

 

The drive will still be there in disk management so you should be able to format it and that didn't happen when I cloned my M6700, but it did happen when I cloned my N50 so it may or may not happen, I guess.

 

I have now started up my new M17x R4 for the first time and gone through the Windows first use setup, downloaded and installed the latest windows updates and tested that everything seems to be working.

The next step is to clone the HD to a new Samsung 840 SSD. I plan on using something like Macrium Reflect Free.

Having a read a fair few threads on cloning and using an SSD, a couple of suggested checks are that the original disk is listed as Basic and that disks are configured as AHCI.

I have checked my Alienware and the original HD is configured as Basic but there do not appear any IDE or AHCI config. The disk appears to be configured as a SCSI.

Is this normal for a new Alienware and will this give me any problems when cloning to SSD ?

Have others cloned successfully with this original config and will the SSD work fine under this mode ?

Thanks