Installing SSD on HP laptop, how to transfer OS?

I'm trying to instal an SSD on a brand new HP laptop which was purchased refurbished and did not come with any instalation CDs.

I really have no idea where to go from here, I basically need to mirror the main disk onto SSD.

I have a USB 3.0 2.5" hdd enclosure and I was thinking that I could just clone the recovery partition to the SSD and set everything up from there. Am I on the right track, or is there a better way?

 

You could clone it via Acronis/Ghost or get one of those docks that do hardware clone.

 

That is one way: but I wouldn't clone just a single partition - you need to clone the whole drive or it may break any access to the hidden partition you want to get to.

What I would recommend is download all the device drivers for your model on to the old HDD.

Download (legally, from this site) the Windows 7 ISO that is installed on your system and burn to a DVD.

Install SSD, clean install Win 7, install drivers - enjoy your new drive!


By cloning your system, you will not give Windows 7 a chance to optimize itself for an SSD - also, the recovery partition is a waste of space on an SSD - unless you think you'll be re-installing very, very often.

Hope this points you in the right direction?

Good luck.

 

Agreed with tilleroftheearth, do a clean installation. This will give you best result on performance side, and it will also be easier (?).

 

Can you clarify what that means ?

Other than that, I agree that moving from larger size HDD to SSD(I assume that is the case here) needs a bit of work so better to just reinstall from fresh.

 

The main thing a fresh install will do is correctly align the SSD for optimal performance. If the drive is merely cloned, there's no guarantee this will happen.

 

True but if it is already a Vista/Windows 7 fresh install(and not upgrade on an ancient XP), the HDD is already properly aligned @ 4KB multiple. You are correct that if Acronis is used to clone from large HDD to small SSD, the alignment is almost guranteed to be screwed though. Some said the latest version already fix that issue, some said it is still there, I don't have first hand experience with the newest version so can't be sure.

 

Also with a clean install: Windows 7 will set certain features as appropriate for the hardware in use. Such as superfetch, defrag, and other optimizations that more closely match the O/S to the hardware.

chimpanzee,

from what I read - the alignment with Acronis is fine from a clone to/from the same (exact) drive. When two drives are involved though (unless they're exactly the same model/size/etc.) then alignment is hit or miss.

 

Much easier to just download Win7 and do a clean install

 

Yes, if it is not to a smaller drive(i.e. it doesn't need to do the scale down/up), it is ok.

As for other optimization, they are user reachable option(I disable superfetch and scheduled defragment manually initially). Now, I have enabled everything back (except defrag) on my SSD as I found that they don't harm the SSD in any meaningful way. I even defrag it once in a while. SSD to me now is no different than HDD.

Beside, I think I read somewhere(faintly remember it is on OCZ forum) that if you run the WEI assessment again, it would do the optimization.

 

+1 for the clean install. That's how I upgraded to the SDD on my Envy.

Just back up your current Windows activation (only a few K, also in the Windows 7 ISO thread), have graphics, disk and probably network drivers pre-downloaded on a USB drive, and you should be golden.

 

+1 for clean install.

1) get a win7 iso legally of your type (32bit, 64bit, and the version should match).
2) set up a usb stick with this tool and the iso: Microsoft Store: Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool Help
3) get abr (google "activation backup restore") to back up your activation, store on usb stick.
4) replace hdd with ssd, plug in usb. install from usb.
5) restore activation.

that would be the way i'd do it. except, i already have a prepared usb stick for that. so it's "backup activation, replace disk, install from usb, restore activation".

you can do it with a dvd, too, of course. but the stick is more cool, and faster to install, too.

 

Right Davepermen, i just like to add "make the stick bootable on a system that was installed with the same install media you are going to use on the stick"

Why?, i did it but on the first run my stick was prepped from a system that has the new Win7 bootloader on it. (you can see this at booting, if you see a green blocked progress bar, that means you have the older "vista" bootloader (got to mention this loader was also used of some RC versions of Windows 7) if you, on the other hand, see the 4 clored windows balls flying towards you, that means you have the new windows 7 bootloader)
and i got to the screen in which you select a disk to install windows on. i got the message "unable to create bootable partition on this disk" (or something like that, as i recall it from memory)

If you get this it means you should re-prep your stick with the right boot loader. do this with diskpart in winpe or from a running windows machine with the right bootloader.

 

You don't even need to do that much. Microsoft released a utility that will prep, and copy all the needed files straight to a USB drive. All you have to do is run the program, point it to the ISO file you downloaded, and it runs from there. The process takes just a few minutes, and when it's done you have a fully functioning Windows 7 installation that can be run from USB.

Edit: MS seems to have pulled the program from its web site, but it's still available for download at CNET.

 

I'm not sure why the following has not been suggested since it is the simplest and quickest way of all. Just duplicate the existing drive.

I've been using a product called Casper for duplicating drives for years but just discovered a free program that works just as well.

The program is called MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition 5.2. Download it from their site. It is owned by Symantec. And it's a full-featured version, completely free. I've used it twice recently and it works beautifully.

Best Free Partition Manager Freeware for Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP 32 bit & 64 bit. MiniTool Free Partition Manager Software Home Edition.

To be clear, it duplicates the existing disk exactly, byte by byte. OS, programs, files, everything and also lets you copy just a partition if that's what you want to do. Also lets you re-size and create partitions.

My technique in doing this is to run a full virus scan on the source drive, clean it and optimize it, turn off any running virus protection ** (speeds up the copy, at least it does with Casper - MiniTool doesn't say anything about doing this but I do it anyway), then do the copy.

The destination (new) drive can then be put in the computer and booted. You'll have a new drive with exactly everything you had on the older drive.

Simple.

Edit: ** Disconnect from the internet when you've turned off virus protection, of course.

 

The main reason not to duplicate the existing drive (which is exactly what cloning is, by the way), is, as mentioned above, alignment issues. Cloning will not always preserve alignment, which can result in reduced performance. As well, duplication does not always work well when changing hard drive sizes, especially when going from a larger hard drive to a smaller one.

 

Thanks for clarifying that. I've always thought of cloning in terms of making an "image" which requires a restoration process but you are clearly correct that disk duplication and disk cloning, in the strict sense of the word, are the same thing.

I guess a person (me) needs to learn about alignment issues. I've never been aware of any differences between any of the disks I've copied in the past, but then I've not done any speed evaluations on those disks either. They all performed the same it seemed.

I do agree that if one is starting fresh in building a system, a fresh OS install is going to get rid of all the accumulated junk that builds up no matter how cleanly one runs their system.

Re going from a large disk to a smaller one, both Casper and Partition Wizard present the space necessary and available in very clear form. Naturally if trying to fit more data than the destination disk/partition can hold, there's going to be a problem. Neither of these programs would even attempt the copy if there were not sufficient space. I've recently read another person mentioning concern about going between HDD's of different sizes. I think these problems, whatever they are, are something one might experience trying to use Ghost or earlier Acronis products. I've never had the slightest problem with Casper.

 

Alignment doesn't usually matter as much on a HDD, although it can slow it down a bit (which may or may not be noticeable, depending on your usage patterns). Here is an interesting article on the matter. It deals mostly with virtual machines, but you can see how the basic principle would work with almost any basic I/O, especially when you consider that the new WD 750 GB hard drives (and by extension future larger hard drives) are designed with "Advanced Format", which uses 4KB sectors instead of the old 512 byte sectors. Thus, if you clone one drive to another, and the information does not fit into sectors the way they used to on the old drive, you can see how sometimes you might have to end up reading 2 sectors now for a piece of data where on the old drive you only had to read one... which would result in added overhead. It can be even worse on SSDs, given the way they read and write; if data isn't stored "properly" within an aligned block, then instead of writing to only one block, you end up having to write to 2... which is essentially doubling the wear and tear on your drive. This is also why, when you read some SSD reviews, they have values for just random writes, as well as 4K aligned writes; modern OSes like Windows 7 align to 4K sectors, while an older OS like Windows XP aligns to 512 byte sectors. You'll notice that 4K aligned writes are typically much higher than the unaligned writes, which are typically 512 byte aligned. Here is an example of that.