Is this possible - Backup HDD, restore image on SSD?

Curious to know whether this can be done or not.

Let's say that I have a regular notebook mechanical hard drive and I backup that HDD by creating a backup image using Acronis.

Now, let's say that I want to replace the HDD in my notebook with an SSD. Would I be able to take the backup image created of the notebook HDD and restore that image on an SSD?

Is that even possible? I'm not certain if this would work since an HDD and SSD store information in very different ways, which could make the restore unsuccessful.

 

Yes it can be done, I don't recommend it as your OS maybe unaligned causing serious performance drp[ as well as excessive wear on the SSD.

 

misalignment can be an issue but there is no excessive wear. In fact, restoring an image put the least stress to the SSD as the write is almost guranteed to be sequential wheras re-install everything would introduce more write(think temp etc. and many are a bit random in nature though not a big issue).

BTW, SSD store info exactly the same as HDD as far as your OS is concerned and I have done this backup/restore using W7 and the alignment is handled properly as well.

 

Yes you can do that, I did it going from RAID 0 Velociraptors to an Intel 320 with the Western Digital version of Acronis. If Windows 7 was responsible for the partitioning, the alignment should be fine. Chimpanzee hit it right on.

 

Alignment is handled properly only after doing a proper install and then restoring to the same exact drive (from what I've read).

 

Yup, you need to have a properly aligned drive to begin with so a drive with XP then upgrade to Vista/W7 would be misaligned from the start.

You don't need to restore to the same exact drive. I restored a W7 installation from a 120GB HDD to a 80GB x25m. Of course, the actual used size(i.e. the allocated size of the system partition) must be smaller than 80G.

 

Ah! Okay, so this is different than what I've originally read.

Thanks for the update.

 

Thanks to all for the very helpful replies and for answering my question! =)

 

Acroins True Image Home works well, and as far as I know, only when using the Clone Full Disk tool.

 

Phil, is that the same as Acronis' sector-by-sector approach for backing up an entire hard drive? I'm using Acronis True Image Home 11.

 

I don't know the sector-by-sector approach.

What works for me: I create a bootable USB key with Acronis. I install the new SSD. I connect the old HDD through USB. I boot from the USB key. I select Tools, Clone full disk automatic. Source: HDD, target: SSD. That works 100% for me. Done it many times.

 

As others have said, cloning the way you mentioned is totally possible, but you will lose proper alignment (unless using Acronis 2011 as Phil said).

HOWEVER:

- Although my SSD alignment was bad after cloning from a hard disk, I did not see any real life performance loss. I am sure there are reports out there comparing performance with and without alignment, but I personally couldn't feel anything was wrong.

- And as I described in my post here, alignment can be easily fixed. All you need to do is to resize/move your partitions to make sure their first sector is a multiple of 2048 or 4096. Here is a guide that worked perfectly for me.

 

This must be a feature that was phased out with subsequent releases of Acronis then. The version I have is from 2009.

Can you define "install the new SSD"? You are simply referring to the act of connecting SATA data and power cables to the SSD correct? Or is there something more you are doing? Also, what version of Acronis are you using?

Thanks very much for the info!

 

Great info guide! Thanks. Dave

 

Yes I meant physically building the SSD into the laptop and connecting the SATA connector. That's all.

I think I used Acronis 2011, but irrc 2010 should also work.

Where it goes wrong is when people try to clone individual partitions instead of using the Clone Full Disk option, automatic.

 

What I did was to backup the HDD with Macrium Reflect, boot from a Windows CD (or USB drive) with the SSD installed, format the SSD, and then used RoboRestore (a separate utility that works from within the command prompt environment used by a Windows CD) to restore the backup onto the SSD and make it bootable. Guaranteed to preserve alignment because the formatting is done on the SSD by Windows, and the backup is restored at the file level onto an existing partition as opposed to the partition level.

 

I moved WinXP over to an SSD with a straight backup/restore using Acronis(no sector-by-sector, just vanilla backup/restore) and it works just fine on the old Lenovo Z61p it's on. Yes, it's incorrectly aligned, but it still works fine and is mucho faster than the HD it replaced.

For casual usage on an old laptop, I don't think alignment is a show-stopper. When Acronis comes up with a backup/restore product that -does- handle alignment, I'll fix it then.

 

That depends on what brand of SSD we are talking about. I remember reading some where that Intel's x25 series show the least impact whereas SF see huge performance hit.

Beside, misaligned SSD is bad for the endurance but if you don't about that, you don't care about that.

 

You probably paid $200+ for that SSD - you should care about endurance.

 

I did a simple image/restore using Acronis WD edition to move from RAID 0 150GB Velociraptors (300GB total available before formatting) to a 120GB Intel 320 SSD. I was only using about 50GB on the drive, so it resized fine. Alignment is correct as well. I know I didn't format it beforehand in Windows.