I bought a new SSD, now what?

I get the impression I'm going about this all wrong. I bought a 120gb SSD and I'd like to use it as my OS and main programs drive making my current drive a secondary. I thought that creating a system repair disk and just using that "reinstall" would do the trick, but as far as I can tell the computer doesn't even try to use the DVD drive even though I've been through the BIOS multiple times trying everything I can think of to get it to boot from the DVD drive first. It does ask to insert media and try again. Maybe it's the disks?

So then I tried the same thing with my USB external drive, but it won't boot from there either.

My OS is an upgrade from Vista, I don't have the Vista disk anymore, which is why I'm trying to use a restore disk. All this aside, if my computer were to have crashed at this point and I needed to restore I'm screwed, so either way I need to figure this out. The one time I've done a system restore on a relatives computer it was rather simple and pretty straight forward. It asks for disks, you put them into the drive, it chugs away. Not this time.

Thanks in advance.
Dan

 

I recently bought a Crucial SSD kit for my Dell laptop. It included a cable and software for transferring everything (including OS). Perhaps you can find something like that?

 

The best way to migrate a system from one hard disk to another, including a SSD, is to image your present disk, storing the image on an external drive, and then restoring that image to your new drive. The software is free -

http://majorgeeks.com/EASEUS_Todo_Backup_Free_Edition_d6195.html

and the basic steps are -

- install the program on your old disk

- from the program create the bootable CD you will use later

- Image your hard disk and store the image on your external drive

- remove old hard disk and install new one

- boot the comp from the bootable CD you created earlier

- restore the image from the external to your new SSD

- boot into system and find it is exactly as it was, only faster hopefully

You will need to be able to boot your system from a bootable CD/DVD of course but your current issue with that could simply be that the DVD you are booting isn't bootable, or possibly the disk is bad. So would be a good idea to test your newly created CD before removing the old drive, just to be sure you can complete the migration.

Let us know how it goes.

 

I thought of that, but currently my current drive's disk contains far more data than my SSD can hold.

 

That will be your personal stuff then, in My Docs, My Pics etc. It's not insoluble but does introduce a few more steps into the process.

- Copy the contents of your personal folders to another drive

- Delete all of their sub-folders and files on the HDD

- Migrate the system to the SSD as above

- Install old HDD and partition/format as required

- Boot to SSD and move My Docs, Music etc to HDD, now drive E or whatever

- Restore your copies of the contents of your personal folders to drive E or whatever, the old HDD.

 

Well I did almost as you suggested. I migrated as much off the HDD to the external drive. I downloaded EaseUS Todo Backup that you've linked too, created the bootable CD, then I simply cloned the HDD to the SSD, rebooted telling the BIOS to use the SSD and voila, here I am.

It's faster that's for certain, but I wouldn't say that it's twice as fast. I reran the Windows Experience Index and the score for the Primary Hard Disk went from a 5.9 to a 6.9. I guess if my Mobo supported SATA III and not just SATA II it would likely be closer to the max 7.9. Still, it's doing what I wanted. Thanks for the help.

 

Good news, and thanks for the feedback. I have been wondering about getting an SSD for this five year old Medion but on past upgrading experience I have never had the performance gains I was hoping for, and it's probably the same for you. The whole thing needs upgrading to avoid bottlenecks. Think I'll just leave well alone for the time being.

 

I did just what you did when I bought my 830 series Samsung 128gb SSD.

Big mistake!!
My read and write speeds were half what they should be.

I was ready to return it, when I was told you MUST do a clean install, not a transfer from an HDD.

I did that and my read and write speeds went through the roof.

Prior to the clean install, my read and write speeds were in the 150 and 50 range.

After: 500/333

I would include a pic, but attachments upload is not working,

You may never get the speeds without Sata!!! and a 6gb port, but they will be better than what you have.

You cannot image from hdd to ssd - they have two different structures.

When you do the clean install make sure to remove all hdds except the SSD

Do a test with Crystal Disc Mark, before and after.
You will be amazed. http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/CrystalDiskMark.shtml

 

I went to Firefox - attachments ok.
Here is a pic of what a properly working SSD is

 

I really don't want to reinstall my OS unless I have too.

 

The ONLY way you will have SSD performance is to do a clean install.

You CANNOT image from HDD to SSD.

THAT is why you can't see any speed increase.

You can keep your current HDD info on a separate HDD and even boot from that as a dual boot,

You can transfer your personal info to the SSD, although I wouldn't do that, because you want to keep the SSD at about 60% max.

If you did a clean install and did the test I referred to, you would see a dramatic increase.

But it's your choice.

 

My SSD was cloned from HDD over 3 months ago, it's bloody fast.

 

I have cloned multiple drives in had absolutely no issues with speed, and they did not require a reinstall of Windows. ATTO benchmarked them to specifications. Requiring a fresh install is more dependent on the hardware that is on the operating system. Not all motherboards play well with solid state drives.

Is a fresh install technically better, yes. Is it always required, no.

 

Why don't you post your sped with the test I referred to and prove it to all of us?

 

I agree about the hardware, but if someone buys an SSD,and doesn't have the correct hardware, then they are wasting their money on the SSD.

Better to just buy a 2tb hdd and wait to upgrade their computer.

 

#1 try linking to the MG's download: http://majorgeeks.com/CrystalDiskMark_d5574.html or the makers - not to a 3rd party d/l site.

#2 I have no wish to reinstall benchmarking software just to 'prove' to you how fast my SSD is, I try to minimise writes on the SSD, benchmarking does the opposite.

IIRC, in that benchmark my C4 was reading at 245-250 and writing around 180, par for the course on a SATA2 'board. HD Sentinel tells me the max. transfer rate today was 179 and my WEI for primary hard disk is 7.5.

FWIW, I had a drive installed here 2 weeks ago that would blow yours out of the water in benchmarks, a RevoDrive 3, it was faulty and was RMA'd but reads clocked over 1000 and writes 900+. In normal usage, it was impossible for me to tell if it was any faster than the C4.

Your initial lack of performance post-cloning may have been as a result of the partition alignment which is reputed to be fairly easy to put right.

 

Whatever.
Partitioning is done automatically by Windows 7, so that was NOT the problem with the HDD.
An image from an hdd, was.
A clean install solved it.

You got 1000 and 900 - sure you did - you're the only one in the world who has.

 

Revo drive do run off the PCI bus and yes they will bench with 900 megabyte a second or above mark.

They actually are that fast.

 

Didn't know that but how can they be any faster than what I have now which gives me a Windows Experience of 7.9 and I just did an image backup of my C drive ( 65gb) in 6 minutes?

 

I don't know about how much faster it can get, but it looks to be 1 TB/s using a RevoDrive on the PCIe bus. It also requires that you have a motherboard which can boot from the slot as well. Not all of them can. The bottleneck in any system has pretty much been the mechanical drives for years. For reference, here's the ATTO of my OCZ Vertex 3 SSD. OCZ drives clone very nicely, it is my brand of choice, I did do a fresh install, and now store my data and emulators on the old Seagate 7200.12 platter drive. Pretty much spot on at the rated 500 write/530 read.

I like it...

:major

And also for reference, disk speeds rated on SATAIII will run at half the rated speed with SATAII, and one quarter the speed on a first gen SATA channel.

 

My test seems identical to yours.
I am a little confused.

Didn't you say that an image is okay from hdd to ssd, and now say you did a fresh install?
Why the change if okay in the beginning?

 

I did a fresh install because I wanted to on my desktop, and then put the data on the old mechanical drive.

When dealing with laptops, I've repeatedly cloned and had zero issues with HP, Compaq, Dell, and even a Toshiba.

And, your write speeds are far slower. About 180 MB/s slower versus my OCZ Vertex 3.