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Windows 7 - Moving to SSD

Windows

Want to move your current disk image onto a SSD drive?

Quick, easy and free. Also aligns disk sectors :)

  1. Tidy up your current HDD - delete / move any unneeded items to an archive disk
  2. Shrink the C volume to under the size of the SSD (you do not need to shrink as small as possible, just shrink just under SSD size)
  3. Run Windows Backup (win7 backup is very good, i.e. image backup) onto external USB Drive
  4. Remove your current HDD and install SSD
  5. Restore via Windows Backup — Boot install DVD, and choose Repair your computer, then select recover from windows backup image (use the image you backed up onto your USB drive).
  6. Reboot, then expand the C volume to consume the full space of the SSD

Done.

4k sector hard drives and zfs

Linux, Solaris-Express, Storage

I hit this as a problem recently. One of my disks died in my raidz so i ran down to the store and grabbed me a replacement WD10EARS (Western Digital 1Tb Green) drive.

BUT…

The one thing the store didn’t mention to me is the new 4K cluster sizing on the drive. I guess they assume most people run windows (though the issues are also present in XP). See these posts…