Windows 7: Will Acronis work on SSD?

I've used Acronis for for years (it ain't never failed me yet!) to capture the state of my system for restoration purposes...



Just curious... if I were to install an SSD for my C Drive, can I simply pop in my Acronis recovery CD and restore the system image like I would if I were replacing the C Drive with a standard hard drive?

Or, would have have no choice but to do a clean OS install (Win 7 64bit)?

Somebody told me SSD provides a nice increase in performance... but, I don't wanna do a clean install.

OR, would it be better to go ahead and install the SSD as a spare drive and and install Windows fresh while I'm still using my original C Drive to work from each day.

I'm thinking I could go to boot order when starting the machine and tell it which drive to boot from... I could temporarily remove my original C Drive, install the SSD long enough to install Windows fresh... then put my original C Drive back in place and boot to the SSD to finish setting up my programs and getting it all how I like it while still being able to work from my original C Drive for daily work (my PC is for work)

That is exactly what I did when I got my SSD, only difference is I used Macrium Reflect.

About the only way it should cause a problem is if your current C drive/partition is larger than the SSD. In my case my C was 80 GB and the SSD is 120 GB., so I just went into Disk Management and added the unallocated space and the whole 120 GB was useable.

So long as you are using Acronis 2010 or newer, there should be no issues.
Older versions may be problematic.


Ideally, a fresh install directly to the SSD would be best. But imaging your current drive will work too.
And no, you dont really want to use the SSD as a secondary drive. You want the OS and porgrams on it as thats where all the performance gain is. Unless, its a second SSD used for games or something along that line.

But for a single SSD system, it certainly should be the primary drive with Windows running from it.

I added SSD's to a few PC's recently as C:\ drives. Backed them both up to the larger conventional D:\ drives with Acronis 2010, and they all work fine. They both restore from the Acronis Boot CD. But I would be aware that both have some long delays on booting up. And an especially long delay after hitting 'browse' for the backup files. So be very patient. As I recall both SSD installs were just image files, no fresh installs. I also had to do in addition, make the switch over to AHCI from IDE. The post-install conversion with Windows XP I Googled from somewhere. And I did a Paragon Alignment, again on the Internet somewhere. But that one didn't really do much as far as performance.

No, I was thinking about temporarily setting up the SSD as the main C drive, just long enough to load Win 7 Pro 64bit.... then, since I need to work daily, I could set the SSD up and one of the add on drives (my sata drive would go back to being the main C drive) so I could boot from it in order to load all my sofware as I have time to work on it.

If it's going to make a difference to fresh install.

If Acronis can handle it, then that's be the way to go cause who has a few hours to sit around loading everything all over again and going through all those settings to get everything just how you like it?

That's why I use Acronis in the first place... barring mobo failure, I'll never need to re-install all that stuff.

I'm probably going to wait a while to see what improvements are going to be accomplished on SSD as they continue to make them more reliable and longer lasting.

I personally used the Paragon Migrate OS to SSD, but as far as reliable and longer lasting. Look at data already written, and expected life.



Go for it

A Guy

I suppose I could always keep a spare sata drive around for backup since my Acronis can easily put the image back there if the SSD gave me any problems.

OK, so if I were to seriously entertain the idea... which
SSD is considered to be the best in terms of quality?

And... all the top rated SSDs on Amazon are 2.5 form factor....
Whaddya do, buy one of those 3.5 enclosures to put it in?

Top rated would be Samsung 830 model, Intel, Crucial, and possibly a Kingston HyperX.

You can buy an adapter to mount the SSD in a standard bay---or you can just tape it down anywhere you want. That's what I did when I first bought one, without any problems. They don't weigh any more than a pack of cigarettes and have no moving parts, so they aren't likely to move if taped and not likely to be damaged if they do move.