Migrating HDD to SSD: Understanding the Different Geometries

Daddyman · 20 Sep 2012

The amateur geek in me has a question:

HDDs are organized around circular geometries (cylinders, sectors, tracks, etc.) which have no meaning to SSDs. When migrating a system volume from a HDD to a SSD, does the SSD "translate" the circular geometry to a block-based geometry?

Reason I'm asking: I plan to migrate my system volume from HDD to SSD. If I understand correctly, the MFT is based on the circular geometry of the HDD. How then will my new SSD 'find' files and folders organized according to circular geometry?

kbrady1979 · 20 Sep 2012

Sorcery

bobafetthotmail · 21 Sep 2012

They both have index tables somewhere. To find stuff they read their index table that tells where the file is physically located on the device. (quick format erases these index tables, so it's quick but data is still there, it just does no more know how to read it) I suppose SSD index tables are different from spinner index tables.

Cr00zng · 21 Sep 2012

The geometry of storing data is pretty much handled by the drive in itself. The OS communicates the file system type, block size, etc., to the drive and the drive sets up the file system based on the hardware type. The data and its structure tracked by location addresses, or pointers, that the drive assigns and the OS keeps a track of these addresses to find it later.

In my experience, moving Windows 7 HDD image to an SSD had no issues and it will align the block size correctly for the SSD drive.

whs · 21 Sep 2012

The MFT can be anywhere in a partition. The initial Windows installer places it somewhere in the middle of the disk, but it can be moved - e.g. when you shrink a partition with Partition Wizard. PW moves the MFT if required - that is something which Disk Management cannot do. That is why you very often cannot shrink a partition as much as you would like when using Disk Management.

Daddyman · 21 Sep 2012

Cr00zng said:

The geometry of storing data is pretty much handled by the drive in itself. The OS communicates the file system type, block size, etc., to the drive and the drive sets up the file system based on the hardware type. The data and its structure tracked by location addresses, or pointers, that the drive assigns and the OS keeps a track of these addresses to find it later.

That explains it. Thanks very much.