What is ideal way of moving data to larger SDD, clone or....?

Dear all,

I am wondering if someone on the board can guide me with my scenario. I am planning on upgrading to a larger SSD in order to create a multi-boot setup with Win 7 64 bit Professional and Win 8 Release preview. The system is a Lenovo Thinkpad T420 and the current disk setup is as follows (see attached image from Disk Management console, the disk numbering is what it is because my boot device is an mSATA drive and it is always listed as Disk2):

Disk 0: DATA D:\ on a Crucial m4 128GB SSD

Disk 1: BACKUP E:\ on Hitachic 320 GB spindle used for backups/system images only

Disk 2: Split into two partitions 1) SYSTEM_DRV 1.17GB & 2) WINDOW7_OS of 73.36GB on an Intel 310 series 80GB mSATA drive.


Disk 2 has the OS and all programs and is the boot device.

Disk 0 has all my user profile folders including docs, music, images etc + the browser cache + Thunderbird Email stores

Disk 1: is used for precisely what its label states. I store nightly backups of the full system images created by Windows 7 Backup and restore on it.

Here is what I would like to do.

1) Leave Disk 2 w/current OS alone and not touch it

2) Replace Disk 0 (drive letter is D/Label is DATA/128GB) with a new 256GB SSD. The new disk would be partitioned into two equal parts. One half would be used for the data files on the current D: and

3) The second half would be used Windows 8 RP

4) Both OSes would point to the same data files on the new on DATA D.


What would be the best way to migrate data from the 128GB Crucial to the first partition of the 256 GB SSD? Can I do the following:

1) Run a full system backup
2) Partitition and format the 256 GB by connecting it via USB
3)Do a restore from the most recent backup of DATA D: to the relevant partition of the 256GB
4) Power off and swap out the 128 GB for the 256 GB SSD
5) Check everything is ok and if so, run Win 8 setup

Or should I be cloning DATA D to the a fresh partition on the 256 GB using a program such as Macrium, then doing the swap and then setting up multiboot with Win 8 RP?

Any help would be much appreciated.

I don't see any reason to use Macrium or any imaging application.

Your steps 1 through 5 look OK.

Install the 256 SSD, partition it, move your data from its current location to the new data partition on the new SSD, then install Win 8 to the other partition on the new SSD.

I'd probably disconnect all other drives when it came time to install Win 8 on the new SSD.

Thank you. I was hoping that I did not have to resort to any cloning software. Like to keep things simple.

I would not use any cloning software, for those things I generally prefer the more traditional methods. If possible, plug both HDs at the same time temporarily, format and partition the newer, and copy the whole drive directly.

By the way, I think it's not good to use SSDs for just data, it seems sort of a waste of the device. You'll get much more benefits from it if you put the OS files and programs and enjoy the faster boot time and load time of programs you use. The data itself is accessed much less and is generally smaller, so there is little point of putting it on an ultrafast drive. I would put instead both instances of Windows on each partition of the SSD, and the data on the normal one.

Hi there
Agree absolutely -- SSD great for OS / applications etc -- also if you have Photoshop allocate scratch files to the SSD -- works brilliantly --lightning fast with a decent SSD.

Using an SSD for DATA is really a total waste of the device - especially if this is "Static" type data. By all means keep a few current documents on your SSD if you are working on them but use SSD as TEMPORARY data store for data files -- after you've finished your document etc move it back to a spinner.

Cheers
jimbo