advice on Cloning Win7 HDD partition to new SSD

[dig314]

I am plan to copy my existing Windows 7 HDD partition to a new SSD. Please offer your advice to help me think through this process. My apologies for using the technical terms incorrectly.

My existing HDD partitions are C: Windows 7, D: Windows XP, E: data and the fourth partition is UBUNTU. My boot-manager is GRUB. I don't remember much about the process of installing three operating systems other than I used EasyBCD to get them all bootable.

I plan to take an image of C: Windows 7 with Macrium Reflect and restore it to a new SSD. Then I want to use EasyBCD to configure the old and the "new" operating systems as bootable. What details do I need to consider ?

And finally, this is more of a SSD question. I read something about the SSD partition needs to aligned a certain way. I think the HDD ( that I will be cloning ) was formatted with Windows 7, and Windows 7 automatically uses the correct setting. How can I very that ?

Dig

 

[Mark Phelps]

I did essentially the same thing -- migrated an "HDD" install of Win7 to an SDD, using MR, and it worked without any problems at all. I imaged the OS partition using MR, shutdown the PC, connected the SSD, put the MR WinPE BOOT CD in the drive, booted from it -- and "restored" the recent backup directly to the SSD. Removed the CD, rebooted, everything OK as before.

Have been using the SDD install for several weeks now with no problems.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I read something about the SSD partition needs to aligned a certain way. I think the HDD ( that I will be cloning ) was formatted with Windows 7, and Windows 7 automatically uses the correct setting. How can I very that ?

Do you mean verify?

You can verify the alignment using the Diskpart command from a command prompt.

Diskpart
List disk
Select disk n (where n is the number of the disk containing the partition you want to verify)
List partition

You should see a result like this.

Partition Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 59 GB 1024 KB

The partition is properly aligned if the offset is evenly divisible by 4, as 1024 is in this example.

If you image or clone such a partition to another drive, the alignment is typically retained, but it's a good idea to check after you finish.

 

[whs]

Have a look at this tutorial: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/149969-ssd-install-transfer-operating-system.html