Re-imaging a SSD.

[Shootist]

I have a Intel 320 120GB SSD that I just installed last Tuesday. Everything went well with loading a image on it from my spinning HDD. Offset is correct and thdrive is running well.

I got up the other morning to find that somehow Windows Auto Update had been turned on and the system had restarted after Win Update had downloaded & installed 18 updates without my permission.

So today I re-loaded that original image I had used on Tuesday to get rid of the 18 updates (Whether I do them in the further is up to me not MS).

This started me thinking about loading a image on a SSD drive.
1) Should I first run the Clean All command to wipe the drive before loading a image on it?
2) What effect does re-imaging a SSD have on the data, partitions and files that are already on the drive?

The program I use is Acronis TI 2011 that they say has full SSD support. But what does that really mean. During the re-image TI deletes all partitions and then recreates them as to what is contained in the image, even if they are the same.
Reading some reports about SSDs deleting partitions & formatting the speed of the SSD was reduced by just deleting a partition and then recreating it and wasn't reduced by just formatting it. In fact formatting it seemed to improve the performance.
So now I'm wondering Should I go back and format or run the Clean All command and then re-image the drive with that original image.

Or am I just being totally Anal Retentive.

Thanks for any comment. And I do mean any.

 

[Kipper]

I say leave it alone, when TI puts the image back on the drive it will format it correctly.

I personally use the steps given here when I want to clean my Intel SSDs prior to re-imageing my drives. The info came from the OCZ forum but is applicable to any SSD.

Secure Erase with bootable CD

You can download Parted Magic here.

 

[whs]

I always restore on top of the existing partition. Never had any problems - even not with my Gen1 SSDs. And I restore relatively often because I always muck up the systems with my "experiments".

 

[Shootist]

Thanks for the replies and a little reassurance.