Make your SSD the second boot device in the BIOS (first boot device should be the CD/DVD reader), then there should be no problem.
If you make your old HDD temporarily the first boot device, you can still boot from it. But don't do that with a BIOIS setting change, but with the Boot Priority setting that is listed on your splash screen after power-on.
If and when I get a SSD .. can I forgo coping/ghosting the HDD, and just boot with my AIO USB drive, and format the SDD like any normal HDD?
Now a days SSD drives come with HDD/SSD Migration software . Most Samsung Pro SSDs come with Ghost Software or their own software .
I got two pro 840 they just came with the drive and nothing more.
Might want to take a look at Newegg.Com - SAMSUNG 840 Pro Series MZ-7PD128BW 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) this model comes with SSD and software and manual
I wouldn't too much about the DVD since the download isn't much. When hardware ships with DVDs it often isn't the latest version anyway. I'd be going for the best price.
I've bought a Samsung 840 PRO 128GB having in mind to migrate my OS ( 100MB System Reserved partition and 60GB C: partition, Windows 7 x64 Pro).
1st Attempt:
Samsung Data Migration Tool, which I've disliked from start because:
-it clones the partition on live running OS
-it specifies that it ignores, some files, like hiberfill, pagefile, etc(I'm a paranoid, and it instantly made me wonder if it does ignore other files as well)
-it failed to clone the partition with an 400200 error, for which I could not find an explanation
2nd Attempt:
-started to follow this thread and I have created the 100MB partition,then the 119GB partition, then set OverProvisioning to 11.9GB, remaining with 107GB from 119GB
-used Easesus Disk Clone, in order to clone partitions at block level, since I don't like to use imaging software that creates the image with the OS running
-boot from a System Rescue Linux CD, in order to check if the partitions are 100% identical using these commands:
root@sysresccd /root % cmp -l /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1
root@sysresccd /root % cmp -l /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2
root@sysresccd /root % md5sum /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1
ad2de28c4be117510d91c4096c2a553d /dev/sda1
ad2de28c4be117510d91c4096c2a553d /dev/sdb1
root@sysresccd /root % md5sum /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2
05ab1eff74a006cd441b7bb56cfc3b28 /dev/sda2
05ab1eff74a006cd441b7bb56cfc3b28 /dev/sdb2
-booted from the SSD, and failed with 0x00000.00 error saying something about some "access"
I've realized that I've done something wrong by copying the partitions block by block, instead of cloning them, but this is the only way that I know, that allows to check if the partitions are 100% identical. I'm paranoid and I don't trust something that doesn't have a check method.
I would have found my mistake myself, but I don't have enough knowledge of partitioning and MBRs.
*I've cloned partitions in the past, and I've seen corruption, even though it was small filename/path corruption, it was there, and it was on a small, 10GB partition. Since then, I really want to check actions like these.
I need assistance on how to migrate this OS, in such a manner that linux block compare and md5sum compare is still feasible.
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