Does SSD clone need anything special?

Forums › Laptops and mobile computers › Does SSD clone need anything special?

Rikkitic

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#227441 7-Jan-2018 13:26

I am cloning my laptop hard drive on to a smaller SSD using Macrium Reflect. I notice other cloning software has a special tab for cloning the OS to SSD. With Macrium it looks like a simple copy operation (I have to do it that way to reduce the partition size). Do I have to do anything special to ensure correct performance of the SSD after the clone is complete? My laptop has a modern 'BIOS' (UEFI).

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#1931727 7-Jan-2018 14:15

Sectors are addressed differently. And often data can be 'optimized' or have drivers injected to ensure TRIM is enabled in the OS.

If its a samsung or other larger brand, they normally have their own transfer software to take care of this. Will re-order driver letters etc for you.

Rikkitic

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#1931746 7-Jan-2018 14:37

Thanks for the info but not sure what to do with it. The drive is just a cheap SanDisk. Will I have problems? Is there anything I can do to prevent them?

Maybe I should add that this is a very simple set-up. Just a single (visible) partition assigned to drive C. Does the UEFI not take care of trimming or whatever else the drive requires?

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Technofreak

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#1931751 7-Jan-2018 15:19

I have successfully swapped out a smaller SSD for a larger SSD using Macrium Reflect. Looks like this may not work going from HDD to SSD though.

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coffeebaron

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#1931759 7-Jan-2018 16:03

Personally, I always fresh install.

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gbwelly

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#1931762 7-Jan-2018 16:21

Last time I did this, I went to a smaller SSD than the source HDD and used this process with Macrium:

Remove all partitions on the destination SSD.
Use the clone drive option and select the SSD as the destination drive.
It will produce an error because the destination drive is smaller.
My Win 10 install had 3 partitions: System Reserved, C:, and Recovery.
Select the destination partition representing the C: drive and configure the options for it, lowering the size to leave enough room for the recovery partition.
Clicking the clone drive option again now will throw the same error as before. The trick is to now use drag and drop on the last (recovery) partition to the area of free space you have created.
Off you go with the cloning. Due to the resize it's pretty slow, but you just need to wait.

@richms replied to my post, suggesting it would be better to resize the source drive down prior to doing the clone so it goes quickly. I don't know the process, but someone might be able to chime in.

PhantomNVD

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#1931763 7-Jan-2018 16:25

Windows (during setup) detects that the drive is an SSD and enables the Trim as it’s Windows itself that does this.

Fresh install is definitely the best option here.

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antoniosk

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#1931779 7-Jan-2018 17:08

coffeebaron: Personally, I always fresh install.

Ditto

Cloning has been very miss rather than hit for me, so gave up and focused on fresh build. Doesn’t take long with win10 these days.

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Rikkitic

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#1931783 7-Jan-2018 17:20

A general philosophical observation here. Windows always seems to want to make everything, even the simplest procedures, as complicated and roundabout as possible. I have been jumping through unnecessary Microsoft hoops for years. I am old. I am tired of it. I don't want to play software games anymore. I just want to put something together and have it work. I think that's called plug n play.

I don't want to do a fresh install. I don't want to spend days searching for the installation files of obscure programmes I rely on and fiddling with drivers and restoring different data files and all the other crap Windows throws at you and then spend more days trying to figure out why things don't work. The whole point of cloning the drive is so I don't have to do a fresh install.

That aside, I have now finished and the cloned(!) SSD drive is installed and working, at least for the moment. If it has a heart attack because it isn't being trimmed or some other damned thing then I will yank it out again and put the other one back. I am keeping the old one in reserve just in case. My question was if there is anything I can or should do to avoid any problems that might arise from this. If there isn't, then that is the end of the matter.

Macrium Reflect is a truly great piece of software, by the way, which just goes to show that such things are possible. The way to shrink a partition is just to copy and paste everything you can, and when you run out of space on the new drive, you can click on any partition with extra space on it and precisely adjust the size down to whatever you need to fit the other partitions on. For someone who remembers the nightmare early days of 20 megabyte hard drives, and the problems involved in manipulating the partitions on those, this is nothing short of brilliant.

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#1931791 7-Jan-2018 17:28

I've always cloned and it always works first time (I check everything and there's nothing extra to be done)

Rikkitic

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#1931793 7-Jan-2018 17:41

OK, sweet and simple. thanks for that info.

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Oblivian

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#1931796 7-Jan-2018 17:55

Unfortunately technology changes. At the rate of EOL every 3 years for most things

Same goes for wanting to keep existing technologies. Sometimes you just can't. HDD = magnetoptical. Do they like/care not for being defrag'd and adjusted to optimize read. Yes.

SSDs are solid state memory sectors. Do they like to be defrag'd and optimised. NO. It will kill them faster. Each area of memory has a finite life. Optimising them with tools will shorten this. The drives have a total written log which most utils will display for this reason.

So if you are as stuck in your ways as seem, make sure you remove any optimizing tools/utilities and turn off defrag for it about now. And don't think about needing to do it to it in the future.

The sectors are written in order, and as data is added/moved the old sector is marked as 'clean' before later being flagged ready to be reused. Making writes/reads faster. This is where TRIM (and such features as disable prefetch and swapfiles) comes in. Something that just doesn't happen when cloning from 1 technology to the other unless you put in the changes to do so.

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Rikkitic

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#1931802 7-Jan-2018 18:41

Thanks for the useful information. I installed Dashboard and it says my drive is in optimum condition. I will run Trim at regular intervals.

Maybe I am stuck in my ways. I don't see it like that but as one ages, one changes mentally as well as physically. I don't have the energy or focus or patience or motivation that I did when I was younger. Why should I have to? Why after all these years is Windows still such a jumbled mess that I have to do a clean install to ensure I won't have problems? Why should I be made to feel inadequate because I don't want to have to put up with that any longer? Surely Windows is mature enough by now to handle a drive swap without melting down, even if it is different technology?

I don't normally use drive optimisation tools or that kind of thing unless I have an actual problem but I will watch out for that. Thanks again for the tip.

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Oblivian

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#1931805 7-Jan-2018 19:00

Why should I have to? Why after all these years is Windows still such a jumbled mess that I have to do a clean install to ensure I won't have problems?

Windows isn't generally a jumbled mess. It's what occurs post install and changes to it can inadvertently make it so. Most people aren't suggesting that to ensure there is no problems. It is however often the best method to resolve them. And like clearing out a drawer/cupboard of old clothes or documents ensures there isn't anything that has not been referenced in a period of time taking up space/resources.

Most the readers suggesting so have possibly noted similar to me, your double Windows 10 issues thread, the Kodi issues, the not resuming from hibernate etc etc.

Of which can be introduced by in-line changes where drivers are either not updated, or legacy registry strings cause havoc. Fresh installs ensures the hardware detection phases all run and get the most up to date (or certified/stable) drivers for such things. And any conflicting drivers/registry strings are flushed.

I too am a stickler in some respects. However I took a full backup before my recent upgrade to Windows10 and Keep an archive of any software installers should the worst happen.

Worked? yes. To an extent. Sure it made the system boot a bit faster, but it introduced a shutdown issue that says <blank> application is preventing windows for shutting down.

Can I fix it? yes. After 30mins or so of tinkering I worked out it was.. 2 bits of legacy installed software that no longer work under 10.

So yeah, it's likely not people trying to make you feel inadequate. It's just the 'done thing' to help enforce that often a clean start can fix previous experienced issues at the same time.

(and as an aside re the melting down, it's still not clear if a HDD change or 2 will make the digital licence trigger deactivation btw.. so yes. A simple HDD could break the ID string and make it invalid :) )

alexx

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#1931809 7-Jan-2018 19:20

If you have a reasonably recent version of windows, which is almost certainly the case if you are using UEFI, then one potential issue should already be taken care of.

Some old versions of windows would start the first operating system partition after 63 empty blocks. For use with an SSD, the offset should be a multiple of 4k, which should already be the default for newer versions of windows.

There are two more issues I can think of, (i) defrag (as mentioned above, you should check that automatic defrag is switched off) and (ii) TRIM. There is some mention of TRIM on the Macrium site.

When cloning, you should select option: Enable SSD TRIM

More info here:
https://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW/Cloning+a+disk

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Rikkitic

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#1931812 7-Jan-2018 19:44

I should say that it has occurred to me to wonder if the reason I seem to have the kinds of issues I do is because of the way I approach things. Maybe it is worth mentioning that most of the things I was having issues with have now been solved, at least for the moment. Win 10 is humming along, the hibernation problem is solved thanks to the SSD (bad sectors appear to have been causing it) and I have found acceptable workarounds for the Kodi/Shield things, though it annoyed me to have to. No doubt there will be more problems like this but right now things are working pretty well.

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