Ed said:
Win7 has its own program for writing a system image; and one that can be
restored with a System Recovery Disk. I've migrated to this instead of a
third party Backup & Restore program I was using, since I used it very
successfully several times recently. Just make sure the images are held
on an external hard drive.
The OP's problem seems to be that he doesn't know the migration
procedure, so here it is;
1. Boot from original hard drive.
2. Save a system image on an external hard drive.
3. Put new hd in box.
4. Boot from a System Recovery Disk, choose Repair Windows and restore
from the image.
Ed
Or stated in yet another way, it would be handy to have a means to have
two hard drives connected to the system at the same time. Something like
a USB enclosure or USB to IDE/SATA adapter kit, may be used for a temporary
setup, to achieve the desired ends.
An SSD with SATA interface, could be inserted into a USB SATA enclosure.
Or connected to a USB to SATA dongle style adapter.
Even a dock could be used, and the SSD stuffed into the dock while
cloning or "restoring a backup". This dock has an adapter plate, that
makes up for the difference in size between 2.5" and 3.5" devices.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817707171
Maybe there is some way to "serve" the backup directory, from another
Windows PC, which could be another way of approaching the problem.
Then the question is, whether the recovery CD can handle a share or
not. Personally, I'd much rather have a USB to SATA device in my
hardware collection, when emergency situations arise - at least,
if all I had was a laptop or netbook with one hard drive bay.
*******
A person could download a copy of the Win7 installer, from a link here,
but the thing is, it's unlikely you'd get a version which exactly
matches the Home Premium x64 OEM used on the original device (or
whatever). I didn't see an exact match for my OEM setup, so the images
here probably won't work right to do an install using the key on the
OEM COA sticker. In theory, these installers probably contain all the
files needed for any version - it's just a matter of how to coerce
the installation to accept the key and enable the appropriate features.
I don't know anything about how that works for Win 7, and perhaps
someone else here knows the rules.
http://techpp.com/2009/11/11/download-windows-7-iso-official-direct-download-links/
The only advantage of installing from the DVD, would be to get an "SSD
alignment" for the partitions, and you can probably do part of that
by hand. On older OSes, the CHS geometry of 63 sectors per track, causes
things to be "aligned to multiples of 63" or the like. With the SSD,
power_of_two alignments are the thing to do, as 63 isn't a good choice
there. Microsoft chose a large enough offset, to accommodate the expected
flash page sizes. But there are probably tools around, which could transfer
over the current hard drive image, and give it a desirable alignment and
size.
I don't have any SSDs here, so haven't tried to do any of this.
*******
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/16454
"I used a LINUX partitioning tool and guide to move my OS partition
over a few megs, then move it back. This fixed the alignment issue on
the SSD. It was relatively painless and took only a few minutes after
I got the tool and burnt it to a bootable CD."
So there may be ways of doing this, without reinstalling the OS.
Using a Linux LiveCD, means Windows isn't running at the time, which
is why the partitions can be moved around or copied, without issues.
There are forums that deal with SSD issues, and they're the place
to start searching. The OCZtechnology forum would be one place to look,
in their "sticky collection" of tools/recipes.
Suffice it to say, a few people have already done this (move to SSD),
so the early adopters have solved all these problems... It's just a matter
of looking it up.
Paul
