Migrating from HDD to SSD

[wes4dbt]

My HDD that came with my machine has problems, the HP utilities says I have a disk problem (can't figure out what their error code means) and my machine does strange things sometimes and I have to reboot for the machine to run correctly.

So I'm going to use this excuse to change to a SSD, I want to do this anyway. My question is can use data migration tool to clone the drive to the SSD even though the HDD may have some bad sectors. I don't have a Win7 disk but I do have a recovery data on a flash drive. But I don't know if will work on the new drive.

Anyone have any experience with this situation??

[dilettante]

No, but consider The case against SSDs.

They are a compromise device. Much more expensive per byte and with nasty limitations.

Performance and reliability problems stem from the reality that they are implemented internally like a fast library of shorter sequential magnetic tapes in order to make them economically feasible at all.

[passel]

Personally, I don't like them. At work we've bought quite a few machines over the last few years with SDD drives, and the number of glitches, failures to boot, etc. has put me off of ever using them myself.
I've got a stack of them in my cabinet where I've cloned the delivered OS to the second terabyte drive, and removed the "primary" SDD drives, and never had a further issue.

[Tanner_H]

To provide a counterpoint, I love the SSDs in my PCs and laptops and would never, ever go back to mechanical hard drives.

Note also that a server environment is totally different from a home PC environment, and consumer-grade SSDs last a hell of a lot longer than most people think.

As for the OP's question, I've always used a Linux boot CD and the classic dd utility to copy drives. (If you choose to do this, carefully heed all the warnings at the link, please.)

[dilettante]

SSDs do vary in quality, and the better ones last for quite a while. However if you think a desktop doesn't use drives the same way as a server does... I'm not sure what you're smoking.

Aside from special purpose servers like those hosting NoSQL datastores as described in the article and striped RAID configurations, most server and client systems beat up drives in pretty much the same pattern.

Ignore the cautions if you will, but most SSD fans are faithful right up until the first time they get burned badly. None of this is to suggest that hard drives are invulnerable and last forever though either.


Frankly if this was my situation I'd stick the old drive in an enclosure or make it the secondary drive. Then install a new primary drive of whatever kind you choose, reinstall the OS from scratch, and then make the effort to recover files and copy them over where it makes sense.

If you choose an SSD as primary I'd buy two drives, and copy the data from the old one to the new secondary.

"Migration" tools would be my very last choice, and one I wouldn't make for myself.

[Tanner_H]

The zdnet article you linked is explicitly about enterprise storage. It starts by referencing on a paper on SSDs in Facebook data centers. The second reference it uses is a paper on specialized log-on-log filesystems, like those used by Twitter. The third paper it references is about SSDs high-performance virtualized systems, like financial trading systems.

Tell me: which of those use-patterns reflects an SSD in a home user's laptop/desktop?

[dilettante]

I think you are missing the point of the article, which pushes the idea that flash memory based devices would be far better rearchitected as a new device type instead emulating a disk drive because they have different physical characteristics. The author blames software though the real issues would have to be handled closer to the hardware first. He is right that a move away from byte-addressability would make them unsuitable as disk drive stand-ins though.

His entire point is that SSDs make poor simulated disk drives by their very nature.

Perhaps a better analogy would be the ancient IBM Data Cell.

[wes4dbt]

"Migration" tools would be my very last choice, and one I wouldn't make for myself.

Why??

Then install a new primary drive of whatever kind you choose, reinstall the OS from scratch, and then make the effort to recover files and copy them over where it makes sense.

As I said before, I don't have a Win7 installation disk and I not sure if the Recovery disk I have on my flash drive will work. I watched one video of an upgrade from HDD to SSD on a HP laptop and they couldn't use their recovery disk because they would only work if the new disk is the exact size as the old one.

[Tanner_H]

I think you are missing the point of the article, which pushes the idea that flash memory based devices would be far better rearchitected as a new device type instead emulating a disk drive because they have different physical characteristics... His entire point is that SSDs make poor simulated disk drives by their very nature.

And I think you're missing the point of the OP.

For the average consumer, what matters is that modern SSDs are much faster and of comparable reliability to traditional hard drives. If their price premium is acceptable, who cares what transitionary layers are used to make it behave like a traditional drive?

If wes4dbt is in charge of a Google datacenter, maybe he cares about the inefficiencies of the translation layers that allow SSDs to be drop-in replacements for a traditional HDD. But I doubt we get many Google engineers here at VBF...

[wes4dbt]

thanks for all the replies, but so far this has turned into a HDD vs SSD discussion, well I bought the SSD before I posted this question so it's a done deal. So far the only answer to my question was one word "No" by Dilettanne, with no explanation of why.

Any further information on the original question would be appreciated.

[dilettante]

See the second half of post #5 above. That's what I'd do based on prior experience with hard drives.

As for the rest... well when we get bored we get cranky.

[dilettante]

I see I missed this:

As I said before, I don't have a Win7 installation disk and I not sure if the Recovery disk I have on my flash drive will work. I watched one video of an upgrade from HDD to SSD on a HP laptop and they couldn't use their recovery disk because they would only work if the new disk is the exact size as the old one.

If you don't have full installation media and your recovery disk has this limitation then it is because your OEM-provided software license doesn't permit you to reinstall. Mostly likely it only really handles a drive replaced under warranty or catastrophic software screwups.

"Time to buy more" as they say, in this case a Windows license and installation media.

"Data migration" tools normally don't clone a bootable partition or entire drive onto new media, though there are tools that can do this. The problem is, if your drive is messed up I'm not sure how useful a copy will be anyway.

[wes4dbt]

dilettante, thanks for the reply

I've found several articles about downloading Windows 7 ISO to a CD or flash drive and use that to reinstall the OS. Like this one http://www.pcworld.com/article/24899...-the-disc.html
do you know if this actually works? Id did find my product key.

[Tanner_H]

@web4dbt, sorry for wandering off-topic!

Your original question was "My question is can use data migration tool to clone the drive to the SSD even though the HDD may have some bad sectors."

My answer is: yes, you can clone data between any two hard drives, even if they are different sizes, and even if the source drive has bad sectors.

Whether or not you should do this is difficult to answer, because it depends on whether the hard drive was smart enough to avoid the bad sectors when it noticed them failing. You can typically inspect the state of a hard drive using a S.M.A.R.T. analysis tool. Here's a good comparison list of different programs that can do this if you want to see how damaged your drive is, and whether it's worth trying to clone it.

You can clone the drive bit-for-bit using the link I posted in #4. More detailed instructions for a potentially damaged drive are available here.

If you don't mind reinstalling Windows from scratch and just migrating the data you want, that's probably the best choice, because you'll be starting with a nice, clean system. I have used instructions very similar to those on your PC World link without trouble, but it has been a few years since I tried with Windows 7. As long as you have your product key and a valid ISO, you should be okay.

Just don't erase your old hard drive until your new one is all set up, so you have a failsafe if things go wrong. (And dilettante's advice to stick that drive in an enclosure is a great one!)

[dilettante]

Well, as they say:

However, we don't recommend that you delete your recovery partition or throw away your existing recovery discs. Although many people have had success with the following procedure, others have not. Some users have not been able to activate their copy of Windows even after entering a valid product key, while others own PCs that require software not included in a Windows 7 ISO. You have no way to know whether this procedure will work for you until you try, and you need a backup plan in case it doesn’t.

HP is fairly notorious for driver issues, often the same model PC was shipped in varying configurations over time. So even if you can find the driver downloads for your system at their site you might have to check them over carefully to be sure to get the right ones. And as far as any preinstalled applications go (typically OEM editions of multimedia and optical disk burning products) you probably won't be able to get them.

All of that assumes your OEM product key works with the Microsoft Software Recovery site. Don't be surprised if you can't get past the first page. OEM SKUs of Windows are required to be supported by that OEM and Microsoft takes little responsibility for support.

Have you checked with HP?

[wes4dbt]

Have you checked with HP?

No, didn't realize reinstalling the Windows OS would also include having to install HP drivers. This machine is only around a year old and actually still under warranty, Costco gives you a 2 year warranty. But I didn't want to deal with shipping the tower back to HP. I didn't think swapping out drives would be all that complicated.

[dilettante]

Maybe you should read through: HP & Costco Concierge Service

Sounds like hard drive failures are a common issue, and maybe it won't be as hard to deal with as you imagine.

See http://www.costco.com/concierge.html

[wes4dbt]

That sound encouraging, thanks for the links.

[krishnanayak]

It's simple for clients, particularly for the novice, to relocate from HDD to SSD with AOMEI programming. A few People might likewise attempt to discover different ways, and afterward we have to allude to the second system.

3. Clone Disk :

Since Operating System is contained inside of circles, you may relocate the OS by cloning plate onto a SSD. This exchanges the framework parcels to SSD, as well as the information segment also. You can't store vast measure of information on SSD in view of the constraint of limit.

2. Reinstall OS :

It's a bit convoluted to straightforwardly introduce OS to SSD and duplicate the information and documents to SSD from the first framework. Now is the right time devouring and complex to reinstall the framework and the applications.

Firstly, you have to move down your present commute, and after that erase all your own records if essential so that your Windows establishment can fit on the strong state drive. After this, you'll clone your present commute onto the SSD and delete your present commute as needed. This operation permits you to move every one of your organizers back to the first hard commute and restore all your own documents from the go down. This is only a brief method of moving Windows from HDD to SSD, however the entire procedure is really muddled.

[wes4dbt]

It's simple for clients, particularly for the novice, to relocate from HDD to SSD with AOMEI programming. A few People might likewise attempt to discover different ways, and afterward we have to allude to the second system.

3. Clone Disk :

Since Operating System is contained inside of circles, you may relocate the OS by cloning plate onto a SSD. This exchanges the framework parcels to SSD, as well as the information segment also. You can't store vast measure of information on SSD in view of the constraint of limit.

2. Reinstall OS :

It's a bit convoluted to straightforwardly introduce OS to SSD and duplicate the information and documents to SSD from the first framework. Now is the right time devouring and complex to reinstall the framework and the applications.

Firstly, you have to move down your present commute, and after that erase all your own records if essential so that your Windows establishment can fit on the strong state drive. After this, you'll clone your present commute onto the SSD and delete your present commute as needed. This operation permits you to move every one of your organizers back to the first hard commute and restore all your own documents from the go down. This is only a brief method of moving Windows from HDD to SSD, however the entire procedure is really muddled.

WOW, thanks for the reply but to be honest, I think something was lost in the translation or where ever your from, they have a different dialect of English compared to the USA. But I think I got the jest of what you were saying.