Do you have to install Win7 to SSD for benefits? Or can you image copy?

Hey all

I'm looking at getting an SSD in the coming months.

I have a question though - apparently Win7 has some nice SSD stuff built into it (like TRIM support).

I haven't found an answer on if it would be OK to take an image of Win7 off a HDD and restore the image to an SSD. Or if you need to INSTALL win7 on the SSD to make sure it sets everything up right.

Anyone know? My google hunt on the topic proved elusive.

Depending on how you do the image and how the image utility works, it may or may not restore with correct cluster alignment. I would do a direct install, or at least have the windows installer create the partitions.

windows 7 detects ssd during install and configures certain things for ssd use, so if you use image made from regular hdd it won't be setup right.

What about SSD in RAID? Or does it matter when it is in RAID?

not sure didn't try raid, as far as i know trim doesn't work when ssds are in raid mode and you would probably have to configure things like disable indexing etc manually. I think if you will use ssds in raid it would be fine to use an image from normal hdd and then just make some service/registry changes.

Everything I've ever read about SSDs says never to image off of a mechanical drive and install to an SSD. I've always heard you're supposed to do a fresh install. If I were you, I wouldn't take the lazy route. I'd do it right. +1 fresh install.

The thing is, if Win7 only applies the proper SSD settings to the OS on a fresh install, then cloning is not the way to go.

If it checks for SSD media on every boot, then it would be possible without much harm, but I still wouldn't recommend it except as an emergency situation type thing.

Not sure anyone even knows if and when Win7 checks the media type, other than perhaps an MS Engineer.

I've always preferred the "clean install" myself.

What about an SSD-to-SSD image copy (i.e., from an older SSD to a newer one)?

It should detect and make the necessary configuration changes (such as turning of defrag etc), when it detects that an SSD device is added.

Even on a cloned system, this should happen on the first boot as the old drive will be removed from device manager and the new SSD added to device manager automatically, at that point the configuration settings for that drive should be applied.

Toytown said:

It should detect and make the necessary configuration changes (such as turning of defrag etc), when it detects that an SSD device is added.

Even on a cloned system, this should happen on the first boot as the old drive will be removed from device manager and the new SSD added to device manager automatically, at that point the configuration settings for that drive should be applied.

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That's what I would figure, but I was hearing some other things. I hadn't seen any definite answers anywhere yet.

Toytown said:

It should detect and make the necessary configuration changes (such as turning of defrag etc), when it detects that an SSD device is added.

Even on a cloned system, this should happen on the first boot as the old drive will be removed from device manager and the new SSD added to device manager automatically, at that point the configuration settings for that drive should be applied.

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I agree completely that's what it SHOULD do, but what it actually does is unknown at the moment, and I can easily see a system check like that slipping through the cracks somehow when they designed the OS.

I don't assume anything anymore with PC's.

If I happen to find an definite answer I'll link it back here.

Limahl said:

I agree completely that's what it SHOULD do, but what it actually does is unknown at the moment, and I can easily see a system check like that slipping through the cracks somehow when they designed the OS.

I don't assume anything anymore with PC's.

If I happen to find an definite answer I'll link it back here.

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Good call. That's just was I was about to say. Either way, is it really that hard to do a fresh install? I do it every 3-6 months.

Ok found a good post about SSD's and Win7 that gives me a slightly better feeling about how things will work, assuming the hardware reports itself correctly to the OS.

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx

One key thing to note, and I had forgotten about this.....

Since SSDs tend to perform at their best when the operating system’s partitions are created with the SSD’s alignment needs in mind, all of the partition-creating tools in Windows 7 place newly created partitions with the appropriate alignment.

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Cloning a drive from an OS that doesn't use the best alignment may cause poor performance is the hint I'm getting from this, as older OS's use a method that isn't the best for SSD's, whereas Win7 knows better and sets the drive up properly.

I still vote clean install, but to each his own.

Vista and WIN XP align to sector 63, which REALLY fudges up SSD performance. Most SSDs need an alignment like 128

If you img your Win7 machine, drop in an SSD then use the same utility to put that img back on the system I don't see any reason why Win 7 wn't reconize and use it properly. It will install the SSD on first boot (Win 7 is great about being able to boot even after major hardware changes), then reboot and use the new drivers and you would think, tuned to those driver specifications. If it's detected and SSD and using the SSD drivers it has, I see no reason why this won't work as if you install the OS on it. Hell if you have to, uninstall your ata and sata channels and have those be reinstalled also, just in case.

Limahl said:

Cloning a drive from an OS that doesn't use the best alignment may cause poor performance is the hint I'm getting from this, as older OS's use a method that isn't the best for SSD's, whereas Win7 knows better and sets the drive up properly.

I still vote clean install, but to each his own.

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Should this matter if you don't partition your SSD? Partition placement should be fine as long as you format the SSD in Windows ahead of time...right?

To all the people blatantly saying "Win 7 will detect your SSD" ... uh, mine didn't.

I'm running Win 7 "AR TI EM" edition and it didn't detect my Intel G1 SSD. I had to manually disable defrag, set prefetch to boot only, and some other minor tweaks which should have been disabled due to the "detection". IIRC my score for the hard drive is 7.7 or something, my GPU is the limiting score factor in my rig.

GreenMonkey said:

Should this matter if you don't partition your SSD? Partition placement should be fine as long as you format the SSD in Windows ahead of time...right?

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You would think so, but a concrete answer has yet to be found anywhere I've looked.

To have an SSD properly set up, you'd need to format it under Win7 only. Previous versions of Windows won't do it properly.

As much as I love being on the cutting edge of tech, some days it's a real PITA.

ordovician said:

Vista and WIN XP align to sector 63, which REALLY fudges up SSD performance. Most SSDs need an alignment like 128

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Vista and Seven align correctly.

Cloning a drive from an OS that doesn't use the best alignment may cause poor performance is the hint I'm getting from this

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And using that clone for a reinstall will result in the exact same misalignment.

It's got nothing to do with partitioning and everything to do with alignment.

If ya wanna do it right the first time, a clean install with AHCI enabled in the BIOS is the only way to go.

If you can get your hands on a copy of WinPE 2.0, you can clone the system with ImageX. It's file based, not sector based. It's pretty quick and works well. You can use Diskpart to prep your SSD, use ImageX again to dump the image to it, and then live happily ever after.

Be safe, do a traditional install. SSDs are structurally different from mechanical hard drives. Your SSD cost hundreds, might as well not start its life off by screwing it up.

Ok, still confused...

If I install windows 7 to a Hard drive the alignment will be the same as if I install it to a solid state drive right?

So If I install Windows 7 to a hard drive and back it up to my WHS server, then get a solid state drive and use the restore CD to transfer the existing windows 7 image I should be fine right?

If I do go the clone route, is there a way to check the alignment afterwards?

When you install Win 7 it's going to look at the drive it's being installed to and set up the alignment based on what it finds.

If it finds a standard HD it sets it up one way, if it finds an SSD it sets it up another way, (in theory).

The thing I'm wondering is what if you already prepped your SSD elsewhere and didn't set up the alignment correctly, would Win 7 notice and fix it or just let it go through?

If the drive is virgin out of the box, the OS has to format it and prep it, at which time it would set the alignment correctly. If you popped it into a case or dock and did a format yourself on another machine, would Win 7 notice a problem or even care?

Would love to see someone at MS or Intel post about this, just to get the answer out there for those who do care.

I still vote clean install just to cover yer arse, but I know thats not so easy for some people.

If you have Acronis thats your best bet for testing just to see if it even works... I would Acronis and Restore just to see what happens. Get the demo version, worst case you wasted 30 min and just do a fresh install...

I assume once you do a fresh install on SSD, and want to use Acronis for backup it should not pose any issues.

Limahl said:

When you install Win 7 it's going to look at the drive it's being installed to and set up the alignment based on what it finds.

If it finds a standard HD it sets it up one way, if it finds an SSD it sets it up another way, (in theory).

The thing I'm wondering is what if you already prepped your SSD elsewhere and didn't set up the alignment correctly, would Win 7 notice and fix it or just let it go through?

If the drive is virgin out of the box, the OS has to format it and prep it, at which time it would set the alignment correctly. If you popped it into a case or dock and did a format yourself on another machine, would Win 7 notice a problem or even care?

Would love to see someone at MS or Intel post about this, just to get the answer out there for those who do care.

I still vote clean install just to cover yer arse, but I know thats not so easy for some people.

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Its also a PITA because you have to install win 7 and make sure it is compatable with everything you have.
Then, buy the solid state if win 7 works, then re-install everything
for me thats about two weeks of work on the PC. On the laptop its not so bad.

And the bigger question is, if alignment is so important, then why arent these ready to go out of the box! Why should I have to prep the drive using a second machine, that ridicuous... Why would windows 7 setup a hard drive differnet than a soild state as far as alignment. I was under the impression that it simply fixed the issue and aligned everything in a solid state compatible mode. Does solid state alignment really differ that much from HD's?

This thread is making my head spin... I know it's an old thread but nonetheless, if you're not clear on the facts then don't speculate, it just adds to the mountain of misinformation that's already out there.

You can clone an OS install unto an SSD just fine, the rub is that you must either use a drive imaging program that will respect an existing (aligned) partition, or one that will preserve drive geometry (alignment) if the image being copied originated from the SSD itself (there's ways to align a mis-aligned partition as well tho, but I haven't tried it).

Having a properly aligned partition is very important and Win7/Vista do it just fine for you if you're doing a clean install (WinXP won't). There's a handful of other things that Win7 will (or should) configure when it sees a SSD, which it might not do if you're imaging an OS install unto an SSD... (even on a fresh install it doesn't always happen tho) Basically it disables Superfetch/Prefetch and stops the defragger from running on the SSD, that's about it tho, you can easily make/check those changes yourself.

Now as far as the specifics of creating a properly aligned partition w/o going thru the OS setup... You need to use diskpart on the OS disc, plenty of info on that in the OCZ boards. TRIM's not yet supported ('cept in very beta firmwares for OCZ drives) so you don't have to worry about that for now, probably won't be 'till everyone gets their ducks (and drivers/firmware) in a row after the official Win7 launch, 'specially for RAID.

Oh and yes, you can check that the drive is properly aligned at any time... As far as WHS, I have no clue how that handles system restores over the network, but the same principle applies... For it to work properly it either needs to be able to restore the image unto an existing/aligned partition, or it needs to know where to align it to like the Vista/7 setup does.

I know for a fact that old versions of Arconis re-create the partition when you restore it and they don't align it properly, I've heard 2009 gives you the option not to do so but I wouldn't know, haven't tried it myself. I know old versions of Ghost let ya do it either way, there's other options as well tho. A lot more specific info (and links) on this thread, including how to use diskpart, etc.

Justintoxicated said:

Its also a PITA because you have to install win 7 and make sure it is compatable with everything you have.
Then, buy the solid state if win 7 works, then re-install everything
for me thats about two weeks of work on the PC. On the laptop its not so bad.

And the bigger question is, if alignment is so important, then why arent these ready to go out of the box! Why should I have to prep the drive using a second machine, that ridicuous... Why would windows 7 setup a hard drive differnet than a soild state as far as alignment. I was under the impression that it simply fixed the issue and aligned everything in a solid state compatible mode. Does solid state alignment really differ that much from HD's?

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You're making this sound a lot harder than it has to be... And you don't need a 2nd system to create a properly aligned partition, you can boot from your OS disc to do that.