I know there is good software out there to clone/image my hard drive and restore it to a new SSD drive. I'm just wondering though, since my laptop is brand new, I made a full recovery to a USB drive and included the OEM recovery partition. Couldn't I just swap out the old HDD with the new SSD and boot with the recovery stick and do a full recovery back to the new SSD? Also, however I do this, recover or image backup/restore, do I need to do some type of SSD alignment? I can't find a clear answer on that.
Went through the process a day ago...yay . Used Acronis to recover a backup of my HDD system onto the new SSD. First time i used a backup that was made sector-by-sector, what caused the wrong alignment on the new disk. So i created a fresh backup (with 'sector-by-sector' unchecked this time) and restored that onto the SSD afterwards. Now the SSD shows correct alignment in AS SSD Benchmark (should show only green OK and no red BAD) and really nice speeds . To check whether Trim is enabled open admin CMD and: Code: fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify should show "0" for enabled Trim. NOTE: Assure to disable automatic defrag task after restore .
The only danger with SSD is that you will never go back to a mechanical drive All the computers in the home have SSD drives now and will never use old drive to boot up.
How much difference does it make as far as speed is concerned? So, you install windows and all drivers on ssd and other personal files on normal hd ?
don't forget to set your AHCI to make your SSD more efficient in windows 7 its msahci in windows 8 its storahci it has to be set in your reg and in your bios
You install Windows/Programs to the SSD. The speed also comes not just from sequential reading/writing but the random read/write speed is high. Also the total No. of IOPs is way better. As a hard drive has a moving head it takes ages to seek from track to track, so the drive suffers. Google up some youtube videos on booting Windows from SSD and HDD on same hardware. Wife has a laptop that loads in about 4.5 seconds from cold, longest time is the BIOS (UEFI) loading up.