Upgrade primary HD to new SSD - Advice on cloning? Or what?

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stickman393
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2015/09/05 16:00:31 (permalink)

Upgrade primary HD to new SSD - Advice on cloning? Or what?

Hey guys - I've just bought a couple of SSDs that will be going into my DAW. I'd like to replace the primary HD (C: drive) with one of them. 
 
Ideally, I'd like to retain my current OS and applications.
 
Has anyone had any experience doing this? Does "cloning" really work? What technique did you use? Anyone feel that a complete re-install would have been a better idea?
 
Thanks,
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    Jim Roseberry
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    Re: Upgrade primary HD to new SSD - Advice on cloning? Or what? 2015/09/05 16:04:52 (permalink)
    All you need to to is create a backup image file using Acronis True Image (or similar).
    Install the new SSD... and load the backup image file onto it.

    Best Regards,

    Jim Roseberry
    jim@studiocat.com
    www.studiocat.com
    #2
    stickman393
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    Re: Upgrade primary HD to new SSD - Advice on cloning? Or what? 2015/09/05 16:25:44 (permalink)
    Thanks Jim - it sounds like you know what you're talking about :-)
    I'll research Acronis True Image.
    #3
    Jim Roseberry
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    Re: Upgrade primary HD to new SSD - Advice on cloning? Or what? 2015/09/05 17:11:15 (permalink)
    A backup image file is the ultimate safety-net.
    It's a good idea to have even if you weren't migrating the boot drive to SSD.

    Best Regards,

    Jim Roseberry
    jim@studiocat.com
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    fireberd
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    Re: Upgrade primary HD to new SSD - Advice on cloning? Or what? 2015/09/05 17:29:09 (permalink)
    I don't know if Acronis has a "free" version, but Macrium Reflect does have a free version that will allow you to make a backup of the hard drive and then restore to the SSD.  That is what I did when I went from conventional hard drive to an SSD.
     
    http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
     

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    lawajava
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    Re: Upgrade primary HD to new SSD - Advice on cloning? Or what? 2015/09/06 09:31:06 (permalink)
    As I recall when I made that move I simply bought an external hard disk enclosure for my original C drive. Those are very low cost items. I put my original C drive in there and then put the new SSDs in my laptop. I then used Acronis to clone the external drive to my new SSD C drive.

    Two internal 2TB SSDs laptop stuffed with Larry's deals and awesome tools. Studio One is the cat's meow as a DAW now that I've migrated off of Sonar. Using BandLab Cakewalk just to grab old files when migrating songs.
    #6
    stickman393
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    Re: Upgrade primary HD to new SSD - Advice on cloning? Or what? 2015/09/06 13:57:45 (permalink)
    I have room in my case (and two spare SATA ports) for the two new drives, so I won't need an external enclosure or a USB-SATA converter cable or anything like that.
     
    Amazon is telling me the drives will show up today, so I'm getting my ducks in a row.
    #7
    azslow3
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    Re: Upgrade primary HD to new SSD - Advice on cloning? Or what? 2015/09/06 14:09:09 (permalink)
    If your SSDs are from Samsung (I am really happy with Pro line, no problems with 20+ computers/servers so far), you can use delivered migration utility ("Samsung Data Migration"). Easy to use with step by step instruction, can clone big disk to smaller SSD. I have used it 2 times without glitches.

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    drewfx1
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    Re: Upgrade primary HD to new SSD - Advice on cloning? Or what? 2015/09/07 12:00:01 (permalink)
    I've also used the Samsung utility on 2 laptops (boot drives) and it's worked perfectly.

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    stickman393
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    Re: Upgrade primary HD to new SSD - Advice on cloning? Or what? 2015/09/10 22:00:34 (permalink)
    Just to close out this story... I followed the instructions in howtogeek.com's article, and used EaseUS Partition Manager.
     
    Long story short: I destroyed the boot mgr on my primary Win7 OS disk, and could not restore it (and I tried many different techniques...). So don't use that utility. Instead, follow the good advice given on this thread.
     
    I ended up disconnecting the HDDs and inserting the Windows 10 install media I created earlier in my Windows 10 upgrade adventures... and doing a clean install onto the SSDs.
    Labor Weekend was spent re-installing ALL THE THINGS, and copying files across from the two HDDs.
     
    #10
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