Cloning a SSD -- software recommendations
 

The new drive will be bigger than the old. I have no problem with doing the operation, I'm just asking what's the best program to do it with these days.

I always used Acronis True Image Workstation for that sort of thing. Worked pretty well, but it's not free. I don't know if the 30 day trial is fully featured or not.

interesting question as i just did this myself for the first time yesterday. I used Win 7 backup and Acer erecovery to test which worked better for me to put in a Seagate momentus hybrid in an Acer AO725. Windows didn't load, Acer eRecovery worked great. I wasn't interested in getting a usb to SATA cable, just used a dvd burner that i already had. Google is your friend to find what might work best for you and there are also a lot of videos out to show the way. good luck.

My copy is a few years old. It's been a while since I've had to do such things.

For a mac the best program is Carbon Copy Cloner

I was a user of True Image until some years ago, but it's getting bigger each year with seldom used features and Acronis has not honored a lifetime edition I had bought in the past.

I now use Clonezilla, an Open Source project and am happy with it:

http://www.clonezilla.org/

A few years old Acronis will probably ruin alignment; avoid.

I generally use gparted from systemrescuecd and recommend it for more technical folks; for somewhat technical folks, I recommend http://www.clonezilla.org/

For non-technical folks, the best option I've found is to use the Windows 7 built in system image backup and then create a restore CD when it offers at the end, then restore back. The down side is that it requires a sufficiently-large separate external drive for the backup, and it doesn't work if you have additional non-windows partitions. It's pretty close to idiot proof, especially since you've never got both the source disk and the destination disk attached at once.

With two votes for Clonezilla I'll go that route unless something changes before the new drive gets here.

I am quite technical, it's just I haven't kept up on cloning software. I could also go with the backup/restore approach (I'm just replacing the OS drive, there are three other drives in there that each have enough space to hold a backup) but a direct copy is certainly going to be a lot faster.

The drive arrived earlier than expected. Clonezilla it was--it did the job but I didn't like it. Every time I've done something like that in the past it showed me a map of the partitions when selecting what to do. Clonezilla only listed the drives, no partitions.

I also *THOUGHT* I told it to expand the partition, it didn't. Fortunately, Windows was quite willing to allocate the rest of the space.

Clonezilla has two modes for going between physical disks -- disk to disk and partition to partition (and for dealing with images, disk to image, and partition to image, both of which can do backup and restore.)

It'll do all the partitions fully automatically in disk mode - it's one partition at a time in partition mode. It's not a full partition manager (gparted is, although far from a user-friendly one); it's just a cloning tool. It also won't (for example) do big disk to smaller disk, at least without some manual adjustment.

I've had mixed success with that one. Did a restore once and the computer would freeze within 60 seconds of logging in. Wiped it and restored again from the same backup and it worked fine.

Got a Black Friday SSD drive for my Lenovo x220.

What's the best freeware option to clone the drive to the new drive?

CloneZilla
http://www.clonezilla.org/

would you use the same software when you are putting in a SSD into a laptop that had a regular drive before ?

do you need to add any drivers for the SSD ?

Do not know. Assume if so, Win7 will find the drivers....

Yes. Drive to drive copying doesn't care whether a drive is an SSD or a spin-y disk. Definitely helps if the new disk is larger than the old (or equal size) -- you'll typically have to shrink the main partition if not, which is not an operation for the faint of heart.

In almost all cases, on a modern (e.g. not XP) version of Windows, no.

Laptops from say, 2007-2010 with XP may have their storage controller set to the wrong mode ("ATA" or "Legacy" rather than "AHCI".) This will work with SSDs, but will not be optimal for the performance or longevity of the drive.

(Laptops older than 2007, while they will work with SSDs if they have a SATA port, will not be able to even older SSDs for optimal performance -- although frankly, in a machine that old, the drive will be so much faster than that machine that the difference won't be noticeable.)

Converting it requires adding a driver, playing with some Windows settings, then shutting down, changing it in the BIOS, and then rebooting. It is a really annoying technical process, and on machines that age, I wouldn't bother to switch it unless you're reinstalling with Windows 7 or 8

What about XP ?

I just bought a couple 120GB SSDs for $59 each today and planned on using them in some older laptops that have XP on them (they came with Vista) and I do not want to pay for Windows 7 upgrade

If they already have XP, either:
(A) despite coming with Vista, the machines are too old for AHCI, or
(B) someone has already gotten the AHCI driver into XP, or
(C) someone has already disabled AHCI

(Which one might be different between the laptops.)

If you're looking at copying the image over from the old laptop to the new one, you're safe: even in case "B" the old laptop has the right driver.

If you're looking at a fresh reinstall, and you installed XP, following whatever procedure you used to do the XP install should work.

If weren't the one who installed XP, (B) is the one case that might trip you up on reinstalling it. It's pretty easy to recognize if it happens, as the XP installer will get partway in and say you have no hard drive. Fixing it requires doing an F6-driver load or slipstreaming the driver onto the CD, and if that doesn't immediately make sense to you, you probably don't want to do it. :D

If you have a Vista DVD and they came with Vista, unlike XP, my recollection is that Vista works with AHCI out of the box, and upgrading the machines might be worthwhile (and the memory; if they're on 2GB, Vista really does better on 4GB.)

OP, I just noticed your thread. Please see my post from another thread: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/21878993-post51.html regarding an Acronis discount offer.

A friend who does network maintenance (involving lots of disk cloning) for a company with many hundreds of PCs strongly suggests HDClone as being easy and powerful:

http://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html

HDClone (non free version) has the ability to resize partitions on the fly which is great when your SSD is smaller than the hard drive you're cloning.