Migrate Windows 7 to an SSD Drive

If you have the pleasure to own a brand new SSD drive: Congratiulations! It’s so much more fun than a disk drive. TO get you started quickly, here’s how you can migrate your existing windows 7 to the new drive. You’re going to perform the following steps:

1. Tidy up your system
2. Create a Backup
3. Restore the Backup to the SSD
4. Align the Partition
5. Recreate MBR
6. Tweak Windows Settings

Tidy up your system

SSD space is not only much faster, it’s also much more expensive. Typically, your SSD is much smaller than your previous drive. If so, you'll need to free some space before the migration.

1. Oursource the Data (Pictures, Videos…) to another partition. See this post how to do it.
2. Uninstall not needed software
3. Clean up using CCleaner

 

Create Backup

Before you start, make a backup. Not only for safty reasons, we’ll use the backup in the next step to get an exact copy of the partitions on your SSD. Make sure you do a partition backup of drive C. I recommend to use Easus Todo Backup for this task.

Select Disk and partition backup

 

Give it a meaningful name

 

Select partition C

 

Select the destination. Best on an external drive.

 

Restore Backup to the SSD

Restore the newly created backup to your SSD Drive

 

Align the Partition

Partition alignment is very important for the speed of the SSD. If a partition is misaligned, the partition clusters overlap with the hardware blocks of the SSD. Writing one cluster on the drive results in writing 2 blocks. This dramatically reduces performance.

1. Download the GParted Live CD
2. Create a bootable media (e.g. burn the ISO to a CD)
3. Boot the PC from the Media
4. Start GParted
5. Modify the Boot Partition, select exactly 2 MiB as offset at the beginning of the partition. Uncheck the “round to cylinder” option

Recreate MBR

We just broke your MBR. Didn’t notice? Try booting Windows… it doesn’t work.

This is fixed easily.

1. Insert the windows installation disc
2. Boot it
3. After the language selection, click “Repair”

It will automatically detect the broken MBR and fix it.

 

Tweak Windows Settings

Disable Defragmentation

Start Menu -> Right-Click Computer -> Manage -> Services and Applications -> Services - > Right-Click Disk Defragmenter -> Startup type: Disabled –> OK

Disable the Page file

If you have enough RAM, you should disable paging. If you don’t have, you should buy more

Start Menu -> Right-Click Computer -> Properties -> Advanced System Settings -> Settings (Performance) -> Advanced Tab -> Change -> Uncheck Automatically manage -> No paging file -> Set –> OK

Depending on your needs, you can try more tweaks listed here.

Done!

References:

http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/windows-7/2441-windows-7-ultimate-solid-state-drive-speed-tweaks.html

Separating Programs and Data

There’s the golden IT rule: Always seperate Programs and Data. Why? Because you need to backup only Data. Programs can be easily reinsalled after a crash. If it’s mixed, it’s hard to maintain.

Target

The target is to have two partitions:

1. Drive C with Windows and all Programs on it
2. Drive D with only Data on it

This way, you can easily delete and restore the complete C Drive from a drive image if anything goes wrong with Windows. Your data is still safe on D.

Backup Data

Before you start, backup your complete system to an external drive.

Splitting the Partition

If you have only one partition, you need to split it. If you have two, you still might want to resize them to your needs. For this tutorial, we’ll assume that you have only one partition.

You’ll first need some space. Delete all your data from the C drive. By data, I mean only

• Documents
• Pictures
• Videos
• Downloads
• etc.

No Programs! And don’t forget to backup first!

For the split, I recommend using Easus Partition Master Home

Start the software and select the Partition C. Select Resize/Move Partition

The new size should be between 50-100GB. You should have at least 20% free space on C after resizing. If you have enough space, you could give it 150GB, just to be safe. In this example, I gave it 90GB

Now create a 2nd partition on the unallocated space.

This partition should fill the rest of the disc.

Finally, Apply the changes. This might take a while and you might be asked to reboot.

Move your folders

Open your account folder from the desktop

Now, do the following steps for all folders in your account folder:

1. Right-Click –> Properties
2. Tab Path
3. Change the Path to point to a new folder on drive D
4. Confirm

Restore Data

Windows will locate your personal data on drive D. Now it’s time to grab the backup you made and restore all personal data into the new folders on drive D.

Backup Drive C

Now that everything is working, backup drive C as a drive image. You can restore this image anytime if needed without losing any data on D. For image backups, I recommend the free software Easus Todo Backup

Done!