Clone HDD Freeware - Data Recovery

While there are a clone hdd of the data disc recovery by wide range of hard drives and partitions to clone utilities are available, many users may not realize that Windows 7 has its own disk imaging utility that is as effective, however, operate with the benefit of the calculation is not everything. The user only needs either an external hard drive or a second internal hard drive to clone the SSD, and either a blank CD-R or the Windows 7 OS installation CD clone HDD.

Ideally, to get the most out of an SSD, it's best with a clone hdd clean OS installation to start. However, this is not an option for everyone, especially those who may not have the original operating system or software discs, such as a consumer PC / laptop that does not come with OS / software installation media.

In order to clone the HDD to SSD with Windows, the process is summarized as follows:

Moving data from all non-OS partitions from OS hard drive and delete those partitions.
They shrink to fit the OS partition to the new SSD.
Make an image of the OS partition on a second or external hard drive.
Install the new SSD.
Set the operating system image from the 2nd or external hard drive.
Change the OS partition to fill the SSD capacity.
Windows will have the data disc recovery OS drive, it recognizes them as an SSD.
Optional: Set up the original operating system HDD as a drive for data.
When you are finished, Windows should behave exactly as before to 7, with all software and settings intact, but with the exception of running much faster with the SSD.



Pages: 1 2 3 4 5
Introduction
Initial setup
Creating an image of the OS drive
The letter from the OS system image to SSD
Finishing Steps for SSD
Written by Sean Byrne at 23.31 clock
22 Responses to "How to Clone HDD to SSD with its own software Windows 7"

Insight says:
Third May 2011 at 1:50 clock
Excellent and well detailed instructions.

I did not see in a post, which is a frequently referenced topic on SSD installation to other sites that the SSD-disk alignment.

Do you manage your steps in this manual this problem or do I need to treat them separately?

Sean Byrne says:
Third May 2011 at 08.33 clock
Windows 7 creates its partitions aligned to 4KB boundary, and from my tests is the 4KB alignment after the backup and restore process. The only thing I have not checked what happens if the partition was not aligned 4KB, such as a Windows Vista installation that was upgraded to Windows 7, but when I get time to test this, I will tell .

A Windows 7 from scratch on a new hard disk or a hard drive that was before Windows 7 is partitioned aligned 4KB. The same with the majority of computers that are shipped with Windows 7.

To check whether the partition is aligned, download and run the AS SSD utility (link). Select the OS drive in the drop-down and look at the information that appears in the upper left panel. If it is green letters with the suffix "K - OK," is the correct partition 4KB aligned. If the font is red ending in "K - bad", then the partition is not aligned 4KB and this might not lead to the clone in the non-aligned 4KB.


Thank you for the follow-up. Other than using diskpart to set the orientation to 1024, I followed your guide and the installation worked without problems. And all is well.


A further indication of the alignment issue for the SSD. If I created a partition with Windows 7 management tools, I noticed that the resulting partion offset was zero, as indicated by Start/MSINFO32/Components \ Storage \ discs. This information is what leads me to DiskPart is used to manually adjust the alignment of 1024.

Perhaps with the Win 7 disk / partition would set repair to different results? I have not tried.

With the insight of http://data-discrecovery.blogspot.com/