Thinkpads Forum

Today I successfully moved a complete Windows 7 image from a conventional hard drive (WD Scorpio Black 160GB) to a new SSD (Intel X25-M 120GB)
while keeping proper partition/sector alignment and trim support enabled. I had always recommended a fresh W7 install while doing this migration,
but found it isn't necessary. I used the latest version of Acronis True Image Home 2011 which claims to support SSD alignment, and here are the
steps;

1.) Defrag your current Windows 7 installation.
2.) Check BIOS to make sure that AHCI is enabled.
3.) Install Acronis TI 2011
4.) Create a bootable Acronic CD using 'rescue media builder' under 'utilities'
5.) While running Acronis in Windows, check for proper alignment using 'View current state of your discs' under utilities. You should have a 100MB 'system reserved' partition that starts on sector 2048, and (1) normal NTFS partition or more. If you do not, then your drive is not properly aligned for an SSD. There are utilities that will align it, but that's for another topic.
6.) Attach a USB backup drive
7.) While running Acronis in Windows, select 'go to main screen' and then select 'disk and partition backup'
8.) Check both the system reserved and C: partitions for backup (also D or E if you have them, etc)
9.) Create a backup name and select a destination (Your USB Drive)
10.) Select 'backup now'
11.) After the backup completes shut down the laptop and install the SSD
12.) Boot up the laptop with the Acronis CD
13.) Select full version Acronis
14.) Follow the prompts to restore the system reserved, MBR, and C: partitions onto the SSD (also D and E if you have them, etc)
15.) Power down the laptop and remove the USB drive.
16.) Boot up into Windows on the new SSD
17.) Install and run SSDTweaker and select the 'auto tweak settings'
http://elpamsoft.com/Downloads/SSDTweaker.zip
18.) Rerun Acronis as in step 5 and make sure the system reserved partition is still aligned to sector 2048.
19.) Go into the defrag utility in Windows and disable scheduled defrags
20.) Done. You now have a perfectly aligned and tweaked SSD running Windows 7.

#7 - you might specify running Acronis under Windows, vs. boot CD. This is for people who are not familiar enough with Acronis to know pro/con of boot CD vs. under Windows.

#18 - you mention 'as in step 4' ... step 4 is to create the boot CD. Did you mean 'as in step X', where X = sumpin' else??

And, lastly, I have Acronis 2010 version. Can I do most/all/none of this alignment stuff under it, or is Acronis 2011 required? Any other ways to check alignment on my SSD? I run SSD under WinXP on one box and Win7 on another.

Thanks for the write up; looks good...

Thanks Harryc for this write up. You figured out some stuff I wish I had known a few months ago, but will use in the future!

Mike

@AMATX, I've made the changes you've suggested, thanks. I do not know the answer to your Acronis 2010 alignment question. I'd say try it and let us know. I do not have a copy of it, but I have read on the Acronis forums where some people were successful with SSD alignment using it in the method I've described. As far as checking your current alignment, during installation Windows Vista or Windows 7 will create a system partition of 100MB with an offset of 1024KB. The 2nd (or 3rd or 4th) partition is already aligned due to the 1st partition being aligned at 1024KB. Don't even bother to check XP, it uses a different default alignment. So to check on Vista or W7;

In windows 7, run msinfo32 by typing it into the search box on your start menu and hitting enter.

click on: components => storage => disks

Look for your hard drive (or SSD) and check the partition starting offset for the 100.00MB partition. Here's mine as an example -

Partition Disk #0, Partition #0
Partition Size 100.00 MB (104,857,600 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset 1,048,576 bytes

Partition Starting Offset needs to be divisible by 4096 (ie return a whole number when you divide by this) otherwise the alignment is not correct.
In my case; 1,048,576 / 4096 = 256

Note: I believe there is a way to align an SSD prior to moving XP onto it, but that is not part of this Howto:. If someone else wants to write that up I am sure it would be appreciated. Google is a good starting point. Search for 'XP Alignment SSD'. My opinion is that if you format the SSD with a Windows 7 installation CD first, then migrate XP to it with the Acronis procedure I've outlined (entire disk backup/restore), the correct alignment will be preserved.

mpcook wrote:Thanks Harryc for this write up. You figured out some stuff I wish I had known a few months ago, but will use in the future!

Mike

Thanks Mike, let us know if you use it in the future and how it works out.

Hi Harry. Is there a minimum T60p BIOS rev required for the system to recognize an Intel X25M in the primary HDD slot of the machine?

My system will not boot to the SSD in the main slot. It only recognized it in the Ultrabay tray and is unbearably slow.

Thanks for any help.

Scratched wrote:Hi Harry. Is there a minimum T60p BIOS rev required for the system to recognize an Intel X25M in the primary HDD slot of the machine?

My system will not boot to the SSD in the main slot. It only recognized it in the Ultrabay tray and is unbearably slow.

Thanks for any help.

Not that I am aware of, but I can tell you that I just installed an SSD in a T60P today and it is happily running Windows 7 64bit. The BIOS is the latest release. Was yours a new blank SSD?

I'm trying to clone XP partitions to avoid a massive time requirement to reinstall software.

The Intel documentation claims that there is no alignment requirement for these SSD's with XP.

My system just won't recognize the drive in the primary slot. I guess a BIOS update is low risk though unnecessary with my current config.

Harryc wrote: 17.) Install and run SSDTweaker and select the 'auto tweak settings'
http://elpamsoft.com/Downloads/SSDTweaker.zip

Why do you need this tweak?

You don't. Investigate what it does for yourself and if you would normally perform those tweaks on an SSD, then use it. If not, then don't.

SD Tweaker 1.8 Lets you Tweak the following:

* Windows Services
* Query and Set Windows 7 TRIM Status (Pro Only)
* Experimental TRIM Optimization (Pro Only)
* Hibernation Settings
* Use Large System Cache
* Ntfs Memory Usage
* Disable 8.3 Filenames
* Disable Date Stamping
* Disable Boot Tracing
* Windows Prefetcher
* Windows Vista Superfetch
* Windows Indexing Service
* System Restore
* Windows Defrag

Harryc wrote: Note: I believe there is a way to align an SSD prior to moving XP onto it, but that is not part of this Howto:. If someone else wants to write that up I am sure it would be appreciated.

has this been written up?
I have successfully migrated my xp from HDD to SSD with alignment. If it hasnt been written, I will post my method.

EDIT: It is now here:
http://thinkpads.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=94795

Not yet. Go for it, thanks!

Great post!

I am planning to skip the system recovery partition (Q:) onto the SSD. SSD space is costly. IMHO, a copy of the recovery partition on the HD is good enough. Is there a possible problem to this approach?

Harryc wrote:You don't. Investigate what it does for yourself and if you would normally perform those tweaks on an SSD, then use it.

I would not run this program under Windows 7 since Windows 7 detects if it is installed on an SSD and optimizes settings automatically. SSDTweaker does absolutely nothing for a Windows 7 installation.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009 ... s-and.aspx

In Windows 7, we’ve focused a number of our engineering efforts with SSD operating characteristics in mind. As a result, Windows 7’s default behavior is to operate efficiently on SSDs without requiring any customer intervention. Before delving into how Windows 7’s behavior is automatically tuned to work efficiently on SSDs, a brief overview of SSD operating characteristics is warranted.

Windows 7 Optimizations and Default Behavior Summary

As noted above, all of today’s SSDs have considerable work to do when presented with disk writes and disk flushes. Windows 7 tends to perform well on today’s SSDs, in part, because we made many engineering changes to reduce the frequency of writes and flushes. This benefits traditional HDDs as well, but is particularly helpful on today’s SSDs.

Windows 7 will disable disk defragmentation on SSD system drives. Because SSDs perform extremely well on random read operations, defragmenting files isn’t helpful enough to warrant the added disk writing defragmentation produces. The FAQ section below has some additional details.

By default, Windows 7 will disable Superfetch, ReadyBoost, as well as boot and application launch prefetching on SSDs with good random read, random write and flush performance. These technologies were all designed to improve performance on traditional HDDs, where random read performance could easily be a major bottleneck. See the FAQ section for more details.

Since SSDs tend to perform at their best when the operating system’s partitions are created with the SSD’s alignment needs in mind, all of the partition-creating tools in Windows 7 place newly created partitions with the appropriate alignment.

Read the entire article for more information.

ETA: I would also suggest using Clonezilla instead of Acronis. Clonezilla is open source.

http://clonezilla.org/

udvranto wrote:Great post!

I am planning to skip the system recovery partition (Q:) onto the SSD. SSD space is costly. IMHO, a copy of the recovery partition on the HD is good enough. Is there a possible problem to this approach?

Having it on an external drive is good, you do not want to be constantly saving a recent drive image onto the SSD since that will wear it out much faster.