New SSD in W500:Install Clean Win 7 or Clone Existing Drive?

[dlai]

I just purchased a new Crucial 256gb SSD drive and was trying to plan out how to best install the drive. Those of you who have installed an aftermarket SSD in the W5xx laptop, did you do a clean install of the OS or did you use a program like Acronis to clone the drive? Was/is there a performance difference depending on the method? If one clones, will Win7 automatically turn on Trim? Any thoughts, ideas, and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks ahead of time...

[georgelam]

I have been wondering about the same question too. I just bought a T510 and have an OCZ Vertex 60GB to put in it. I suppose there are at least 3 feasible methods of migrating to the SSD:

1) Clone the drive using Acronis or similar programs
2) Create recovery disks with the original hard drive and use them to install on the SSD
3) Perform a clean install using a Windows 7 disk and use System Update to get the drivers online from Lenovo

I wonder if any one has tried at least one of these methods and can share his or her experiences. Regarding option 3): Does anyone know if there is a way to create a Windows 7 installation disk from an existing installation? I mean, you can do this with Windows XP if you have the i386 folder on your current hard drive, and I find this to be very convenient.

[Harryc]

You'll want to do a fresh install of Windows 7 on a new SSD because that will ensure the proper disk partition alignment which is essential to preventing performance deterioration on SSD's. Cloning does not do this. Google 'SSD alignment' and 'clone SSD windows 7' for additional information on this topic.

[RonS]

HarryC is right. The boot partition needs to start on a sector offset that's evenly divisible by 4096 or your write performance may be less than half of what is should be. Allowing Windows 7 to do the formatting and partitioning will assure that it's aligned correctly.

[Crunch]

+1. Anytime you get a new computer, you should invest the time and effort to do a fresh installation of the operating system. It will pay off in the long run.