new SSD+new T420s: best practice for setup

[zern]

Hi everyone,

I have ordered a T420s.

I am planning to move my existing Intel X25-M 160Gb SSD to it, by removing the rubber rails it is currently sitting in inside my T60p.

I am thinking through how best to clone the boot partition from the HDD to the SSD. I had only recently discovered the whole sector alignment issue.

On previous Thinkpads I have successfully used Acronis True Image Home 10 to clone new drives. The current SSD was cloned the same way from the previous HDD. (And it has the misalingment issue under Windows XP - which I am not fixing now given the pending move.)

I plan to use my copy of Acronis True Image Home 10 instead of the Intel supplied Acronis Data Migration Tool. Any thoughts on this?

So what I want to do with the new machine before I install anything on it is as follows. Based on post 2 from this thread http://forum.acronis.com/forum/23774

1. Turn the new T420s on and boot from the Recovery partition, to create the recovery DVDs. This way Windows 7 Pro 64 bit remains untouched (ie not going through the first run setup process). I am assuming this is possible.

2. Attach a temporary USB HDD. Boot from the Acronis boot CD. Backup the entire (factory) source HDD (C: and hidden recovery partition) to the USB HDD. Validate this backup.

3. Replace the source HDD with the SSD. Source HDD and Recovery DVDs now set aside for posterity.

4. Boot from the Acronis boot CD again and restore the C: partition from the USB HDD to the SSD.

5. Leave a 1Mb space before this restored C: partition. Mark the restored C:
as active. Resize this partition to fill the remainder of the SSD.

6. So I now have a hidden 1Mb partition at the start of the SSD and the C: partition. I wont restore the Recovery partition.

7. Restore the MBR+track0 and the disk signature. Reboot.

8. Set up Windows etc. The SSD should now behave as if it came fresh from the factory install right?

9. I then do the tweaks as per post 2 of the thread linked above - turning off SuperFetch etc.

The rationale behind this approach as far as my understanding took me:
- Backup/Restore instead of Clone because Clone will override the SSD's partition tables with the HDD's, while Backup/Restore won't.
- The 1Mb hidden partition at the start of the SSD is what will shift the sectors to correct the alignment for the rest of the SSD.

Have I missed/misunderstood anything?
Has anyone done this before?
There are also discussions about setting UEFI/Legacy BIOS etc. I plan to leave the BIOS alone for now and not complicate things. I am assuming that if I manage to correctly "clone" the factory C: partition, then the SSD should work with whatever the BIOS setting is. Yes?

Looking forward to your much valued input and thoughts! Thanks in advance!!!!

[zern]

http://forums.anandtech.com/archive/ind ... 62158.html

This thread says nice things about the Intel Migration Tool and Acronis 2010.