Migration of HDD to SSD

[ronk]

Have used Terabyte IFL and IFW successfully for years, for backup, and several successful restorations of complete systems. Now, on a Thinkpad T530, Win 7, have reached a time when wish to move HDD to hot swap bay, and SSD to internal. All data partitions (in an extended partition) will be backed up (more than once) then deleted from 'C' drive. There will only remain only 2 partitions: in Disk Mgmt showing 1)System_DRV 1.46g (system, active, primary), and 2. Win7_OS C:150gb (boot, pagefile, crashdump, primary). I will be deleting the Extended partition containing 5 logical data drives, and the Recovery partition (Primary) I don't need since Win 8. What is the safest procedure to do this, considering I'm mainly familiar with IFW and IFL. I use IFW for data backups or restores, and IFL nonet for Sys & C partition backups or restores.

Loading IFW, clicking of info for C drive shows minimum of 154gb needed for restore. The SSD will be 180Gb.

Anyone have the steps to accomplish this just using IFL and IFW, or do I need to used other software provided by Terabyte as well.

Thanks!

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

With just those two partitions you can just copy the disk to the SSD. You would want to use the "Scale to Fit" and "Align to Target" options for the copy. Additionally, you would want the following global options enabled: "Align Partitions on 1MiB Boundaries," "Automatic Scaling Restrictions," and "Automatic Boot Partition Update".

Assuming you use IFL to do the copy, it would be something like this:
1. Boot to IFL.
2. Copy the HHD (entire disk) to the SSD.
3. Shut down the computer.
4. Disconnect/remove the HDD (Windows shouldn't see it on first boot-up of the SSD).
5. Boot the SSD.
6. Reconnect and configure the HDD as desired.

[ronk]

Paul,

Thanks very much! I need to do it this way because I have no Win7 recovery media, only Win8 in recovery partition to be deleted. Now I just need to acquire the SSD and the caddy. I assuming IFL will be able to see the SSD in the hot swap caddy in order to do the copy.

Ron

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

Keep in mind that generally it's best to have the destination drive in its final location when the copy is performed. In this case, the SSD would be installed as the booting drive and the HDD would be in the hot swap caddy.

You can also create a backup image and restore it instead of doing a copy. The backup image could be saved to a USB drive, for example, and wouldn't require the caddy.

1. Create a backup of the HDD (entire disk) and save it to a USB drive. You could use IFW or IFL.
2. Power down the computer.
3. Remove the HDD and replace it with the SSD.
4. Boot to IFL (or TBWinRE/PE) and restore the entire disk image to the SSD (the options used would be the same as for the copy operation).

[ronk]

Thanks for pointing out that the destination drive should be in its final boot location, I wouldn't have thought of that. Also, goodto know I have the restore option as well.

Ron

[Fracso]

About the options, what does "automatic scale restriction" mean?

Also, what happens if one forgets to enable "Automatic Boot Partition Update" and the system doesn´t boot?
Is it necessary to restore the image again with this option enabled? Or is it possible to do a boot repair without restoring again?

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

Both of those options are enabled by default so it's more just a case of checking if you've changed them. The "Automatic Scaling Restrictions" option prevents smaller partitions from being scaled (they retain their size). This is helpful when the drive contains a small boot partition, recovery partition, utility partition, etc. Boot partition updates are normally handled automatically (the default). However, if it didn't, you certainly could do a manual boot repair instead of restoring again. Also, if you disable the "Automatic Boot Partition Update" option the "Update Boot Partition" option will be available when doing the operation -- you could just enable it instead of enabling the global automatic option.

[ronk]

TeraByte Support(PP) wrote:
> With just those two partitions you can just copy the disk to the SSD. You
> would want to use the "Scale to Fit" and "Align to
> Target" options for the copy. Additionally, you would want the
> following global options enabled: "Align Partitions on 1MiB
> Boundaries," "Automatic Scaling Restrictions," and
> "Automatic Boot Partition Update".
>
> Assuming you use IFL to do the copy, it would be something like this:
> 1. Boot to IFL.
> 2. Copy the HHD (entire disk) to the SSD.
> 3. Shut down the computer.
> 4. Disconnect/remove the HDD (Windows shouldn't see it on first boot-up of
> the SSD).
> 5. Boot the SSD.
> 6. Reconnect and configure the HDD as desired.


Just to confirm, but between 1 and 2, assume the hotswap out of the CD drive for the HDD can occur, since IFL is loaded in memory and no longer accesses the CD, right? And earlier will already have the destination SSD in the primary bay before the boot to IFL CD.

Ron

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

Yes. If the swap isn't detected, you could boot from a UFD so both drives could be in when IFL is booted.

[ronk]

Thanks, I forgot about the UFD (flash/thumb drive) option.

Ron