Migrating Win7 installation to SSD

[kyrathaba]

Will this work as described?  If the consensus is "Yes", then I'll describe what I'd like to do, and see the community's reaction and advice.

[4wd]

The one thing I have noticed with that procedure is that it seems to make the assumption that you're dealing with a drive that you formatted under XP, (and possibly Vista), ie. not formatted via the Windows 7 install procedure.

From my, (admittedly not extensive), experience, Windows 7 always seems to include the 100MB System Reserved partition when it does a new install to a blank HDD, ie. not a single partition formatted HDD.

However, I've just done the same thing myself, (migrate HDD-SSD), but I used Paragons Hard Disk Manager, (which I own anyway) - it took 5-6 minutes, (my system partition is only 50GB), including changing BIOS and booted without a problem.  I then just removed the drive letters from the old HDD partitions until I'm sure the machine runs fine.

You could see if it will let you do it within HDMs trial period.

[tomos]

From my, (admittedly not extensive), experience, Windows 7 always seems to include the 100MB System Reserved partition when it does a new install to a blank HDD, ie. not a single partition formatted HDD.

I think that's correct -

Windows 7 installation wizard will not modify existing partition which already been defined and allocated. The 100 MB .. partiton will only be created when user creates new partition on a clean and empty HDD (no partitions) [with the windows install dvd], or delete all partitions and then create a new partition during setup. Thus, system with hard disk already partitioned, and users wish no change to existing partitioning but wish to clean install can just format the partition in Windows 7 setup wizard before installing.

http://www.mydigitallife.info/hack-to-remove-100-mb-system-reserved-partition-when-installing-windows-7/
i.e. Windows only creates that partition if starting on a 'clean' (partitionless) hd

Yeah, I just skimmed the article,
but I didnt see any mention of the 100MB System partition.

Do you have that in your current setup kyrathaba?

[kyrathaba]

Yeah, I just skimmed the article,
but I didnt see any mention of the 100MB System partition.

Do you have that in your current setup kyrathaba?

No, I just have a single partition on my hard drive.

[f0dder]

Sounds like it would work, but it's a bit much mucking around - and I'm not a fan of their "let's shuffle data around a lot to get the partition aligned".

Personally, I do my OS setups in vmware, then migrate to physical hardware with Paragon Virtualization Manager 2010 Personal - works like a charm. For migrating an existing install it would be even more mucking around than the lifehacker way, but it still offers the benefit of getting everything juuuuust right in a virtual environment before doing the switchover to physical.