Solve : Cloned SSD to a HDD for Windows 7 system - heavily fragmented

1.	Solve : Cloned SSD to a HDD for Windows 7 system - heavily fragmented & more?
Answer» So I decided that I wanted to move my SSD from my prior gaming system to my new gaming system, but I didnt want to have to reinstall the OS back to the old system, and so I bought a Unitek Y-3023 SATA drive dock/duplicator and took a same capacity HDD and placed that into this duplicator with the SSD as the Master in Slot A and the HDD as Slave in Slot B. This drive duplicator didnt work for the offline duplication as for maybe it didnt like the SSD to HDD clone process. So I then went on the search for a software utility that could achieve this for free and tried Corsair SSD Toolbox as seen here: http://www.corsair.com/en-us/blog/2013/may/the-corsair-ssd-toolbox BUT there is just about no info out there to assist with this software and after the clone was complete it just would say "Succeed" with option for [OK]. When placing the HDD into the old system which should be an exact clone to the SSD, it detected the HDD but missing OS. Looking back at this HDD it had no drive letter assignment and so I tried to fix the issue by giving it a letter assignment with the dock connected to netbook via USB connection and then place it back into the old gaming system and once again still Missing OS. I then went on the hunt for another clone software replacement which was free to use and found a tool SHOWN on a youtube video called AOMEI Backupper Standard Edition 2.1.0 http://www.backup-utility.com/free-backup-software.html and decided to try this software out after first scanning for virus and malware etc. It came up clean and so after making sure it was clean and installing it I performed a drive to drive clone with this utility and use of the dual SATA drive USB dock connected to the netbook running XP Home SP3. After about 1 hr and 15 minutes the drive was cloned, and it looked like it should work. So I installed the HDD and booted the old gaming system up and Windows came up stating that there was an error and that a system repair disk should be run on it. Located the Windows 7 Repair DVD that I burned a few years ago and booted the system off of that disc and performed the repair and COOL... Windows 7 is now working on the cloned drive, but far slower than expected. The system stated that there was a hardware change and it needed to reboot, so I rebooted it. On the boot up after reboot started it seemed as if the system was acting way slower than it should have. HDD activity was more active than normal and so I went looking first to see if there was any fragmentation and sure enough it was heavily FRAGMENTED at 18% So I defragmented the HDD and performance got much better. When it comes to cloning drives its usually a bit for bit based on the data location from one to another drive to have an exact copy of the master. I am guessing that this bit for bit clone placed data on the HDD that was as it was indexed in order by the SSD and so it placed the data on the HDD from the SSD fragmented. On top of this for some reason the HDD was named Copy of F: by running this clone utility so I will have to go and rename it. Through this process I learned that: - For some reason Windows 7 doesnt like the drive cloned from SSD to HDD and a repair was needed to get this drive to function properly to boot the system. - Offline clone doesnt work with the Unitek Y-3023 between this SSD and HDD of same capacity - Expect Fragmentation of data on the HDD when cloning from SSD to HDD. - Corsair SSD Toolbox clone utility is seriously lacking support documentation and the clone utility didnt work correctly between Corsair brand Force Series SSD and HDD. - AOMEI Backupper Standard 2.1.0 worked to transfer the image to the HDD from the SSD, however the Windows installation may need to be repaired with a Windows 7 Repair disc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I could have cloned this drive by using the built in Windows 7 image utility, BUT the problem here is that this requires a drive that contains the image separate to that of the drive that would be made into an exact clone. From my experience working with this Windows 7 image utility feature, while it works very well to create and restore from images, it requires another drive for the image to be placed onto. So this feature is really intended for use with making a system recovery backup image to be placed onto say an external USB connected HDD, but the image then copied from the external HDD to the original HDD and so the external drive is only an upload/download system recovery data drive vs one that can be placed into the computer internally and able to run. So instead of having to use a 3rd drive as the upload/download location for images, i decided to instead go with a direct clone method. I was really hoping that this drive duplicator was going to be a quick easy way to duplicate like capacity drives without much trouble, but that wasn't the case here. Maybe if I had 2 same drives, same make/model it would have worked out better vs 2 different brands and 2 different types. [attachment deleted by admin to conserve space]Quote from: DaveLembke on December 15, 2014, 11:30:17 PM - For some reason Windows 7 doesnt like the drive cloned from SSD to HDD Evidently Windows 7 reacted the same way as I did when I read the title - insert "you're doing it wrong" picture here I've always used Macrium Reflect to clone my drives if needed and never had a problem moving between drives of different capacity, at worst I've had to resize the partition which I've always done with GParted and encountered no problems at all. Edit: also meant to add that you're right, if an exact copy is made then the HDD will be heavily fragmented as the SSD controller will place data spread across the SSD's flash to even out writes etc. As fragmentation doesn't affect an SSD in the same way as a HDD and the OS can't control where the data goes anyway, any exact copy will inevitably be fragmented. Something to bear in mind that might not be obvious for anyone else doing this, so thanks for sharing. I suppose it might even be worth defragmenting the drive from another system, using something like Mydefrag (formerly JKDefrag, other software is available) to thoroughly defragment the drive before use to ensure it performs as well as a HDD can.Quote I've always used Macrium Reflect to clone my drives if needed and never had a problem moving between drives of different capacity, at worst I've had to resize the partition which I've always done with GParted and encountered no problems at all. * Thanks for reminding me... I forgot to add this detail... I attempted to use Macrium Reflect first before these other methods, but because it was installed once prior about a year ago and the 30-day trial ran out on it, it wouldnt allow for me to use it again on this same build. It appeared to leave its signature on the registry somewhere and so even when uninstalling and reinstalling a new copy of the 30-day trial it came up and TOLD me I had 0-days left and I would have to buy it. So thats why I went the alternate route. I cloned this system once prior with Macrium as I believe you suggested about 2 or 3 years ago here when I was complaining about Ghost 2003 not working with Windows 7, and it definitely was better than the AOMEI backupper. Had I not blown my opportunity to use Macrium on this build to image it, I definitely would have gone with that instead. I started nodding off as I was typing this initial post the other night and so looking back at it now, I am glad that it makes sense although lengthy...LOL There is a free version of Macrium available, for the average user there's no difference between free and standard but a full comparison is available at the bottom of this page - http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx When you tried to reinstall it were you not able to use the free version? Was it a case of once you'd taken the trial and it ran out you didn't have that option? I've never taken up the trial option so I can't say with certainty whether it'll allow you to install the free version once the trial runs out but that would seem like quite an oversight. I do remember helping someone whose system got stuck in Avast's rescue mode when their Avast trial ran out though so it's definitely not impossible for oversights like that to happen, RECOVERING from that wasn't much fun.I checked out the free version website and it only has a download from cnet without a direct download for the software. Looks like they want me to install a download downloader to get it Maybe I will download the download downloader with a crappy system I have to try to get the Free edition that way. Definitely dont want to have any junk installed as a service on this system etc. Frustrating how many companies out there are ditching direct clean downloads and now they want you to install some downloader to download their software or even worse there are check boxes to pay extreme attention to when installing software to make sure that a tool bar or antivirus is not slipped into your system upon an installation from Adobe's site etc. The Macrium Reflect version I had tried was from my collection of software that I have that I refer to when i need to install software or reinstall software without having to download new copies each time. So I didnt try the new Free edition, and I guess back when I downloaded the Free edition it either was the Free edition with a check box for trial time for the PREMIUM that got checked or wasnt the free version but instead the trial version that broke after 30 days. In regards as to if the Free Version wouldnt work after the Trial Version was up.... if I had a spare drive to try this out on, I would, but I think I will have to state that for now, this would be unanswered. Only spare drives I have are IDE and the original drive is SATA. And while the image could fit on a 160GB IDE drive, it just doesnt make much sense to go through the trouble to place that image onto an IDE HDD. Try downloading Macrium from Filehippo instead of cnet - http://filehippo.com/download_macrium_reflect/ The download link there gives you "reflect_dl.exe" which in turns downloads and installs the actual program, that's the way I have installed it and it's definitely safe, no junkware included as sneaky checkboxes or anything either.the cnet download is reflectdl.exe, which is the Macrium download tool. The purpose of the tool is so they can provide different installation packages for different licenses, Windows Versions and architectures, I think. It is not from cnet, however- it's not, say, a cnet downloader they slapped in-between. They basically have two such download tools- they look identical, but the "Full" downloader let's you choose between the full version or the trial (with the former requiring a license key), whereas the free version allows a Free option. I have been using the Free Edition for some time. When I swapped out a 750GB HDD in my old system for an SSD, I used macrium to create an image of the 750GB Drive first, When I moved to this PC, I imaged that SSD I was using in my previous system using it, and then wiped the SSD for use in the new system. So I have two HDD images which I mount when I think I may want files or data that I had on one of those drives. The mounting is quite exceptional. I just right-click the image file, select to mount, and choose a few options (such as making the entire thing writable, preventing the common requirement to take ownership from when you slave the drive for example), and then it appears as a fully mounted and accessed Drive Letter that has the exact contents of the drive image.Have to say I didn't check what cnet was offering, I have just always downloaded Macrium from Filehippo as I know it's clean and I generally avoid Cnet. I agree the way Macrium mounts images is great, makes browsing for specific files to reference or restore very easy indeed.

Solve : Cloned SSD to a HDD for Windows 7 system - heavily fragmented & more?

Answer»

So I decided that I wanted to move my SSD from my prior gaming system to my new gaming system, but I didnt want to have to reinstall the OS back to the old system, and so I bought a Unitek Y-3023 SATA drive dock/duplicator and took a same capacity HDD and placed that into this duplicator with the SSD as the Master in Slot A and the HDD as Slave in Slot B.

This drive duplicator didnt work for the offline duplication as for maybe it didnt like the SSD to HDD clone process. So I then went on the search for a software utility that could achieve this for free and tried Corsair SSD Toolbox as seen here: http://www.corsair.com/en-us/blog/2013/may/the-corsair-ssd-toolbox BUT there is just about no info out there to assist with this software and after the clone was complete it just would say "Succeed" with option for [OK]. When placing the HDD into the old system which should be an exact clone to the SSD, it detected the HDD but missing OS.

Looking back at this HDD it had no drive letter assignment and so I tried to fix the issue by giving it a letter assignment with the dock connected to netbook via USB connection and then place it back into the old gaming system and once again still Missing OS.

I then went on the hunt for another clone software replacement which was free to use and found a tool SHOWN on a youtube video called AOMEI Backupper Standard Edition 2.1.0 http://www.backup-utility.com/free-backup-software.html and decided to try this software out after first scanning for virus and malware etc. It came up clean and so after making sure it was clean and installing it I performed a drive to drive clone with this utility and use of the dual SATA drive USB dock connected to the netbook running XP Home SP3. After about 1 hr and 15 minutes the drive was cloned, and it looked like it should work.

So I installed the HDD and booted the old gaming system up and Windows came up stating that there was an error and that a system repair disk should be run on it. Located the Windows 7 Repair DVD that I burned a few years ago and booted the system off of that disc and performed the repair and COOL... Windows 7 is now working on the cloned drive, but far slower than expected.

The system stated that there was a hardware change and it needed to reboot, so I rebooted it. On the boot up after reboot started it seemed as if the system was acting way slower than it should have. HDD activity was more active than normal and so I went looking first to see if there was any fragmentation and sure enough it was heavily FRAGMENTED at 18%

So I defragmented the HDD and performance got much better.

When it comes to cloning drives its usually a bit for bit based on the data location from one to another drive to have an exact copy of the master. I am guessing that this bit for bit clone placed data on the HDD that was as it was indexed in order by the SSD and so it placed the data on the HDD from the SSD fragmented.

On top of this for some reason the HDD was named Copy of F: by running this clone utility so I will have to go and rename it.

Through this process I learned that:

- For some reason Windows 7 doesnt like the drive cloned from SSD to HDD and a repair was needed to get this drive to function properly to boot the system.

- Offline clone doesnt work with the Unitek Y-3023 between this SSD and HDD of same capacity

- Expect Fragmentation of data on the HDD when cloning from SSD to HDD.

- Corsair SSD Toolbox clone utility is seriously lacking support documentation and the clone utility didnt work correctly between Corsair brand Force Series SSD and HDD.

- AOMEI Backupper Standard 2.1.0 worked to transfer the image to the HDD from the SSD, however the Windows installation may need to be repaired with a Windows 7 Repair disc.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I could have cloned this drive by using the built in Windows 7 image utility, BUT the problem here is that this requires a drive that contains the image separate to that of the drive that would be made into an exact clone. From my experience working with this Windows 7 image utility feature, while it works very well to create and restore from images, it requires another drive for the image to be placed onto. So this feature is really intended for use with making a system recovery backup image to be placed onto say an external USB connected HDD, but the image then copied from the external HDD to the original HDD and so the external drive is only an upload/download system recovery data drive vs one that can be placed into the computer internally and able to run. So instead of having to use a 3rd drive as the upload/download location for images, i decided to instead go with a direct clone method.

I was really hoping that this drive duplicator was going to be a quick easy way to duplicate like capacity drives without much trouble, but that wasn't the case here. Maybe if I had 2 same drives, same make/model it would have worked out better vs 2 different brands and 2 different types.

[attachment deleted by admin to conserve space]Quote from: DaveLembke on December 15, 2014, 11:30:17 PM

- For some reason Windows 7 doesnt like the drive cloned from SSD to HDD

Evidently Windows 7 reacted the same way as I did when I read the title - insert "you're doing it wrong" picture here

I've always used Macrium Reflect to clone my drives if needed and never had a problem moving between drives of different capacity, at worst I've had to resize the partition which I've always done with GParted and encountered no problems at all.

Edit: also meant to add that you're right, if an exact copy is made then the HDD will be heavily fragmented as the SSD controller will place data spread across the SSD's flash to even out writes etc. As fragmentation doesn't affect an SSD in the same way as a HDD and the OS can't control where the data goes anyway, any exact copy will inevitably be fragmented. Something to bear in mind that might not be obvious for anyone else doing this, so thanks for sharing. I suppose it might even be worth defragmenting the drive from another system, using something like Mydefrag (formerly JKDefrag, other software is available) to thoroughly defragment the drive before use to ensure it performs as well as a HDD can.Quote

I've always used Macrium Reflect to clone my drives if needed and never had a problem moving between drives of different capacity, at worst I've had to resize the partition which I've always done with GParted and encountered no problems at all.

* Thanks for reminding me... I forgot to add this detail... I attempted to use Macrium Reflect first before these other methods, but because it was installed once prior about a year ago and the 30-day trial ran out on it, it wouldnt allow for me to use it again on this same build. It appeared to leave its signature on the registry somewhere and so even when uninstalling and reinstalling a new copy of the 30-day trial it came up and TOLD me I had 0-days left and I would have to buy it. So thats why I went the alternate route.

I cloned this system once prior with Macrium as I believe you suggested about 2 or 3 years ago here when I was complaining about Ghost 2003 not working with Windows 7, and it definitely was better than the AOMEI backupper. Had I not blown my opportunity to use Macrium on this build to image it, I definitely would have gone with that instead.

I started nodding off as I was typing this initial post the other night and so looking back at it now, I am glad that it makes sense although lengthy...LOL There is a free version of Macrium available, for the average user there's no difference between free and standard but a full comparison is available at the bottom of this page - http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

When you tried to reinstall it were you not able to use the free version? Was it a case of once you'd taken the trial and it ran out you didn't have that option? I've never taken up the trial option so I can't say with certainty whether it'll allow you to install the free version once the trial runs out but that would seem like quite an oversight. I do remember helping someone whose system got stuck in Avast's rescue mode when their Avast trial ran out though so it's definitely not impossible for oversights like that to happen, RECOVERING from that wasn't much fun.I checked out the free version website and it only has a download from cnet without a direct download for the software. Looks like they want me to install a download downloader to get it

Maybe I will download the download downloader with a crappy system I have to try to get the Free edition that way. Definitely dont want to have any junk installed as a service on this system etc.

Frustrating how many companies out there are ditching direct clean downloads and now they want you to install some downloader to download their software or even worse there are check boxes to pay extreme attention to when installing software to make sure that a tool bar or antivirus is not slipped into your system upon an installation from Adobe's site etc.

The Macrium Reflect version I had tried was from my collection of software that I have that I refer to when i need to install software or reinstall software without having to download new copies each time. So I didnt try the new Free edition, and I guess back when I downloaded the Free edition it either was the Free edition with a check box for trial time for the PREMIUM that got checked or wasnt the free version but instead the trial version that broke after 30 days.

In regards as to if the Free Version wouldnt work after the Trial Version was up.... if I had a spare drive to try this out on, I would, but I think I will have to state that for now, this would be unanswered. Only spare drives I have are IDE and the original drive is SATA. And while the image could fit on a 160GB IDE drive, it just doesnt make much sense to go through the trouble to place that image onto an IDE HDD. Try downloading Macrium from Filehippo instead of cnet - http://filehippo.com/download_macrium_reflect/
The download link there gives you "reflect_dl.exe" which in turns downloads and installs the actual program, that's the way I have installed it and it's definitely safe, no junkware included as sneaky checkboxes or anything either.the cnet download is reflectdl.exe, which is the Macrium download tool.

The purpose of the tool is so they can provide different installation packages for different licenses, Windows Versions and architectures, I think. It is not from cnet, however- it's not, say, a cnet downloader they slapped in-between.

They basically have two such download tools- they look identical, but the "Full" downloader let's you choose between the full version or the trial (with the former requiring a license key), whereas the free version allows a Free option.

I have been using the Free Edition for some time. When I swapped out a 750GB HDD in my old system for an SSD, I used macrium to create an image of the 750GB Drive first, When I moved to this PC, I imaged that SSD I was using in my previous system using it, and then wiped the SSD for use in the new system. So I have two HDD images which I mount when I think I may want files or data that I had on one of those drives.

The mounting is quite exceptional. I just right-click the image file, select to mount, and choose a few options (such as making the entire thing writable, preventing the common requirement to take ownership from when you slave the drive for example), and then it appears as a fully mounted and accessed Drive Letter that has the exact contents of the drive image.Have to say I didn't check what cnet was offering, I have just always downloaded Macrium from Filehippo as I know it's clean and I generally avoid Cnet. I agree the way Macrium mounts images is great, makes browsing for specific files to reference or restore very easy indeed.

Solve : Cloned SSD to a HDD for Windows 7 system - heavily fragmented & more?

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