Switching System Drive to SSD

[wayner]

I want to switch my system drive to an SSD. I run Windows Home Server (my former Sage server) - can I just backup via WHS, swap out the old hard drive with the SSD and then run the WHS restore? Or is there something special that I have to do given the fact that it is an SSD? Any BIOS settings I should worry about?

Is there anything special that I have to do to ensure that the restore is done to this SSD as opposed to the other 3 hard drives that are in the system? In other words does WHS give you a choice of drives to restore from when you start up from the restore CD?

I cleaned up my system drive and shrunk the partition (using Acronis Disk Director) so that it is smaller than my SSD. Anything else to keep in mind?

Running Sage V7 on Win7 Pro 32bit with 4 GB of memory (only 3 being used of course). All media will stay on traditional 3.5" hard drives.

Are there any specific types of files that should be kept off the SSD (besides the pagefile argument that I don't want to rehash here)? I have my Fanart in the Sage directory structure so it is on the SSD.

[gplasky]

You can't just backup or image the WHS OS drive and restore it. You'll run into issues because of the tombstones.

The proper procedure is to install the new drive (regardless of SSD or mechanical) and then do a reinstall the OS and your apps or add-ins. There is a process to image the OS drive but requires registry changes and changing of the Drive ID. Not for the faint of heart.

What you could look at doing is this: Force Data Migration off the Primary Data Partition

Then proceed with the removal of the old drive, the install of the SSD and then boot to the WHS DVD and choose reinstall. This method will also take awhile because it will have to reread the pool and recreate the datapoints and tombstones. After that you'll need to reinstall your add-ins and apps.

Gerry

[wayner]

Originally Posted by gplasky

You can't just backup or image the WHS OS drive and restore it. You'll run into issues because of the tombstones.

I didn't explain myself very well - the OS for my Sage server is Win7 Pro x86 - but I do have WHS backing it up daily (I also have Sage running on this WHS machine but I only use that as my test environment/backup Sage server). The WHS used to be my Sage server but I switched to Win7 for exactly this reason.

So WHS just enters the equation as my disk imaging product.

What I am asking is that can I just swap drives and do a restore of my WHS backup of my Sage system drive which is using Win7Pro?

[davephan]

Originally Posted by wayner

I didn't explain myself very well - the OS for my Sage server is Win7 Pro x86 - but I do have WHS backing it up daily (I also have Sage running on this WHS machine but I only use that as my test environment/backup Sage server). The WHS used to be my Sage server but I switched to Win7 for exactly this reason.

So WHS just enters the equation as my disk imaging product.

What I am asking is that can I just swap drives and do a restore of my WHS backup of my Sage system drive which is using Win7Pro?

I can't tell you if the WHS restore would work, but I can tell you how to do it with imaging. Just take an image of your Windows 7 computer using the mechanical hard drive. Save the image files on a secondary hard drive. Then recover the image onto your new Windows 7 / Programs SSD. I changed out my old mechanical hard drive with an SSD on my general purpose Windows 7 64-bit computer using Acronis True Image Home 2011. If you did not want to pay for Acronis, you could use Parition Image is Not Ghost (PING).

There is a significant performance difference using the SSD. It is well worth the cost. I haven't installed one on my SageTV computer yet, but I plan to eventually. I have two SageTV computer rebuilds coming up. One to move from XP to Windows 7 64-bit. Another, longer term Linux SageTV build. I don't plan on updating one of the SageTV computers to an SSD right away, but it is in the longer term plans.

Dave

[Spectrum]

Just an FYI you may run into a situation where the imaged SSD won't boot and need to do a boot repair using a Win7 DVD. Last time I shuffled things around, one system needed it and the others didn't. Just booted to the Win7 DVD, ran a boot repair, then rebooted and everything was fine.

[davephan]

Originally Posted by Spectrum

Just an FYI you may run into a situation where the imaged SSD won't boot and need to do a boot repair using a Win7 DVD. Last time I shuffled things around, one system needed it and the others didn't. Just booted to the Win7 DVD, ran a boot repair, then rebooted and everything was fine.

Come to think about it, I ran into that situation. I had to repair the newly imaged Windows 7 64-bit system with the Window 7 DVD. It was fine after that Windows 7 repair process.

Dave

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by wayner

I didn't explain myself very well - the OS for my Sage server is Win7 Pro x86 - but I do have WHS backing it up daily (I also have Sage running on this WHS machine but I only use that as my test environment/backup Sage server). The WHS used to be my Sage server but I switched to Win7 for exactly this reason.

So WHS just enters the equation as my disk imaging product.

What I am asking is that can I just swap drives and do a restore of my WHS backup of my Sage system drive which is using Win7Pro?

The answer is yes. The backup is stored as a Windows img file. The same format is used to install your Windows 7.

Gerry

[Beefcake550]

I've had problems where when I try to re-image back to the "new" hard drive, WHS won't do the deed because the new drive was smaller than the original one. This was regardless of the fact that the data size of the old drive was stil smaller than the size of the new drive.

Good luck....

[wayner]

I was aware of, and planned for that as you need to have enough space for the entire partition, even if you are only using a small portion. When I set up systems I now use a fairly small partition for the OS so that this doesn't become an issue. And Windows 7 does let you resize partitions - but that doesn't always work so well. Acronis Disk Director is pretty good at shriking partitions that Win 7 can't

My new SSD is 55GB and my old system drive is now down to 54GB, so hopefully it will work for me. The first try was unsuccessful as WHS couldn't find a connection to my WHS server - I think it was an issue with my NIC. I think my onboard NIC is acting flaky as it will now only connect at 10 Mbps so I will try buying a separate NIC. The other option is to use third party imaging software like True Image, Ghost, PING, etc.

[jerryt]

What would be the best option with one SSD on hand.

Install in the server and enjoy faster response of Sage on the client?

or

Install on the client and enjoy faster operation of everything?

[bjterry62]

The best way to switch to a new hdd is to download the Acronis Migrate Easy trial here and install it on the old hdd. connect the new hdd using either a usb adapter or just a SATA and power cable inside the case. Open Migrate Easy and choose copy hard drive. Make sure you choose the old OS drive as the source and the new SSD for the destination and off you go. When it's finished, remove the old drive and boot your PC. I actually purchased ME and use it all the time.

BT

[wayner]

I just finished this and am now booting from my SSD. One note for anyone who does this in the future - after you restore your image to your new hard drive don't forget to change the hard drive boot order in your BIOS and then you may need to run the Win7 repair process as many as three times to set up your new drive as the boot drive. I only had to run it twice.