Migrate Win 7 64 bit install to a SSD

Make the bootable Rescue CD, boot with it and use the Backup feature to make a backup Image of the C partition. You can use either the D or E part to store the Image.
After this is done, shutdown and install the SSD if you haven't already done so and reboot the system, again with the bootable Rescue CD, and this time choose the Recovery feature to restore the Image to the SSD.
When the restore process is done, reboot and if you have the option to select a Boot Menu (usually by pressing an F key) do this and select to boot from the SSD. If you don't have this option you will have to disconnect the 640gig drive before rebooting or change the boot order in the Bios.

I have read somethings about "partition alignment' problems.

Will the newly form SSD have a partition alignment problem?

Are there any steps to prevent a partition alignment problem?

thanks for the reply.

If the partition isn't aligned it can cause extreme degradation in access speed. It seems restoring an image with TI does not guarantee proper alignment.

See this link for more info and a possible solution:
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/8322

I wish to do a migration similar to the one described by the original poster. The main difference is that my HDD is configured as a single partition. Therefore the OS (Win 7), programs, and data all start from the same partition and will need to have different destination partitions. Is this possible with Acronis True Image Home 2010? What about with TIH2010 *and* the TIH2010 Plus Pack?

Aside: I hope the latter is true since the description for this product says "Restore a computer to dissimilar hardware regardless of make, model, or installed components, or to a virtual machine." However I'm not holding my breath since I've not seen any postings suggesting this is possible. Hope I'm wrong!!

Thanks,
JAV

If your migration is changing the disks then there is no problem - I'm not commenting on SSD alignment etc though.

The dissimilar hardware refers to things like the motherboard, video card, etc where there can be significant driver issues.

JAV-

Universal Restore has been used successfully as reported here: http://forum.acronis.com/forum/6906#comment-25458

@Seekforever: My question is more directed at the "regardless of make, model, or installed components" portion of the advertising claim. Can the restore, in fact, handle the case where all of the installed programs (OS, apps, etc.) will not fit on the new boot disk?

@Gary: Thanks but IMO the comment you pointed out is not applicable as it doesn't give any reason to believe that the disks in the new system has a smaller system partition.

JAV

True - it is for a different situation. I don't see how one can restore to a smaller disk than the original disk. If there is not enough room, I do not understand how one expects software to make a physical disk grow. I also don't see how "regardless of make, model, or installed components" has anything to do with trying to put more data on a disk if the disk is of physically insufficient size. No software can make installed programs (OS, apps, etc.) shrink.

The Universal Restore option AFAIK only deals with the Hardware Abstraction Layer stuff not installed applications which would have entries in the registry referencing their location as C:.

Is your OS and apps alone, ie, not considering data files, so large that it won't fit on your SS drive?

My personal preference is not to keep any important data files on the same partition as the OS and apps but that may not be yours.

JAV.

You can restore to a smaller disk as long as the disk being restored from uses less space than is available on the new drive. If the used space on the old drive is larger than the available space on the new drive then you will not be able to restore. See this old post http://www.wilderssecurity.com/archive/index.php/t-174360.html.
The restore has to fit completely on the new drive. There is no way to split the data during a restore.

I wrote the comment that Gary referred to http://forum.acronis.com/forum/6906#comment-25458. In this case the disk was the same just a new motherboard.

@Gary: To clarify...the "new" configuration has more total disk space than the "old" configuration so it's not an impossible task that I'm asking the SW to do (just quite difficult :-). And just because your answer comes across as a bit "smarty", I'll note that as a matter of fact there IS software that can make installed SW shrink--it's called disk compression and was the rage in the "old days". [This forum SW may call me a "beginner" but I have more than 35 years working as a SW engineer. :-)]

@Seekforever: Yes, I'm trying to use a (relatively) inexpensive 40G drive so Win7 and apps will not fit [It really makes me feel old to realize how recently it seems that we bought our first 1GB drive--at which time I foolishly told my wife: "we'll never need a bigger drive than that!"]. I used to partition my disks but quit once I started using NTFS; guess it's time to revert to that practice!!

@thomasjk: "Partitions" are the right way top think here, not "disks". Note that the same problem exists if I simply want to repartition my existing disk into two or three partitions. As Seekforever points out, moving an application from one partition to another is not simply a question of moving the files but rather involves mucking with the registry (thanks, billg!).

I'm now convinced that the desired operation cannot be done with TIH2010 & TIH2010 Plus Pack. MAYBE if I also buy a copy of Acronis Disk Director Suite 10??? But skimmed the user's guide for same and it wasn't clear whether or not this was the case. So, I'll quit throwing $$ at Acronis and just get ready to reinstall all the apps.

Thanks again for sharing your knowledge,
JAV

Jav,
I obviously don't know what you have on your machine in the way of apps but on my Win7 installation which has Paintshop Pro, Photomanagment program, music editing program, MS-Office Home, various editors and utilities, etc, I'm only at 14GB. Perhaps, you have a large amount of space being used by System Restore Points. I have my restore points allocation trimmed down to about a GB or so.

In response to your post I went in and estimated the space I think I need for the OS and Apps. Counting Windows, "Program Files", "Program Files (x86)", drivers, "Program Data" I get roughly 33GB. After adding the space used by all the top level directories (i.e. C:\*), there is ~24G missing when compared to the space used under C:\ [Aside: all usage numbers come from the "space on disk" value shown in the properties window of Windows Explorer--these will change some when the files are put on a disk with smaller sectors but I believe it is a good first approximation.] So assuming the 24G can stay on the HDD and that W7Ultimate isn't significantly bigger than W7HomePremium, it looks like my OS and programs *may* all fit on the SSD. Guess I was assuming that MS Office was even larger than it really is! That said, the safest way to get there still seems to be reinstalling.

And yes, I should have thought about all this BEFORE I bought the SSD.....but it seemed such a good sale price that I just couldn't pass it up. Well, I guess I did--it's just that reinstalling didn't seem to be as big a pain when I was going to do it at some future time as it does now that I have to actually do it. ;-).

Thanks again, JAV.