Ordered an SSD for my system drive, my Mobo is only Sata II, but the drive is Sata III but as I understand, the drive will work, just wont reach its max transfer rates…
Is it as simple as, run computer with the SSD connected as a slave, and run a cloning program to create a replica of the system drive onto it.
Shut down, boot with the new drive where the system drive was. Is that basically gonna work?
That’s the way I transferred my system into a SSD.
thats good news!
Hi, Folks!
Although not an expert with SSD’s (my system is getting a bit “long in the tooth” 
), I’ve heard that most need to be “tweaked” for optimum performance with your MOBO interface. Apparently, although they all work, there are ways to tweak their settings for your specific MOBO to enhance their performance. Perhaps a rummage around Tom’s Hardware ( http://www17.tomshardware.com/ ) and a closer check of the manufacturers setup specifications would provide some insights for your rig.
Yeah I was looking into this a few months ago and then again just yesterday and today.
The consensus I gathered from most of the “comments” in any article about cloning Windows to an SSD is “just do a fresh install”.
I know some people may not like that (me particularly), but Southae is right that certain settings or procedures DO need to be taken to ensure a successful and stable cloning. These steps, combined with the benefits and “cleanliness” of a fresh install, make reinstallation seem to be the wiser choice over cloning.
But I’m not an expert either, so YES, look into it first.
if you are not changing your motherboard then it should be fine.
however when going from larger to smaller many imaging programs will NOT do this correctly…
smaller to larger is ok…
I cloned an HDD to an SSD and it worked just fine, and my HDD was bigger than the SSD. I used a freeware version of one of EaseUS’s Disk Copy freeware to do it; it was the only freeware backup that would let me back up a larger drive to a smaller one. Just make sure the HDD isn’t using more space than the SDD has (my HDD was a 500 gigs, but only 120gigs of which was data; the SSD was 160 gigs).
However, if you’re using Windows 7 which installs the small recovery partition, make sure you clone that partition as well. If for some reason your Windows 7 install doesn’t have that partition (happened on one of my systems: a Vista to Win 7 upgrade…), my advice is to do a fresh install of Windows 7 on the SSD, and then destroy the main partition and clone your old system there. That recovery partition is good to have.
The system I cloned to SSD has been working perfectly for over a year now.