Question about TRIM and cloning an HDD to an SSD

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Not sure this is the correct forum, but I will be using Macrium Reflect . . . 🙂

I have a 2009 Win7 Home Premium PC running with a single 1TB HDD. I want to keep this PC going for a while longer by replacing the HDD with an SSD. My plan is to use Macrium Reflect Home (v5 on this PC) to clone the HDD to a new 1TB Samsung EVO 970 SSD using a USB to SATA adapter cable.

My question is about TRIM. Will the cloning process take TRIM into consideration and automatically make any necessary adjustments for it to be enabled for the SSD? Or will I have to manually intervene?

I have the same question if I instead create an image of the HDD and restore it to the SSD.

Thanks!

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Opti1,

I would suggest you avoid cloning. IMHO you’re much better off doing:

1. An Image backup of your HDD to an External drive (HDD or SSD).
2. Then replacing the HDD with your New SSD, making sure you use the same cables or at least the same header on your motherboard.
3. Boot from your Reflect recovery drive and restore your image from the backup drive.

Once you’re sure the machine boots properly you can repurpose your HDD as an Image drive for future Reflect Images.

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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opti1, Alex5723

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Assuming you don’t have another disk to use as RG suggested, cloning is the correct solution.

I don’t know if V5 will align the partitions on your SSD.
When you restore / clone you should see an “alignment” drop down. Hopefully this will have an SSD option, but you can use “1MB” alignment if SSD is not shown.
https://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW80/Understanding+partition+alignment

If you can’t manage the alignment you will need to use another product to restore / clone. (Aomei Backupper free will do it.)

cheers, Paul

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opti1

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For an ‘old-fashioned’ 2.5″ SSD on W7, you can use the “Standard AHCI SATA controller” driver to enable Trim as some Intel, Marvell, Nvidia, etc. drivers didn’t/don’t.

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opti1

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I have used EaseUS Partition Master to clone and replace several C: drives, as well as to manage partitions on all my internal and external drives. As to cloning, I once moved from a small HD to a 2T SSD and then from the 2T SSD to a 4T SSD. I have never had a problem with the transfers and management of device partitions has been simple and versatile.

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satrow wrote:

For an ‘old-fashioned’ 2.5″ SSD on W7

See this thread for exact details.
https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/ssd-life-new-question/#post-1532492

cheers, Paul

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opti1

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Thanks everyone for your suggestions and help.

Unfortunately, after several days and way too much time spent I have not been able to get the old PC to properly recognize the SSD (Samsung 970 EVO SATA 1TB) I want to install to replace the HDD nor recognize another SSD (Samsung 960 EVO 500GB) I tried for comparison.

I think this PC, Win7, drivers, etc., are just too old for these SSDs and not worth investing more time in trying to get them to work, so change in plan.

I grabbed a new 1TB HDD to swap in for the old 1TB HDD in the old PC.

I’ve refreshed my memory on restoring with Macrium Reflect 5. If I understood correctly I should be able to run MR (Home) on the old PC to restore an image from an external HDD to the new replacement HDD in an external docking station and then move the new HDD into the old PC in place of the old HDD.

Is this correct?

The old PC is stuck on USB 2. The external HDDs where all the images sit are USB 3 and the docking station is USB 3. I have a laptop that has Macrium Reflect and USB 3.

To speed up the restore process can I use the laptop instead of the old PC to restore an image of the old PC from an external HDD to the new HDD in the docking station and then move the new HDD to the old PC?

Thanks!

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Did you connect the SSD to a spare cable in the PC and boot Windows? You should be able to see the new disk without issue.
Booting from a Macrium USB should see both disks and allow you to clone. Then shutdown, take out the old disk and boot.

cheers, Paul

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Paul T wrote:

Did you connect the SSD to a spare cable in the PC and boot Windows?

Thanks for your response.

No I didn’t. I tried multiple times to clone in Windows to the SSD hooked up to USB first with an external enclosure,  then with a USB to SATA adaptor. Every time I got ‘Clone Failed – Read failed – 22 – Broken pipe’ after four minutes.

I also tried to image and got ‘Image Aborted – Error Code 1117 – Unable to read from disk’ and ‘Image Aborted – Unable to read from disk – Error code 1117 – The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error’. The error when imaging comes either at the end of the PQSERVICE section or during the transition from there to the next section.

When I researched on the Macrium site it said that read errors are associated with the source disk and write errors are associated with the destination disk, which leads me to believe the old HDD in the PC is the problem.

I also ran Crystal Disk Info which came back with ‘Caution’ warnings on the old HDD:

At this point I just want to get the old HDD out of there and put in the new one with the last image restored and any new data updated before the old one fails altogether. This old PC will be sent to a well deserved retirement (13 years!) as soon as life stuff lets me get to it.

Thanks again for your input. 🙂

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Replace the old one with the new SSD and boot from a Macrium USB. If you can see the SSD you can restore, but you may need to boot into Safe mode afterwards.

cheers, Paul

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Paul T wrote:

Replace the old one with the new SSD and boot from a Macrium USB.

Update . . .

A few hours ago I proceeded with my plan mentioned a few messages up. I used Macrium Reflect on my laptop to restore the most recent image I had on an external HDD to a new HDD in an external docking station. I selected to verify the image before restoring. The verification and restore successfully completed in about an hour and 35 minutes without any issues.

Then I moved the old HDD in the PC to the second drive bay and left it disconnected. I installed the new HDD where the old one had been and hooked it up to the same cables the old drive had been using. From there the PC booted right up and started Windows. After letting it sit for a bit I successfully logged in to my user account. Shortly after that I got a pop-up window that I needed to restart the computer to apply the changes so I did that. The restart proceeded without issues. So far everything appears to be functioning as it should.

At this point I’m going to stick with this arrangement for a while to make sure everything continues to behave. The increase in performance by switching from the old 5400 rpm spinner to the new 7200 rpm WD Black spinner is quite noticeable, certainly not as much as an SSD would provide but a pleasant bump for the remaining time until we retire the PC.

Thanks yet again for your response(s).

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