Looking for tips and resources around using a SSD for a Windows XP Pro boot drive, cloned from my existing XP installation.

August 18, 2011 12:06 PM

Looking for tips and resources around using a SSD for a Windows XP Pro boot drive, cloned from my existing XP installation.

I've already plugged in this Kingston SSD Now V100 Series to the motherboard, and I'm already a bit concerned that I've already done something wrong, or at least not done the right thing (copying a 6GB file on that drive to itself took about 3 minutes, which seems awfully slow).

Anyway, ideally I would like to clone my existing XP Pro installation over to the SSD and boot off that. This computer is used as a HTPC and as such, I'm admittedly not entirely sure when I last updated the OS. I'm also not sure whether a "current" XP build would include all the drivers I'd need for this to work properly.

My google-fu is seemingly weak - I'm finding some guides but they seem to pertain to OCZ SSDs, and while I'd assume they would be mostly applicable to my drive, I'm just not sure.

So, I am looking for advice, tips, links to good resources, on how to 1) make sure the drive is running as fast as it should, and 2) whether I can / should clone my existing OS install over to the new drive (and change the boot order of my drives), or whether I would need to install from fresh (which I'd like to avoid if I can).

Thanks!

posted by schmoppa to computers & internet (11 answers total)

You can use Acronis to clone your current hard disk to the new SSD and boot from it thereafter. I wouldn't be terribly concerned about the speed of copying a file from the SSD to itself. Focus on tests that give you accurate read-write numbers if you want to diagnose problems.
posted by odinsdream at 12:08 PM on August 18, 2011

Thanks. There's a ton of data drive speed test software utilities out there. any in particular I should try?
posted by schmoppa at 12:19 PM on August 18, 2011

HD Tune comes up on alot of my searches. I'd try the trial of the pro version.
posted by dgeiser13 at 12:32 PM on August 18, 2011

Good news, everybody - read and write speeds seem fine according to the benchmark.

Now looking for a good, free, cloning package
posted by schmoppa at 12:43 PM on August 18, 2011

I've had a lot of success using Acronis Easy Migrate for this. There's a free demo that'll clone your drive.
posted by damn dirty ape at 12:59 PM on August 18, 2011

Ditto the Acronis software. I've used it a couple of times. Very slick.
posted by bonehead at 1:01 PM on August 18, 2011

Its also worth noting that XP does not support TRIM and that you can expect performance degradation over time. Some SSDs come with a cleanup utility for XP, but I'm not sure if yours is one of them.
posted by damn dirty ape at 1:01 PM on August 18, 2011

If you don't want to pay for Acronis you can use Ghost 4 Linux, which is just as capable, but a but less friendly.
posted by odinsdream at 1:24 PM on August 18, 2011

That speed is 66mb/s (because you are reading 6gb and writing 6gb) and that's getting close to the limit of PCI (with overhead). How old is your motherboard?
posted by gjc at 3:57 PM on August 18, 2011

@gjc, the mobo is a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R 775 from 2007
posted by schmoppa at 6:57 PM on August 18, 2011

You are supposed to re align the drive before formatting.

I'm pretty interested in TRIM alternatives myself, but I don't have a good one in mind right now. Other tweaks seem more about general good use of XP than specific for SSD use (turn off indexing services, well 'duh).
posted by Chuckles at 5:59 PM on August 22, 2011