How to Move Windows 8 from HDD to SSD, the Easy Way?

SSD can give your computer a superb boost and make your applications start almost instantly unlike HDD’s where applications may take more time, depend on the space filled and memory it requires to run. However, hard drive is still a top runner when it comes to storing bunch of files and user data but may results in low performance over time due to degraded equipment. So, it’s better to move your current OS from the old HDD to a brand new SSD to get maximum possible speed and use your old drive to store as much data as you want. 

Clean installation of Windows in new SSD would be much easier but may force you to start everything from scratch such as installing all the programs once again, copy data to the drive, customize windows the way it was before etc. So, if you don’t want to take that much headache and simply want to put everything from the old drive to new SSD, we’re describing few simple things to get this done easily.

What you need?
You’ll require SSD drive to use as a destination device and the old drive as a source drive to migrate Windows 8. Keep in mind that SSD prices are almost double as compare to the normal hard drives but you can take a low capacity solid state drive (at the cost of normal drives) to put only Windows and install programs you can’t live without. However, make sure the SSD capacity is equal or greater than the size of C: drive. If the C drive is too big, you can take backup and then delete files from c:\users\. We’ll need this backup later to restore everything back to the old drive. Make this backup copy as updated as possible, just to be sure that you’re not missed anything updated recently. You can use external hard drive or the spare removable storage device to secure the backup copy.

Note: As the process is little tricky and anything could go wrong. Keeping a copy of professional Windows data recoWindowsvery software is recommended to recover any lost, deleted or formatted data. 

We’ll need a free Drive Cloning tool, called Clonezilla also known as Clonezilla live as you’ll need get an ISO copy of Clonezilla and thereafter, have to create a bootable USB or CD/DVD. Once you’ve opened the website, click on stable release and the ISO file will begin downloading. Burn the downloaded ISO copy to USB or bland CD using imgburn.

                            
                 
During ongoing cloning process, Clonezilla tends to format the destination drive. So it’s recommend to create a prior backup copy or move entire data to an external drive such as USB or flash drive.

Note: Before continuing with this migration, make sure that you’ve cleared enough files and defragmented the drive to get some extra free space. This is to ensure that the current partition size is at the lowest and could easily fit to the solid state drive.

How to Migrate?

Hook up your SSD to your computer in the available slots and remove hard drive after taking updated backup.

Restart your computer and the created USB or CD will take care of the rest such as automatically boot your system using the same and provide various options to clone HDD and transfer it to SSD. If your computer didn’t start automatically using the bootable USB or CD, change the boot sequence from the BIOS option.

After choosing the display size and preferred language, you’ll get an option to start cloning the drive using Clonezilla.

Note: Choose Device to device cloning option when screen appears to choose the desired cloning method.

Once you’ve completed with SSD migration, reconnect the old drive back again and format it to erase everything on the drive and restore files from the backup copy we’ve created previously.

That’s it. You have now Windows 8 installed on your computer with spare drive left to store almost anything else you want. Just make sure to thoroughly read your SSD user manual to keep it maintained and free from troubles.

Disk Repair exercise on Mac OS X

A Mac when all in good state of health runs like a charm. It follows your command request and delivers the desired output. However, if a Mac is behaving in an abrupt manner from past many days & you are really concern for its health then don’t waste a time to run Disk Utility. The disk utility is a clinic for Macs where you can run few test to determine the cause of its illness. The First-Aid feature is capable of verifying the individual as well as the entire hard drive of the OS X. It can also adopt corrective measures to put your troubled disk back to work. A below test ran on one of the Mac disk ends up suggesting the hard drive (volume) is absolutely fine. It requires no further repair or attention from the
user. This is always a sign of big relief.  

Unfortunately, this sign of relief will not appear on the user’s face if the below report is delivered by the disk utility. As the image suggests the First-Aid tool has found numerous concerns on Mac disk. These concerns are denoted by red lines, which are an indication of danger. These reports marked by red lines clearly indicate the problem persisting in that particular area.

 

The Disk utility will clearly mention to run a repair immediately and dump the problem at this point. In no time, user can click to Repair Button to fix the faults.

“”Note: The Mac OS boot volume can be tested for disk permissions. However, this option is not available for rest of the Mac volumes.””

How effective is Disk Utility? Disk Utility is something that can resolve the disk problems on your Mac either instantly or may not fix any corruption. Yes, the reason I said ”May Not” is mostly cited when disk corruption is severe. The hard drive may have gone through series of corruption in catalog files, volume bitmaps, even a corruption of directory structure. Disk utility on Macs boot volume verifies and repair permissions for applications that may have turned bad. The applications may be of OS X and of 3^rd party software vendors. You will find people recommending running repair permissions feature at times when Mac is slow or an application is not opening. The same is suggested even when a Mac disk goes through corruption. Although effective but repair permissions fails to resolve any of the major corruption that might have crippled a Mac disk. This major corruption can again in the form of directory corruption. The same error is identified by “Invalid Node” error, which in turn is quite unpopular amongst Mac users. The family of Invalid Node error extends to Invalid Entry – Count, Length, Key, header & so on.

Need arises for a proficient disk repair software? Soon you realize the Mac is not going to be treated by the Disk utility, you have to opt for a disk repair utility. Volume repair software will scan the hard drive of the computer and will create a new directory structure for it. The moment it finishes fixing minor bugs in the directory or recreates a new one, you can have your Mac back & running. Not only this, disk repair software for Mac also heals variety of Invalid Node errors. Why you may require a bootable DVD?  As we learn above, that errors minor in nature will sorted out by the Disk utility. But a boot disk of Mac facing larger damage may not be treated efficiently by the disk utility. In that case you may require a bootable DVD of your Mac to fix it.  The bootable DVD can be created with the help of a repair utility. Once you select your Macintosh OS drive you are prompted to create an image (or DVD) to boot the Mac.

 

The above is a screenshot of Stellar Volume Repair that is suggesting the user to create a boot DVD in order to proceed with the boot repair. Once the DVD is created, it will boot the Mac and hard drive will become a secondary device. The user can now perform the directory rebuilding on the said volume.