HDD migration to SSD

[flip]

I just had to add a bigger storage drive and have decided to use a 250 GB drive I've had for a few years to install FSX and Prepar3d onto. This is just a temporary solution and I intend to migrate this FSX install eventually to a 250 GB SSD but I want to go ahead and install FSX again and get it activated before Microsoft decides to take down their activation servers. In the little bit of research I've done, the problem seems to be a difference of allocation units between a regular HDD and a SSD and makes the migration problematic (decreased performance). Is there a problem if I format the HDD with 1024 size which can then be cloned to a SSD in the future without any issues or is there a better way?

[Krom]

Use the cloning software that comes with the SSD (for instance, if you buy a Samsung SSD you can go to their site and download their data migration software) and it will automatically set the optimal alignment for the SSD as it copies the data.

[flip]

Alright, good enough. Thanks Krom.

[snoopy]

Yeah...

Isn't all of the "alignment" stuff on an SSD an abstraction provided by the firmware so the OSes can happily continue without having to adapt too much? Isn't the data *actually* spread intelligently across the SSD so as to evenly wear the drive, and aren't the access / throughput capabilities uniform regardless of the physical locations of the data?

[Krom]

It is still possible to botch the alignment, basically Windows XP for instance assumes 512 byte sector alignment on a drive, and SSDs/modern hard drives actually have 4 KB or even 8 KB/16 KB "sectors" in the hardware. The problem is that XP and OSes before it started partitions on the 63rd 512 byte sector of a drive instead of the 64th sector, and since SSDs and modern hard drives present themselves as having 512 byte sectors so older OSes can still use them, XP will create the partition out of alignment with the SSD or hard drive. Some SSDs firmware are smart enough to check and will fix the alignment themselves, but it isn't something one should take for granted.

Newer versions of Windows align to 1 MB so they will work properly for drives with 4, 8 or 16 KB sectors (or future drives with even larger ones).

[Tunnelcat]

Use the cloning software that comes with the SSD (for instance, if you buy a Samsung SSD you can go to their site and download their data migration software) and it will automatically set the optimal alignment for the SSD as it copies the data.

Yeah, Samsung's migration software worked really great. One little catch though. All your Microsoft Update history will disappear because the cloning software can't copy that little file, so you'll get a warning that your OS is not updated. Just go to Windows Update and check and it will be happy again.