I've read the 2011 topic on "how to migrate windows 7 to a solid state drive", but I still have questions.
I just bought new HP laptop (dv7t-7000 Quad Edition core i7) and it came with 750gb HD. I have not cut it on yet, thus nothing has self installed yet !!
I had plans to boot it up, and let it go thru all the HP motions and installs, then create the restore DVD's. Then remove the HD and install the new 256gb SSD, then do the factory restore to the SSD drive, letting it format the new drive and everything. My worry was, that this is not the same size HD that the restore disk were created from and it would not work. (I ran into this when my sons HD went bad in his laptop, and upon replacing it, the restore disk would not work untill I bought the exact same size HD and installed it- also a win 7 unit)
I've read everything from I need to re-partition the 750gb hard drive down below 256gb so a clone program could be used, and I read about the cloning, ect...BUT a forum user named "Roman Berry" at the end of that 2011 article stated that the restore system in Win 7 would actually work in my case ???
PLEASE HELP !! Everything is brand new, and I don't want to screw something up in the process of all this.
When all is said and done, I'll put the 750gb in my secondary HD bay, putting a partition on it for nothing but backups(possible cloned back-ups)
How-To Geek Forums / Geek Stuff
Best way to put factory OS(win7) from 750gb to new 256gb SSD on NEW Laptop
(6 posts)Your idea of creating the recovery DVDs is your best option as even if it all goes pear-shaped you can then still restore everything to your original harddrive. Once you have created them then you shouldn't have a problem setting them up on an SSD - I've done it with an Acer and a Samsung laptop, and I think the days of manufacturers expecting you to use exactly the same size harddrive when replacing have gone, but all you can do is try it & see.
Failing that then the next option would be to use the inbuilt disk management to try & reduce the size of the partition but it may not let you reduce it to under a third, and you then still have the issue of the System partition when you come to do the cloning which means using Easeus or similar which are not always successful either.
Have a look at this tutorial. If you have the 100MB System Partition, you may first want to move the bootmgr to C. Then you don't have to clone the 100MB partition. Here is how.
If the migration should go wrong, you will be needing this Tutorial to Factory Restore the SSD BEFORE Attempting to do a second installation.
http://howto.cnet.com/8301-113.....ssd-drive/
Parted Magic
http://sourceforge.net/projects/partedmagic/
Rufus USB Stick
http://rufus.akeo.ie/
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