The Acronis disk is a bootable disk right? So you would install the SDD, boot up with Acronis and wait, what, 2, 4, 8. 16 hours to load the back-up disk to the new drive?

Which PDF manual are you referring to?

If swapping with just another "spinning drive" just use Acronis. Even with a SSD, Acronis should be fine. However, if you have been meaning to rebuild your system from scratch, this would a good time to do it.

The OCZ Tech is likely thinking that a new install is nice and fresh. You would not be carrying over any software or driver problems from the old build-up ... that might cause problems (and he's probably right). There might be more to that reasoning (maybe someone else can speak towards that).

You can run Acronis from Windows or a bootable CD/DVD that you can create. The PDF manual is available to take a look at.

Acronis will do a clone disk incredibly fast.  A regular backup takes quite a bit longer.  The reason you'd want to do a fresh install when doing an SSD is to properly align the drive partitions.  Windows 7 does this automatically as it formats the drive to do the install.  You can clone a platter drive and copy it to an SSD, but you won't get maximum performance from the SSD.....

The cloning process is quite simple, you start Acronis from Windows and tell it you want to clone a drive.  It then lets you select the drive to be cloned, and then the drive to clone it to.  Once you do that, it shuts down Windows and performs the task in a DOS environment.  The first time I did it, I was amazed in that it copied my boot platter drive (96 gb of 500) to a 128gb SSD in about 15 minutes.  I swapped out the drives and had everything back up and running in a total of 30 minutes.  While I was impressed with the SSD speed, I learned about the partition alignment and decided to do a fresh install.  It did make a difference.

Good luck.....

Acronis will do a clone disk incredibly fast.  A regular backup takes quite a bit longer.  The reason you'd want to do a fresh install when doing an SSD is to properly align the drive partitions.  Windows 7 does this automatically as it formats the drive to do the install.  You can clone a platter drive and copy it to an SSD, but you won't get maximum performance from the SSD.....   The cloning process is quite simple, you start Acronis from Windows and tell it you want to clone a drive.  It then lets you select the drive to be cloned, and then the drive to clone it to.  Once you do that, it shuts down Windows and performs the task in a DOS environment.  The first time I did it, I was amazed in that it copied my boot platter drive (96 gb of 500) to a 128gb SSD in about 15 minutes.  I swapped out the drives and had everything back up and running in a total of 30 minutes.  While I was impressed with the SSD speed, I learned about the partition alignment and decided to do a fresh install.  It did make a difference.   Good luck.....

So when you did a fresh install, did you manually reinstall all your programs etc.., or did you transfer from your Acronis back-up onto the new SSD? Did you transfer Windows settings to the new SSD using a transfer kit or manually reset everything?

Sounds like if you do a fresh install all you can transfer would be documents , pictures, etc.., and then be stuck with reinstalling all drives and updates.

When you say aligning the drive partitions, I think you are referring to the C: drive and the System Reserve? If so, why would it make a difference on a SSD? from what I've read the SSD doesn't care where the data is or where it places it since it is no longer a mechanical search. On a SSD it is suggested you disable two or three different prefetches and defrag because where the data is no longer makes a difference. But I guess you said you could tell the difference when you did a fresh install, so it must be noticeable.

Does anyone have any thoughts about using this software to transfer over to a SDD?

http://www.paragon-software.com/technologies/components/migrate-OS-to-SSD/

Thisn isn't spam or an endorsement.

I'd like to rephrase the OP's question a little differently. I assume Acronis does a backup image of the whole disk (including MBR) on a sector by sector basis. So, if I image an SSD which has been properly aligned, etc., can I assume that the restored image will also be properly aligned?

Thanks,

Harvey

You can run Acronis from Windows or a bootable CD/DVD that you can create. The PDF manual is available to take a look at.

I found in Control Panel where you can make a recovery disc. I looked at the manuals on Dell's site and the operating systems section doesn't include Windows Seven. It has Vista however.

I've used IOLO System Mechanic for years and it tells me two of my hard drives attributes are in the warning stage. The PBA in the bios says all is ok and I ran it with a tech individual a few weeks ago and it showed no problems. But with all the R3 issues and all the internal tests showing no issues with those systems I'm incline not to trust the Dell internal testing software.

So after reading up on SSD's I chose to go with the intel 510 250GB SSD. It isn't as fast as the OCZ Vortex 3, but a firmware update may fix that. My decision was based on the reliability factor. Intel is much more reliable than OCZ according to many googles. What I like most about the 510 SSD is that it comes with an adaptor and other hardware, plus it has a transfer-of-data software. It also has a tuning software that can optimize the SSD.

We'll see in a week or so.

Yes, if you clone an SSD that has been properly partioned, it will automatically copy each sector and partion to the new SSD.

I chose to manually reinstall all of my programs because I didn't want to add all of the optional program accessories on a couple of them.  You can, however, do a Windows install and then recover a backup to an SSD and it will maintain the partition alignment.  Note:  this is with recovery and not clone......Hope this helps.  I noticed in one of your later posts that you went with Intel instead of OCZ, I have two gSkill drives and a Kingston myself, and they all serve me exceptionally well.