Need Help Changing to New SSD

[Wulffolk]

I have a custom built system that is about 3 years old. It was originally built with a 120 GB OCZ SSD as my C: drive and a 1 TB HDD for storage. That SSD never seemed very stable, and the size is a little on the small side. From the very beginning I was having crash issues with this drive.

Recently I purchased a 240 GB SanDisk Ultra II SSD. My idea was to just create a duplicate of my original C: drive, and then switch them out. So far I have not been able to get this to work. I have tried creating a mirror image of my C: drive on the new drive, and I have tried to manually copy and paste files between them. Neither option has created a disk that will be recognized when I boot the computer. I use Windows 7 Home Premium for my OS, but I can't find my original disk to do a fresh install.

I would greatly appreciate any suggestions you might have. Thanks in advance.

 

[giantbucket]

create a system image of your current C drive and save it onto your 1TB drive.
burn a recovery cd.
shut down. swap ssd drives.
boot into recovery cd, and find the option that lets you do a restore from system image.

 

[popatim]

Use the Sandisk Dashboard software that should have come with the new SSD to clone the old one to it.

 

[USAFRet]

Any of a number of current cloning tools will do this easily.
DriveimageXML, CloneZilla, Acronis Todo, Casper,

Have only the 2 SSDs connected, and clone directly from old to new.

Or, just do a clean install on the new drive.
Either way.

 

[Wulffolk]

Thank you for the responses. I appreciate the help.

First, there was no SanDisk dashboard software that came with the SSD, so I passed over popatim's suggestion.

Second, I tried GiantBucket's suggestion using a back-up image on my HDD and burning a recovery disk. It took me forever to track down a DVD-RW to create that recovery disk. Once I finally had that I could not get my USB keyboard and mouse to work while going through the recovery. I spent a lot of time digging through boxes in my basement looking for a USB to PS/2 adapter (much of my computer stuff is still in boxes after a recent move). I still could not get the keyboard or mouse working with the PS/2 adapter, so I don't know how this method would have worked out. It seems like it might have worked if I could have followed through with it. The good news is that I found my original OS disk for Windows 7 and my computer tool kit.

Third, I tried several of the programs that USAFRet suggested. Most of them contained the Suspicious.Cloud.9 virus, cost lots of money, or simply wouldn't work. While searching for cloning tools I also found Apricorn EZ Gig, but that would not recognize either the source or destination drives.

Finally, I did a search for SanDisk Dashboard software, as mentioned by popatim. After downloading that it contained a link to EZ Gig. I decided to see if it would work if used through the SanDisk software before I gave up. It worked. It was simple. It took very little time. I just wish I had investigated popatim's suggestion more thoroughly when I first read it.

Thanks again