SSD Redux - Seriously?
Not all that long ago, I upgraded one PC to an SSD drive, and that turned out to be a long and frustrating process for such a simple task. The main issues were:
1. The computer has only USB 2 (and eSATA).
2. The imaging software that came with the drive didn't work.
I didn't even mind #1 all that much, as slow but reliable beats fast but unreliable every time in my book - but #2 was really sad. The worst part about the software not working was that it waited until the end of the hours long imaging process to try (and fail) to adjust the partition map - and the error message / help was useless.
The really sad part is that a lot of manufacturers include this bundled software in order to add convenience and give their brand a competitive edge. In the end, it had the opposite effect in my case.
Although I managed to migrate that drive using free software, I ended up reinstalling it later anyway, as the performance was awful for some reason. (Windows is much faster since reinstalling).
Recently, it was time to upgrade another PC, and so this time I chose a different brand (Toshiba) instead. The Toshiba drive also included some imaging software, so i figured I would try it out. The first issue was that the software doesn't support BitLocker encrypted drives. That pretty much makes it a non-starter for me. I wondered why this would be the case, but decided to press on anyway. I turned off encryption, rebooted, and waited a long time. One might notice that unlike OS X, Windows doesn't give you much of a status indication for the background encryption/decryption process. (You can see that it's in process, but not what percent complete it is - nor is there a way to pause it). You can get an idea of the activity by looking at the disk access statistics in the task manager, however.
When everything was done decrypting, I launched the imaging tool again. This time it let me continue. It partitioned the destination drive, rebooted, and much to my surprise - was suddenly in Linux. This makes sense, since it can not access the drives offline (unmounted) and not have to deal with changes going on while the user is using the system. However, while the display indicated that it was working, the percentage meter never grew above 0%.
I tried again several times with different options, but once again I had to give up on using the manufacturer supplied imaging tool.
Is this really so difficult?
1. The computer has only USB 2 (and eSATA).
2. The imaging software that came with the drive didn't work.
I didn't even mind #1 all that much, as slow but reliable beats fast but unreliable every time in my book - but #2 was really sad. The worst part about the software not working was that it waited until the end of the hours long imaging process to try (and fail) to adjust the partition map - and the error message / help was useless.
The really sad part is that a lot of manufacturers include this bundled software in order to add convenience and give their brand a competitive edge. In the end, it had the opposite effect in my case.
Although I managed to migrate that drive using free software, I ended up reinstalling it later anyway, as the performance was awful for some reason. (Windows is much faster since reinstalling).
Recently, it was time to upgrade another PC, and so this time I chose a different brand (Toshiba) instead. The Toshiba drive also included some imaging software, so i figured I would try it out. The first issue was that the software doesn't support BitLocker encrypted drives. That pretty much makes it a non-starter for me. I wondered why this would be the case, but decided to press on anyway. I turned off encryption, rebooted, and waited a long time. One might notice that unlike OS X, Windows doesn't give you much of a status indication for the background encryption/decryption process. (You can see that it's in process, but not what percent complete it is - nor is there a way to pause it). You can get an idea of the activity by looking at the disk access statistics in the task manager, however.
When everything was done decrypting, I launched the imaging tool again. This time it let me continue. It partitioned the destination drive, rebooted, and much to my surprise - was suddenly in Linux. This makes sense, since it can not access the drives offline (unmounted) and not have to deal with changes going on while the user is using the system. However, while the display indicated that it was working, the percentage meter never grew above 0%.
I tried again several times with different options, but once again I had to give up on using the manufacturer supplied imaging tool.
Is this really so difficult?
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