Good FREE Testing Programs for HDDs/SSDs

[Kaos Kid]

Hey all!

Since I found out that I will have a Kingston v300 SSD on the way ( thanks to LegitReviews/Kingston 10th Anny Giveaway! ) I figure that it will be interesting to compare results from my current WDC 500GB SataII-300 that I am using for a dual-boot (XPPro-32 & Win7-64) to document how much of a performance increase I will receive. Can you point me towards some FREE reliable testing programs that I can use to compare my old vs my new and improved? I plan on splitting the new SSD into two equal-sized primaries to dual-boot with and hope to clone the XPPro-32 & Win7-64 Operating Systems off the SATA drive over to it. Once I have them both cloned over and working, I will wipe the two OpSys partitions and merge them into the storage partition so that should also speed things up further (I will probably bench that as well to see the increase in access times to a single partition storage drive ) Any help and advice you would like to impart would be greatly appreciated!

[Apoptosis]

Sandra
Crystal Disk Mark
HDTune
HDTach
ATTO
AS SSD Benchmark

[Kaos Kid]

Wow, a wealth of choices, some of which I thought were retail, not free. I'll check these out, and have some results for you once I get the SSD up and running!

A question--I've never cloned a dual-boot system before (from two separate partitions on the same drive to two separate partitions on another drive), can I assume that it will all transfer over and work? The SATA partitions are 61GB and I am thinking that the SSD partitions will be a bit smaller per, but neither of the SATA partitions are anywhere near full so it should work, right?

[rrplay]

Thanks to the Legit Reviews 10th Anniversary I also won a Kingston SSDNOW V300 ! Was checking out the Kingston SSDNow V300 120GB SSD Review and this thread with the apps too. really stoked guys and Thanks Again !

A question--I've never cloned a dual-boot system before (from two separate partitions on the same drive to two separate partitions on another drive), can I assume that it will all transfer over and work? The SATA partitions are 61GB and I am thinking that the SSD partitions will be a bit smaller per, but neither of the SATA partitions are anywhere near full so it should work, right?

I have used Clonezilla before a few times, and basically the destination drive or partition has to be a bigger in volume than the source to clone.The Windows OS can be a bit 'tricky' and you will likely need to sort out the MBR later after coming from the dual boot scenario. Should be ok with some preparation ahead of time, and best to back up in advance while planning ahead.

[egloeckle]

Clonezilla works, but tends to be a pita to get to work properly at times.

Try Macrium Reflect, they have a free version that I have used for some HD to SSD migrations. http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

[Kaos Kid]

Got my drive!!! Yaaaaaay! I'm having 2nd thoughts about keeping the dual-boot with XP though, I think I may set up a dual boot with Win7 and Win8 on the SSD instead, and keep WinXP on the standard SATA drive and use boot order in bios to boot to that if I want to and then eventually phase it out entirely. Will I still be able to clone Win7 to the new drive as a standalone since it was the 2nd OS in the bootloader in my current setup? I know I'm hijacking my own thread

[INeedAFnSuffix]

The question is how big will Win7 be? Very big. At least 20-30GBs gone in my case, if you use ultimate
Win8 is not a exception, it's larger as usual and anyway, Win8 is crap if you haven't used it yet

[Kaos Kid]

I have Win7 but don't really use it, old habits die hard plus most of my hardware and favorite software is old and doesn't have drivers past WinXP 32bit. I have a Win8 key but loaded it and didn't like using it with a mouse so I've never booted to it since. However I think it is time I got with the program Oprah and at least started learning my way around Win7

I just checked and the Win7 I have installed (with no extra programs) is about 19GB so yeah I wonder whether it is a good idea to share this drive by dual-booting since it will only have about 110GB usable... Maybe I'll just do the Win7 on it and if I find myself with extra space on down the line I can resize the partition and add another one to install Win8 on. I have a problem with making things harder than they should be by overthinking them, but such is my impulsive Latin nature I guess ;)