Intel ssd formatting

The partition could be misaligned in that example. While it MIGHT work, it definitely is not recommended and your performance will suffer. There are several cases of this if you search the forums...

What was the original question? Or are you asking groch?

Do a fresh install on a SSD for several reasons:

1 - Windows will be "aligned," a great benefit to SSD
2 - Windows 7 will notice that it's an SSD, and optimize programs for it's use (i.e. disable defrag for SSD, enable TRIM support...)

Although cloning MAY work, wouldn't it take just as much time to clone, than to install the OS?

For instance, my Win7HP installed in 16 minutes fresh. From DVD boot up, to ready to use. THe only driver I installed/updated was ATI Catalyst for my Radeon 4870. All others were part if OS install/updates.

Now, after that, I did have to go in and "tweak" some things, like moving or redirecting info to my data/media drive. And install all my added programs (Office, iTunes, etc.), and that took more time.

Still, I'm not a proponent of cloning, especially to a SSD.

When I recently installed an SSD in my laptop I just used Acronis to image the old drive onto the SSD, then optimized Windows for SSD use. I didn't have to do much because it automatically did some tweaking on it's own (see 1 and 2 in above post). Here's a great webpage on how to optimize Windows on your SSD (Thanks to tecmo34).

http://www.computing.net/howtos/show/solid-state-drive-...