Masonisbetter :
My friend recently purchased a Hybrid Solid State Drive for his laptop to replace his regular HDD. After a ton of drama trying to find a way to install windows 8 (I won't go into detail) we decided to put the drives in my computer and use software to clone the contents of the old drive onto the new drive. I know that when cloning from an HDD to an SSD the SSD won't run at full speed and will benefit from a clean install. What I'm wondering is whether or not this will be the case with a hybrid solid state drive since it seems like it is a regular HDD with a large SSD cache on it from the description. Any feed back would be great!
Assuming the source hard disk had days and weeks of use on it, yes, would be better to do a clean install. Just because all the degradation from the Windows clean install of the old HD, plus any hidden spyware etc. also transfers over to the new drive. At least it will be somewhat faster doing the clean install!
I have a different way of fixing windows/reinstalling windows/same thing. I keep a reserve disk, with a fresh load of windows and all my most-used programs. This "RESERVE DRIVE" has not gone on the net even once, except sometimes to download/update a driver or utility I normally use, and to run Windows update. That's all that's on "RESERVE DRIVE". All my drives are plugged into a card switch I got from the net, for $15. The card switch has 4 switches (goes into a card slot in the back, you can access 4 push in/push out buttons) each one connected to a SATA power output going to your drives. You choose which drive to provide power to, without opening the computer, just by setting the button into the "on" position (push in to lowest height means on, greatest height means drive is off, kind of like old car door locks from the inside?) This way, I can turn on the power to reserve drive for reloading, and ONLY for reloading. After which the reserve drive is immediately shut off again to wait til next time!
When windows gets a virus that wont easily remove or otherwise starts acting buggy, i shut down, turn on the switches for reserve drive, and ACTIVE drive. I access the bios and boot to reserve drive. I have the Seagate disc software installed on reserve drive, so i start the software and make sure active drive is seen for the cloning process. (If it isn't, go to admin tools/disk management and make it an active partition-if this doesnt work, create the DVD from the Seagate disc wizard software - its in the upper left of the disc wizard menu. Then boot to the Seagate DVD, and make your drive active using that program.
So start the Seagate Disc wizard again until your bios, and the program sees your new drive (if it didnt before). Now start the cloning process, choose "reserve drive" as the source and "active as the primary. Reboot when it tells you to - THEN WHILE REBOOTING ENTER YOUR BIOS AGAIN. Choose the "RESERVE" disc to boot to again (or the whole thing wont work). Now let the Disc wizard clone reserve to active drive.
I always set the disc wizard to (SHUT DOWN AFTER PROCESS IS COMPLETE". Then when it does, you should be all done. Go to your switch and turn off power to reserve disk. Boot to your active disk, now you are up and running. And reserve disk is still daisy fresh for next time.
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