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I have a 2009 first-generation 64 GB SSD drive (manufacturer: G.Skill) that acts as my boot disk for Windows 7. I've installed new applications and media on another hard drive, but the OS is on the SSD. Unfortunately, the drive is slowing down to a crawl whenever there are writes to it (e.g. updating Win7 takes hours).

I suspect the SSD is wearing down, so I would like to duplicate its entire contents, including its "bootability" (boot sector?) to a new SSD or hard drive. So some questions:

  1. How do I duplicate my boot drive to another SSD or hard drive? What software do I use? I would prefer something with a GUI.

  2. Do I have to get the same capacity drive (currently 64 GB, but I would like a bigger SSD)?

  3. I have installed some apps on the SSD (e.g. MS Office) and other apps on my D: hard drive (e.g. games, Firefox). If I duplicate the boot drive, do I need to reinstall all my applications?

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    It may be worth checking to see if there is a firmware for your current ssd that supports the TRIM function. I suspect your current firmware doesn't which is why your performance has degraded so badly. If not there's utility to reinitialise the drive called HDDErase that helps get your performance back but this wipes all your data.
    – Col
    Aug 12, 2011 at 22:55

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Just clone the drive, and it will be exactly like the old one (but bigger) if its of the same type.

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There are various bits of software that will let you clone your drive, clonezilla or ghost are examples. If you want to you could use an ubuntu livecd and dd to do it although clonezilla or ghost will probably be easier. If you have problems booting from the cloned disk you might need to run the windows 7 startup repair from the install DVD.

Depending on how you do the cloning you may end up with a partition the same size as your original disk rather than filling the new one, if you do an ubuntu livecd comes with an application called gparted that will let you grow the partition to fill the drive.

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