Paragon Migrate OS To SSD V.4 System Migration Software Review And Tutorial

MIGRATION

When we first launch the “Migrate OS to SSD” software, we receive a welcome screen.

Note the last sentence / disclaimer, referring to the inability to migrate “dynamic volumes.”  Examples of this would be RAID or caching setups.  Click “Next” to continue.

If your destination SSD were to become unplugged prior to a migration attempt, you would receive the above screen, stating that no destination drive is available.  If this happens, exit the migration and power off the computer.  Reconnect the destination SSD and reboot.  Start the migration as before, and this time you should arrive at the next screen:

Now we see a screen that is a summary of what the migration software is going to do.  It states that our Windows 7 64-bit Edition operating system partition will be copied to Disk1, model Corsair Force LS SSD SATA Disk Device, 223.5GB.  It also shows that after migration, the Corsair Force LS will have 28% of the available space in use.

The vast majority of users will not be utilizing the destination SSD’s available storage space to create any additional partitions.  This majority of users will want to utilize all of the available space for the migration.   Check that bottom box, and then click “Copy” to proceed.

Next we get a default warning that the destination disk may contain data (because we already formatted it).  Just to be on the safe side, let’s check the box and let the software do a fresh formatting.  Click “Next” to proceed.

Now we see the migration software in action!  The “Delete Partition” and “Modify Disk Patterning Style” rows indicate that the re-formatting completed successfully.  The copying of the source partition is underway.

Next we see that the copying of the source partition has completed successfully, and the copying to the destination SSD is underway.

“Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Edition on Local Disk (C:) has been successfully migrated!”  Click “Close” to exit the migration software.  Now then, let’s go back to “Disk Management” (click on the Windows orb, right-click on “Computer”, then click on “Manage”, then select “Disk Management” in the upper left pane)  and view the partitions now that the migration is complete.

The post-migration graph shows that we now have “System Reserved” partitions and “Primary Partitions” that are exactly  proportional to the corresponding partitions on the source SSD.  The only difference is the overprovisioning area on the original  SSD.  The primary partition on the destination drive is proportional to the combination of the primary partition and overprovisioning area combined  on the source SSD. Now that we are satisfied with the results we see so far, we need to make sure that we can boot the computer from the newly-migrated destination SSD’s operating system.

Restart the computer, press “Delete” or whatever “F-key” your motherboard specifies to use during POST to enter the motherboard’s BIOS.  On our Asus Sabertooth 990FX motherboard, tapping “F8” during POST gets us straight to a small boot options window.  We select the Corsair Force LS to boot from, and in customary SSD boot speed we are looking at a mirror image of what we had / have on the Samsung 830-Series 128GB SSD.

Is our migration complete?  Have we missed anything? Would you like to satisfy your curiosity as to whether or not our migrated operating system partition is properly aligned? What follows is a pretty simple way to see proof of such: