clone 5,1 HD to new Samsung 840 evo 1TB SSD

[QuickstartBridg]

I bought, but not yet received, a new Samsung 840 Evo 1TB SSD to install in my wife's Mac Pro 5,1. I plan to use Disk Utility to clone her 1TB HD to the SSD using Erase/Restore.

She uses Parallels to run embroidery software in Windows 7 VM. My question is: Should I expect the Parallels/Windows 7/embroidery software to be transferred to the SSD and to run from the SSD just like it did on the HD?

Thanks,
Brian

 

[DPUser]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8570/...o-read-performance-bug-coming-on-october-15th

 

[h9826790]

If you make the new 840 Evo has exactly the same "name" as the old HDD in disc utility, then everything in parallel should work fine.

However, if you use a different name, all short cut at desktop or in the VM list will not work anymore. You have to make a new alias yourself, and "add" a existing VM in parallel.

 

[QuickstartBridg]

disc name

If you make the new 840 Evo has exactly the same "name" as the old HDD in disc utility, then everything in parallel should work fine.

However, if you use a different name, all short cut at desktop or in the VM list will not work anymore. You have to make a new alias yourself, and "add" a existing VM in parallel.

There is lots of extra capacity on the original HDD that I would like to leave unchanged in case of any problems with the SSD (as DPUser linked to). If I use the original name of the HDD on the SSD and alter the name of the HDD, can I leave all the original system files, including the startup files, on the HDD without causing a startup conflict?

I do have an up-to-date Time Machine backup.

Thanks,
Brian

 

[crjackson2134]

There is lots of extra capacity on the original HDD that I would like to leave unchanged in case of any problems with the SSD (as DPUser linked to). If I use the original name of the HDD on the SSD and alter the name of the HDD, can I leave all the original system files, including the startup files, on the HDD without causing a startup conflict?

I do have an up-to-date Time Machine backup.

Thanks,
Brian

When I did this (moved system to SSD), I just used my Time Machine backup to restore to the SSD. I then repaired permissions and its been working fine ever since.

 

[QuickstartBridg]

When I did this (moved system to SSD), I just used my Time Machine backup to restore to the SSD. I then repaired permissions and its been working fine ever since.

Thanks CR,

Did you do anything to the original HD such as change the name or remove any startup files to avoid conflicts? I assume from your answer that you did not make any changes in the original HD and used Macintosh HD as the name for both drives? Just identified the SSD as the boot drive?
Brian

 

[crjackson2134]

Thanks CR,

Did you do anything to the original HD such as change the name or remove any startup files to avoid conflicts? I assume from your answer that you did not make any changes in the original HD and used Macintosh HD as the name for both drives? Just identified the SSD as the boot drive?
Brian

No special steps were taken and my VMs work just fine. Later, I did rename the drive to Macintosh SSD but it had nothing to do with any sort of issues. I just wanted it to reflect SSD instead of HD.

I did however remove the original spinner during SSD setup. After setup was completed, I renamed the drive and tested every out. Then I reinstalled the original drive and repurposed it. If you decide to rename the drive, you need to make a quick before & after TM backup. Renaming will probably cause TM to make a separate backup rather than appending to the older one, so be ready for that.

 

[QuickstartBridg]

Can I avoid removing the spinner during SSD setup?

No special steps were taken and my VMs work just fine. Later, I did rename the drive to Macintosh SSD but it had nothing to do with any sort of issues. I just wanted it to reflect SSD instead of HD.

I did however remove the original spinner during SSD setup. After setup was completed, I renamed the drive and tested every out. Then I reinstalled the original drive and repurposed it. If you decide to rename the drive, you need to make a quick before & after TM backup. Renaming will probably cause TM to make a separate backup rather than appending to the older one, so be ready for that.

Thanks CR.
I have the new SSD but am waiting for the OWC sled. My plan for my wife's Mac, adapting your comments, is to:
1) Do backup of original 'Macintosh HD'
2) Install SSD in new slot
3) Using Disk Utility, do Erase and Rename SSD to Macintosh SSD
4) Restore Macintosh HD to Macintosh SSD
5) Rename Macintosh HD to Macintosh HD Orig
6) Rename Macintosh SSD to Macintosh HD
7) No change to current Boot Drive name of Macintosh HD
8) Backup Macintosh HD Orig
9) Test Boot

We have a 3TB Time Capsule and there are 220 GB of data currently on her Macintosh HD. I plan to delete the old bloated backup before I do the fresh backups. There will be lots of backup storage capacity.

Are there any gaps or errors in that plan? I don't plan to remove the original drive during the conversion as you suggested. Would that cause any problem?

 

[Weaselboy]

Are there any gaps or errors in that plan? I don't plan to remove the original drive during the conversion as you suggested. Would that cause any problem?

Just one last step you need. After you are all done and running off the SSD, open System Prefs and go to the Startup Disk pane and select the SSD as the boot drive.

It will work without doing this, but boots will be slow while the system searches for all available boot sources instead of going straight to the one you want.

 

[QuickstartBridg]

Just one last step you need. After you are all done and running off the SSD, open System Prefs and go to the Startup Disk pane and select the SSD as the boot drive.

It will work without doing this, but boots will be slow while the system searches for all available boot sources instead of going straight to the one you want.

Thanks Weaselboy,

I planned to change the name of the SSD to Macintosh HD which is the current name of the boot drive. I thought I wouldn't need to adjust the boot drive, but I will take your suggestion and go to System Prefs/Startup Disk and inspect for the designated boot drive and change it if needed.

I wasn't planning on removing the boot information from, or otherwise altering, the original HD in case I needed to revert to the original HD for some reason. If the system is having to search for the boot drive, it could find the old drive first. That would defeat the purpose of installing the SSD for faster boots.

 

[Weaselboy]

Thanks Weaselboy,

I planned to change the name of the SSD to Macintosh HD which is the current name of the boot drive. I thought I wouldn't need to adjust the boot drive, but I will take your suggestion and go to System Prefs/Startup Disk and inspect for the designated boot drive and change it if needed.

I wasn't planning on removing the boot information from, or otherwise altering, the original HD in case I needed to revert to the original HD for some reason. If the system is having to search for the boot drive, it could find the old drive first. That would defeat the purpose of installing the SSD for faster boots.

The names won't matter. The system uses the UUID of the volume to pick the startup volume. So you will need to manually select it after your swaparoo.

 

[flowrider]

Hi Brian

I see your In Tucson, I lived there a number of years, and when I retired I moved up to Casa Grande. Miss Tucson.

Anyway to your question, When I add a disk I always use the clone method, works fine for me. Never any issues. I either use Apple's Disk Utility or if I'm cloning a larger disk to a smaller one, I use the cloning feature in TechTool Pro.

I've found TechTool Pro's cloning method to be faster than Apple's and a bit and more versatile. And yes, I just added (last week) a second Solo x2 with an 840 EVO 500GB and cloned a 1GB HDD (one of my startup disk's) with PB3 of Yosemite. As usual, no issues.

Lou

 

[QuickstartBridg]

Hi Brian

I see your In Tucson, I lived there a number of years, and when I retired I moved up to Casa Grande. Miss Tucson.

Anyway to your question, When I add a disk I always use the clone method, works fine for me. Never any issues. I either use Apple's Disk Utility or if I'm cloning a larger disk to a smaller one, I use the cloning feature in TechTool Pro.

Lou

Lou, if you are still in Casa Grande, Hi Neighbor. Thanks for confirming my use of Disk Utility. When you say 'clone', you mean using the Restore tab and, with the HD icon in the Source text box, dragging the SSD icon to the Destination text box and clicking the 'Restore' button?

The names won't matter. The system uses the UUID of the volume to pick the startup volume. So you will need to manually select it after your swaparoo.

I thought another reason to change the name would be to avoid confusion as to where apps looked for previously used files or where Parallels and Win7 looked for related files? However CR said it wasn't necessary although I don't understand why that would be since I thought the name of the drive was baked into the path name for the old files.

I appreciate everyones' responses in helping with this rather basic housekeeping task but one I haven't gone through before.

 

[Weaselboy]

I thought another reason to change the name would be to avoid confusion as to where apps looked for previously used files or where Parallels and Win7 looked for related files? However CR said it wasn't necessary although I don't understand why that would be since I thought the name of the drive was baked into the path name for the old files.

I appreciate everyones' responses in helping with this rather basic housekeeping task but one I haven't gone through before.

This would only be an issue for files stored off the main drive.

For example is you had documents stored on a drive named MyDocs the path to that would be /Volumes/MyDocs. So if you changed it to BobDocs it would break any references to those documents.

But for anything on the main boot drive you can make the drive name whatever you want because the path starts at the root / of the drive.

For example if you want to of to /Library you can to Go menu... Go to Folder and enter /Library and enter and you are there. You don't need the volume info for the boot drive.

 

[flowrider]

Lou, if you are still in Casa Grande, Hi Neighbor. Thanks for confirming my use of Disk Utility. When you say 'clone', you mean using the Restore tab and, with the HD icon in the Source text box, dragging the SSD icon to the Destination text box and clicking the 'Restore' button?

Yes. This.

Lou

 

[QuickstartBridg]

Thanks to my friends

Thanks for answering ALL my questions and straightening me out on terminology and naming conventions. I shouldn't have any issues once I receive the OWC Pro sled and insert the SSD. (Fingers crossed. Knock on wood.)

Brian

 

[QuickstartBridg]

Installed SSD. Startup time unchanged compared to with original HD

I finally got the opportunity to install the Samsung 1TB Evo SSD. I started in recovery mode. Using Disk Utility, I erased and formatted the SSD and then did a restore from the HD to the SSD. The restore named the SSD as Macintosh HD, the same as the original hard drive. In Get Info, I renamed the SSD to Macintosh SSD. In Start Up Disk, I made the SSD the start up disk and restarted the computer.

The startup time for the SSD was essentially unchanged compared to the startup time for the HD - about 2 minutes. Not about 15-20 seconds which was what I was expecting. Applications might open slightly more snappily but similar to when the HD was the start up. I then removed the HD from the computer and restarted and had no change in the long startup time. Subsequent to that test, I replaced the HD in its bay which again had no effect.

I also checked User & Groups for startup items and disabled them but this also had no effect on boot time. A side effect of booting from the SSD was that Microsoft Word was disabled and requested a licensing key to operate which I have but haven't applied it yet. Other applications, from Adobe for example, worked without issue.

Does anyone have any ideas about how to get increased boot speeds from the SSD?

 

[MacVidCards]

Get out a stopwatch

Wait til Boing sound then start watch

Important to get actual time, not what it seems like.

I had some crappy SSDs from Crucial that became slower as time went on. Eventually they were a good deal slower than HDD.

Returned them and got updated ones.

Run one of the disk speed tests too.

For crazy fast you need a PCIE SSD.

 

[flowrider]

My Boot time from Bong to Desktop is from 30 secs to 32 secs. Samsung EVO and Apricorn Solo x2.

Lou

 

[QuickstartBridg]

time and Black Magic speed test

From the boing, the time to the desktop is 1:50 using the SSD as the startup disk. I have never used this before nor fully understand it but the Black Magic test is below. Any comments or suggestions?

Thanks,
Brian

 

[QuickstartBridg]

Speed test on my nMP for comparison

I ran the Blackmagic speed test on the SSD on my nMP for comparison. Almost 4 times faster on Write and more than 3 times faster on Read. The PCIe vs SATA (on 5,1) connection is contributing to the difference however.

 

[flowrider]

My BlackMagic Test 840EVO, Solo x2.

Lou

 

[MacVidCards]

Now slap the old HDD in there and do time for boot and speed test.

BTW, if you want fast, better with cMP than the can.

I loved Tucson. Just remember a Mexican place on North side of town, on big North/South street. Great food and they did a Margarita with a twist of prickly pear syrup on top.

I was helping renovate a place on 5th Avenue in older part of town. After a month there in February 2007 my skin was so dry I had to return to LA. Hard to believe that LA has "humidity" but a month there convinced me.

I tested 4 drives, the PCIE XP941, an SSD in SATA 2 and a HDD of both the 5900 rpm variety and a 7200 rpm one.

 

[QuickstartBridg]

Now what?

Thanks for posting your tests Lou and MVC. In trying to compare apples to apples, it seems that I am not getting the full potential disk speed as advertised by Samsung - 520/540 MB/S nor the 473/491 MB/S that Lou showed from an actively used real world computer.

I have the SSD in the 2nd bay from the left and the HD in the first bay. Here is the info about the SSD from System Report. Note the mount point is designated only with a '/'. Is there any other report that would be helpful?

Now, the question is "Is there something I can do to improve the disk speed issue?"

 

[QuickstartBridg]

more system profiler info

Here are two more system profiler info screens for the SSD and HD. Could this 5,1 MP have a SATA II controller that would explain the slower disk speed for the SSD?