Will a clone work?

[Pending]

I have a 5,1 MacPro with 2 x 1Tb HD drives in Bays 1 and 2.
Bay 1 has OSX and Bay 2 has Win 7 (set up via bootcamp).

I am considering buying 2 SSDs (probably Samsung ones) and then cloning my OSX drive to one and my Win7 to the other. Effectively replicating exactly what I have currently only onto SSDs. I would then run everything on the SSDs and keep the 2 HD drives as backups/storage.
Would I have any problems with this?
Should I keep the SSDs in drive bays 3 and 4 or use pcie, say 2 of the Apricorn Solo x2 cards? Apart from the speed boost is there anything else to be aware of?
Lastly, what sort of boot time is possible with these two methods?

 

[paulrbeers]

I have a 5,1 MacPro with 2 x 1Tb HD drives in Bays 1 and 2.
Bay 1 has OSX and Bay 2 has Win 7 (set up via bootcamp).

I am considering buying 2 SSDs (probably Samsung ones) and then cloning my OSX drive to one and my Win7 to the other. Effectively replicating exactly what I have currently only onto SSDs. I would then run everything on the SSDs and keep the 2 HD drives as backups/storage.
Would I have any problems with this?
Should I keep the SSDs in drive bays 3 and 4 or use pcie, say 2 of the Apricorn Solo x2 cards? Apart from the speed boost is there anything else to be aware of?
Lastly, what is the fastest boot time possible with these two methods?

Yes you can clone (I use SuperDuper) to clone an OSX drive to another. I've never really tried using SuperDuper to do Windows 7, but I can't imagine it would be any different (as long as you did the clone while logged into OSX).

 

[JoSch]

I have a 5,1 MacPro with 2 x 1Tb HD drives in Bays 1 and 2.
Bay 1 has OSX and Bay 2 has Win 7 (set up via bootcamp).

Winclone is the my tool of choice for cloning Win7

 

[Baunkjaer]

Winclone is the my tool of choice for cloning Win7

I´ll keep that in mind. When I replaced my 80GB Intel X25M with a 120GB OWC, I used DriveClone, which didn´t work. Consequently I reinstalled windows 7.

 

[Pending]

Many thanks for responses so far.
So winclone seems to be the app of choice to clone a windows only drive to an ssd.
From reading around various threads it seems the best place for an ssd boot drive is connected to a drive bay (sata). Then reading and writing to an ssd on the pcie bus.

 

[flowrider]

Should I keep the SSDs in drive bays 3 and 4 or use pcie, say 2 of the Apricorn Solo x2 cards? Apart from the speed boost is there anything else to be aware of?

When I bought my second Apricorn Velocity Solo x2, my thinking went like this:

The Solo x2 is $90., an adapter to fit an SSD into one of the internal HDD Sleds was $20. Why not spend the extra $70. on another Solo x2, and have superior performance and gain another slot for an internal drive. It was a no brainer for me.

And there's another avenue. If your trying to keep the costs down, you could get a Solo x1 for $49.00, slower interface but then only $30 more than the 2.5" adapter.

Lou

 

[Pending]

When I bought my second Apricorn Velocity Solo x2, my thinking went like this:

The Solo x2 is $90., an adapter to fit an SSD into one of the internal HDD Sleds was $20. Why not spend the extra $70. on another Solo x2, and have superior performance and gain another slot for an internal drive. It was a no brainer for me.

And there's another avenue. If your trying to keep the costs down, you could get a Solo x1 for $49.00, slower interface but then only $30 more than the 2.5" adapter.

Lou

Thanks Lou.
Yeah I see your angle. I was thinking to achieve min boot time, to keep one ssd on the sata. Then I could use another ssd on a Solo x2 for storage of files and even my most used apps. I was thinking a 256Gb for the boot ssd and a 512Gb for my files etc on the solo x2.

 

[flowrider]

Thanks Lou.
Yeah I see your angle. I was thinking to achieve min boot time, to keep one ssd on the sata. Then I could use another ssd on a Solo x2 for storage of files and even my most used apps. I was thinking a 256Gb for the boot ssd and a 512Gb for my files etc on the solo x2.

Boot time for me is very fast with the Solo x2. Yes, it takes longer for the OS to locate the drive, but once it's found, boom. I think I remember timing it once, and I got to the desktop in 32 secs after button push. Also, there's another option, if the pennies are really tight. You could get a Solo x1 for $49.00. A slower interface than the x2, but then only $30.00 more than the adapter.

Lou

 

[Pending]

Out of interest what sort of boot time do you get from ssd in sata drive bay?