Is SSD Cloning a Bad Thing?

[SteinMaster]

I am upgrading my MBP first gen unibody to an SSD drive. I just read that we should not clone an existing HDD to a SSD. The author did not give a reason why. So, my question is: will cloning my current HDD to a new SSD (using Super Duper) adversely affect the SSD performance? My initial plan for upgrading before reading this article was to clone my HDD to a new SSD in an enclosure (using Super Duper), then install the SSD. I thought this would save me a lot of effort restoring everything from scratch.

Thanks

 

[Hellhammer]

As long as you can fit all your data in the new SSD, it's fine. The reason why most people don't do that is to avoid transferring useless files as that will save space (SSDs are still relatively small).

 

[dusk007]

As long as there is enough free space it really doesn't matter how or what you save on an SSD. The only thing that effects Sandforce drive performance is compressed stuff like movies.
I really cannot think of any reason why cloning an SSD should have any effect on performance or anything else. The only possibility would be that a fresh install of OSX would load different more optimized drivers or it would do anything else different, but that should happen on its own too with out a reinstall.

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

Not so sure about this cloning to a SSD.

On Mac Pro ran DiskWarrior over SATA II drive in a Mac Pro in position two, all clear, ran Repair permissions, into Disk Utility and partitioned and formatted the SSD, mounted in position one, Mac OS Extended/Journalled and ran Restore in Disk Utility cloning OS X.6.5 to SSD.

Boot time atrocious, gone from 28 seconds up to 75 seconds, applications all opening slowly and very poor performance all round. Awaiting reply from OWC Tech Support but suspect I shall have to do a clean install of SL from install disc and then use SuperDuper to clone to the SSD.

 

[stroked]

Not so sure about this cloning to a SSD.

On Mac Pro ran DiskWarrior over SATA II drive in a Mac Pro in position two, all clear, ran Repair permissions, into Disk Utility and partitioned and formatted the SSD, mounted in position one, Mac OS Extended/Journalled and ran Restore in Disk Utility cloning OS X.6.5 to SSD.

Boot time atrocious, gone from 28 seconds up to 75 seconds, applications all opening slowly and very poor performance all round. Awaiting reply from OWC Tech Support but suspect I shall have to do a clean install of SL from install disc and then use SuperDuper to clone to the SSD.

How much data did you put on what size SSD?

 

[AppleNewton]

cloning shouldnt be an issue, not atleast from my experiences and I used a WD SSD in my MBP. I back up to a time capsule and restored it on another SSD seemed fine, just as fast a clean install.

You may consider clean install and migration if you're completely worried about anything but i havent had an issue cloning HDDs to other SSDs for clients, speeds were normal for SSDs even being cloned from an HDD.

 

[NickZac]

OWC recommends for maximum performance to physically format the SSD, install OS X, update OSX, and then migrate all of your software over. That's what I did and it was simple and runs really fast. I now use my HDD for storing the clone of my SSD.

 

[miata]

OWC recommends for maximum performance to physically format the SSD, install OS X, update OSX, and then migrate all of your software over. That's what I did and it was simple and runs really fast. I now use my HDD for storing the clone of my SSD.

Strange recommendation. Why would reinstalling OSX make a difference?

 

[wirelessmacuser]

Over the last few years I've been doing a lot with SSD's in both my PC & Mac laptops. I've used OCZ, Corsair, A-Data, Intel, Crucial, Transcend and Samsung. I've done cloning as well as clean installs. I have not experienced any difference in boot times when benchmarked.

 

[NickZac]

Strange recommendation. Why would reinstalling OSX make a difference?

I thought so as well but they say installing OS X starts with a clean base as over time, computers 'collect' leftover files from installers, erased apps, logs, cookies, etc., and by installing OS X instead of cloning, you don't bring these files with you to maximize performance and reliability. How much this actually matters can be debated and probably not too much but if you are spending $250+ on a new hard drive, you might as well make that sucker as fast as you can. IIRC if you have some of the older versions of OS X however, you actually do need to clone your drive.

 

[miata]

I thought so as well but they say installing OS X starts with a clean base as over time, computers 'collect' leftover files from installers, erased apps, logs, cookies, etc., and by installing OS X instead of cloning, you don't bring these files with you to maximize performance and reliability. How much this actually matters can be debated and probably not too much but if you are spending $250+ on a new hard drive, you might as well make that sucker as fast as you can. IIRC if you have some of the older versions of OS X however, you actually do need to clone your drive.

I understand the system benefits of doing a cold install. I just don't understand how it is going to make your "disk" faster. Sure if you are already maxing out a disk removing files will be good, but that is a different matter.

 

[NickZac]

I honestly don't know nearly enough about the inner workings of how files affect speed to tell you. I just figured I'd do the install as they said to and migrate programs over which has resulted in kick ass performance. With that said, cloning the drive from the HDD to SSD probably would have yielded the same results.

 

[mharpo]

I cloned over 200GB to an OWC Mercury Extreme a couple of months ago and have had no issues whatsoever. Probably the single best performance upgrade you can make. Took the optical drive out and used OWC's adapter to install the original drive as a back up and boot camp partition...

 

[dr. shdw]

Clean install > cloning.

 

[zerostar]

Over the last few years I've been doing a lot with SSD's in both my PC & Mac laptops. I've used OCZ, Corsair, A-Data, Intel, Crucial, Transcend and Samsung. I've done cloning as well as clean installs. I have not experienced any difference in boot times when benchmarked.

Same here, did clone and fresh install on both an Intel X25M and an OCZ Vertex 2 120G... same diff.

 

[Ifti]

Another one here supporting cloning.
I cloned my original HDD across to my SSD using SuperDuper. Its been several months now and haven't experienced any problems whatsoever.

 

[NickZac]

Over the last few years I've been doing a lot with SSD's in both my PC & Mac laptops. I've used OCZ, Corsair, A-Data, Intel, Crucial, Transcend and Samsung. I've done cloning as well as clean installs. I have not experienced any difference in boot times when benchmarked.

Have you tried the OWC Mercury Pro Extreme? It is consistently shown to be faster in read and (especially) write speed compared to virtually all SSD's (Crucial's most recent is close).