Cat, just Image your new SSD the same way you create other Images. Then play around to your hearts content. If you run into a problem, eliminate the play OS and restore the Image you just created. I would not suspect MS would care one way or the other. They want people to test the hell out of this OS for them, so go for it.

TM & Ted, thanks for your responses. I believe that I'll try it out on my SSD, this will save the time from swapping drives around.

Of course, I'll make a new Full disk image prior to doing anything.

Many Thanks,
Cat

I do not know what I would do anymore without Imaging. They have saved my bacon so many times I have lost count. I do a lot more "Playing" with my PC than the average bear, and consequently screw things up far more than the average bear. LOL

One last question before proceeding. Should I perform a sector to sector backup, being that this is a SSD? Storage space is not of concern to me, as I have plenty.

I just want to make sure that the backup image restores exactly as before messing around. SSD's requires that 1MB of space in front of the 1st partition for optimal performance. If I understand correctly, the sector to sector backup & restore leaves the partitions "as is" during recovery.

Cat

Can't answer that as I have no experience with SSD's. Perhaps you could do both.

I believe your answer is good, Ted. That way I'll have 2 backups, better to have an extra & not need it than not having it & needing it. That's why I snatched up these 1TB HDD's when they were $49-$59 range.

Prices fall enough again, I'm getting a 2TB one. But with all that's going on, Windows 8 Retail around the corner, it's not high priority right now.

Thanks,
Cat

Since the SATA hard drive technology is so tried and true, and gets faster every few years, I think I'll stick with SATA II or SATA III hard drives.
I have a beautiful SATA III, 500 gig Seagate HD, that will only transfer data at SATA II speed, because I don't have a SATA III compatible motherboard.....yet. But it IS quick! I'm using it for Win-8/RP/64 right now.

I do have a SATA III controller card, but it's Quirky. So I've decided not to use it.

SSD? It's just not for me yet. Also Quirky! But doing backups shouldn't be any different than with a standard HD.
I may try a Combo drive one of these days though.

Let us know how that all works out for you, CAT. Eh?

TM

I was actually intending on buying one of those "combo" drives, hopefully you're speaking of the "Hybrid" ones. The Seagate 500GB has a 4GB Flash Drive built in, the 750GB has 8GB Flash. Both has a 32MB cache, which is good for 2.5" notebook drives, as many "top line notebook drives" still has a 16MB cache. Which, even if the Flash were to go south, the user would still have a fast drive.

After checking out user reviews at Newegg, I backed out. Both were more expensive than the 128GB SSD that I bought, many users, especially of the 750GB one, complained of excessive noise & heat. I was looking for a 5 Star (or egg) rated product. It was rated as barely 4 eggs.

One of the features of this type of HDD is that it gets faster the more one uses it. It doesn't say whether the use of "cleaners" will negate that benefit, but still, the computer is reported to boot faster.

This was some months back when I checked these HDD's out, there may have been product improvements over past models, especially since the merger of Samsung with the company that builds them (Seagate). From product reviews that I've read on Seagate products, they need all of the help that they can get there.

Here's some reading on the 2nd generation of the Seagate Hybrid HDD.

Momentus XT 750 GB Review: A Second-Gen Hybrid Hard Drive : Seagate's Momentus XT Picks Up FAST Technology

Cat

I attempted that sector to sector backup option, but there was no option (I canceled & looked 3 times) to decide which HDD to do this type of backup on. The backup app (Todo 4.5 Free) wanted to backup BOTH HDD's (the SSD & Backup drives) in this manner. Yes, over a 600GB total backup.

But I did do a regular image, it ran fast, seems that the SSD backups faster than the original one did. BTW, this was the same app that I did the initial transfer with, so all should be OK.

Will run the upgrade install in the morning & see what happens.

Cat

Still being a little bit off topic (which has really been answered) I did read the blurb from the link.
Intelestink! But thankfully, they do keep it pretty non-technical. They don't get into just what information is held by the HD and what is held by the flash memory. (firmware handles it!) But that's OK, as I'm sure that they know that almost no-one really knows how a HD works anyway.
But, if someone's going to do it, I trust Seagate to do it right. Eh?
I've been trusting Seagate for 32 years now.

But the one tiny bit of data that they stuck in there with absolutely NO fanfare at all is the 6 GBPS data transfer speed. That's FAST America! Just using plain numbers that anyone can understand, , , the max data transfer rate of the IDE Drive, (which most of us have used in our own computers) is 133. While the transfer rate for a SATA I is 1500. The transfer rate for a SATA II (second generation SATA) is 3000 and NOW the SATA III or SATA 6, transfers data at a blinding speed of 6000.

Even a blind man can see that this is a huge increase in Data Transfer Rate, in just a very few years, still using tried and true technology, that we've all grown to know and love. Well, I do anyway.

I don't remember what the speed of my original Seagate ST-225, 20 meg HD was, circa 1980, but not too fast. In my own infancy with the PC and the sealed hard drive, I wondered how anyone would ever fill up a 20 meg drive. I don't even own a Flash Drive that small today. My smallest flash drive is 64 meg.

See what happens, when you get an Old Timer started down memory lane?

Anyway, what I've wanted to say is: If an SSD is connected to the average Motherboard today it will only be able to transfer data at the SATA II rate of 3000mbps. You can't move data any faster than the on-board SATA controller can take it and put it on the Data Bus.
If you don't buy a SATA III controller card, for that SSD, you've spent a lot of money for a pretty small drive, but not gained a lot in system performance.

Data access is faster, (with an SSD) so if you're moving a lot of small files, the data transfer would be faster, but if you're copying a really big file, like a movie or ISO, the data transfer rate will be the same as a conventional HD.

You can have a car that can run 200 mph, but when it's stuck in traffic, it can't move any faster than the guy in front of it. And it doesn't take a NASA engineer to figure that out. Eh?

On the other side of the coin: If you connect an IDE drive to a SATA II motherboard, with an IDE to SATA adapter, the data transfer rate will be equal to a SATA I drive. (1500mbps) It's all in the controller, not the mechanical drive itself. That's a really neat way to get more performance out of your old IDE drives.
I do that, when I have to connect a customer's IDE drive to my own computer for data recovery, HD Repair, etc.
The speed increase is 11.27 times faster. Time is money!

Bored yet? Ok, I'm outta heah!
Y'all have a good day now, Y'heah?
TechnoMage