ddrescue Rocks.

So Newegg was selling 500GB SSD’s for only $200 on Black Friday ($250+ off!).  Well, I saw that as the perfect opportunity to upgrade Fi’s slow Windows system.

But, how do you move an installed OS and all the programs to a new drive without re-installing everything?  It turned out to be a hell of a lot easier than I was expecting.  I just booted from a Linux (Knoppix) thumbdrive, then used the ddrescue command to image the internal drive to the new drive (which I had attached via a USB->SATA interface).  Then I powered down, swapped the drives, and it booted with no problem.

I only wish I had bought more than one of these Intel SSDs, because it is fast!