Data Migration Tool Ships With Intel Solid-State Drives

All Intel solid-state disks (SSDs) will now ship with data migration software, a set of hard disk data transfer utilities developed by Acronis. Badged by Intel as part of its SSD Toolbox, the software detects the system’s old and new drives and guides the user through the required steps to clone the old drive across.

Designed to be quick and simple, the data migration software transfers all the information from the old hard drive, including the operating system, applications, documents and personal settings, Acronis said.

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“As solid-state drives become more pervasive in the market, customers will need a solution to migrate their data from their old hard drives to the new SSDs,” Izzy Azeri, vice president of business and corporate development for Acronis, said in a statement.

The free software requires both the old drive and the new drive to be present simultaneously. The new SSD can be connected to the system via an external hard drive case or connector. Cloning generally requires the new drives to be at least the same capacity as the hard disk but size does not matter for the Acronis tools. The SSD just needs to be able to hold all the data currently being stored on the old hard disk being copied, the company said.

Conversely, once the drive is cloned, the old drive can be used as a backup drive for the new SSD.

“The Intel data migration software, powered by Acronis, makes the process of migrating to Intel solid-state drives faster and easier for both home and corporate users,” said Troy Winslow, director of product marketing, Intel NAND Solutions Group.

Cloning hard drives is a faster process than just copying files and can turn a tedious process into one that takes just minutes rather than hours, Acronis claimed.

At the moment, the free hard-drive cloning utility only supports Intel SSDs. Current Intel SSD customers can download the Intel data-migration software from Intel’s Download Centre.

The Intel data-migration software complements the SSD Toolbox, which Intel also offers free to its SSD customers. The SSD Toolbox, announced last month, offers various drive-management utilities, including the System Configuration Tuner, Secure Erase and SSD optimisation tools.

Intel SSD customers looking for a full-featured backup and recovery solution will receive a promotional rate that can be used toward an upgrade to the Acronic True Image 2011, the company’s disk-imaging tool. True Image protects and recovers all data on the computer, including photos, videos, music, documents and applications.

There is also a server version of True Image, which allows IT administrators to create an exact disk image of live servers for backup. The server version of the software supports incremental backups and image verification. It also supports dynamic disks and tape drives. Western Digital also offers a free version of Acronis True Image software on its drives.

Acronis also offers a freely downloadable disk monitoring tool called Acronis Drive Monitor to all customers.