Test restore of SSD on HDD?

[mck]

BACKGROUND:
Running Windows 11 and the latest July 2026 version of Hasleo Backup Suite.
Only Win11 is installed on a 512GB NVMe SSD (C drive).  All data is stored on a different 2TB SATA SSD (D drive).
HDD in the following refers to mechanical hard disk drives.

I backed up the system NVMe SSD using Hasleo's "Disk" backup to an external 4TB HDD in a USB3 docking station.  The image backup was fast.  Now I wanted to verify that restoring that image backup would work.

Since the only spare drive I have is a 1TB SATA HDD, I connected it to a motherboard SATA port.  Then I restored the backup to it.

HERE'S MY QUESTIONS:

Normally, my system boots into Win11's splash screen to enter the password, in 47 seconds.  After entering the password, the Win11 desktop appears within a second, though it then takes maybe 15 seconds to fully complete the Win11 boot.

However, booting the the 1TB restored HDD took about 6 or 7 minutes to boot into Win11's splash screen.  Then it took maybe 1 or 2 minutes to display Win11's desktop.  Then it took 1 or 2 minutes to fully complete the Win11 boot.  Opening File Explorer took about 30 seconds.  IOW, everything about the restored 1TB HDD is very, very slow.  But everything eventually does work OK albeit very, very slow to open.  However, playing MP4 videos on the 1TB HDD plays back normally.

Has anyone else restored their system NVMe SSD to a HDD for testing?  Same slowness?

Since everything works, albeit very very slow to open, it appears that the Hasleo image backup is good.  Is it the difference of the original source drive being a NVMe SSD but the restored drive being a HDD that causing the extreme slowness for booting and opening programs?

[Gork]

I did the opposite. I was on a spinner and Win (10 in my case) was very VERY slow to boot. I took an image of the spinner with HBS and restored it to an NVMe SSD and it was night and day in comparison with regard to boot time and anything that used hard drive access.

[al3x]

Hi and welcome (back) to the Hasleo forum!

As far as I can see, Windows 11 performs quite bad on HDDs these days. On my Windows 11 there currently run 260 processes in 5400 threads and I have only started a browser, a video player and some background processes. And I wouldn't consider myself someone that spams his PC with unnecessary programs.

SSDs are capable of loading all that stuff at once without slowdowns. HDDs on the other hand need to jump around physically between sectors all the time and this might be a huge factor here. Defragmentation might help, maybe your partition wasn't defragmented for a long time (because it usually isn't needed for SSDs). Then, when restoring your image (which works on block level), your HDD will probably get the same or very similar (fragmented) layout.

I would try a defragmentation to see if that helps. But also it's quite common for Windows 11 to run pretty slowly on HDDs.

I don't think the slowdown is caused by HBS. The only thing that would hurt performance, especially on HDDs, is if you'd chosen a bad partition alignment during restore. But HBS sets this to "1M" by default, which is perfect for modern drives. If you haven't touched that, you should be good to go.

[admin]

Windows 11 is designed for modern hardware, especially solid-state drives (SSDs). Therefore, it is normal for it to run slowly on a mechanical hard drive (HDD). Although Microsoft has not made an official statement to this effect, Microsoft support specialists have already mentioned it in their responses to user questions. Please refer to:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answer...11-upgrade

Transfer rate has decreased after win 11 upgrade. - Microsoft Q&A
I have been using WIN 11 for a while now and ever since i have upgraded the transfe…

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answer...windows-11

HDD Usage 100% Windows 11 - Microsoft Q&A
My computer is a very old 8-year-old computer, still running HDD. I upgraded to Win…

In fact, Windows 10 already ran very slowly on mechanical hard drives years ago. The Windows system reads and writes a large number of small files during operation, and these files may be scattered across different locations on the hard drive. The mechanical seek time of HDDs is too slow, which makes them no longer suitable for use as system disks.

[CDC9762]

...Defragmentation might help, maybe your partition wasn't defragmented for a long time (because it usually isn't needed for SSDs). Then, when restoring your image (which works on block level), your HDD will probably get the same or very similar (fragmented) layout.
...

@admin,
Can you please confirm this is the restore method, that is, the blocks are put back into their original location and not essentially defragmented at least on a HD image to HD restore. 
I don't know if a SSD image to a HD restore would be the same given the lack of physical tracks/sectors but maybe they are emulated in the SSD layout.

[Froggie]

Original location return is a fundamental function of imaging restoration.

SSD image to HDD restore will use the same LOGICAL disk blocks.  Remember, an SSD has no platters, tracks, sectors... it uses only LOGICAL blocks, same as an HDD.  Those restored block numbers will be the same... how the devices place those blocks is up to the hardware.

[admin]

@CDC9762, yes, Hasleo Backup Suite does attempt to restore blocks to their original positions, but that's not always the case. For example, when you resize the partition, especially if you shrink it.