From HDD to SSD - tuning the SSD

This is a summary of the steps to move from an HDD to an SSD based on what worked for me. To round it off, here are also some steps to be taken afterwards to tune your system better for an SSD.
My situation is as follows:

• The laptop is an HP Envy15-3012TX running Windows 7 Home Premium
• The disk uses a Dynamic MBR, complicating matters
• There are a few 'hidden' partitions holding the recovery software that need to be transferred as well
• The HDD (750GB) is much bigger than the SSD (250GB), which means partitions have to be shrunk and moved
• Recovery and repair disks are not available

So the steps that worked for me are as follows:

1. Use WinDirStat to find out how the disk space is used and delete or move files off the HDD
2. Use Defraggler to defragment all partitions in preparation for shrinking the partitions to make them fit on a smaller SSD. Move or delete files that do not allow the partition to be defragmented.
3. Shrink partitions using Windows Disk Management. Be careful to pick sizes that are multiples of 4K as this will simplify the tuning that comes later.
4. Convert Dynamic MBR to Basic MBR, move partitions and clone to SSD using EaseUS Partition Manager
5. Physically install the SSD in the laptop replacing the old HDD
6. Tune the system for the SSD
7. Write a tedious blog on the experience

Now to tuning the laptop so that it operation is more suited to an SSD. In my case, there is only one disk and it is an SSD. In mixed systems with SSDs and HDDs, the process will be slightly different. There are a number of sites outlining the steps. I will list the ones I carried out.
If you have the same laptop as me, some of the settings will already be correct. Check if your laptop is in AHCI mode. In my case, it already was and so I will skip the details. Verify TRIM is on. Again it was on, so I will skip that bit. Disable drive indexing. This is done by right-clicking on each drive in turn and selecting Properties. The General tab has a check box for indexing. Uncheck it and say you want to do that for all sub-directories. You may get an occasional warning that you can ignore. While you are in this dialog, turn off the periodic defragmentation. This is in the Tools tab and click on Defragment Now. In the schedule, turn off defragmentation. That is about all I did except for a few optional steps.

You can run Samsung's Disk Magician to check the drive performance against what it says it should be. This software comes with the kit but you can download it from Samsung's site if you went for the bare drive. You can also use it to update the SSD firmware. I had a backup so I boldly did a firmware upgrade with the data on the SSD and it did not cause any problems.

You can also download and run AS SSD benchmark that checks performance and also tells you if you messed up the partition extents and ended up with a partition not aligned with a 4K boundary. Select the disks one by one and check the messages on the top left hand box - all green OK's are what you are looking for.