Got my M4...install help.

[awmann]

Putting a 64gb M4 in my Lenovo G570. Got the drive in the mail today and really itching to use it but I have a few questions..

Can I somehow use the recovery partition from my stock 500gb drive, or how would I go about Windows install? Do I absolutely need my Lenovo recovery disks? Have regular Win7 disk, but laptop did not come with them.

Do I also format it ol' NTFS on the Win7 install??

 

[Damar]

Best option for any SSD is a clean WIN7 install so that the alignment is set properly from the start.

Barring that, install WIN7 however you need to then use something like this web site to verify the alignment is ok and correct it if needed.

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/other/157

 

[tangoseal]

Download trial of acronis true image home 2011.

Image your laptop

Install sad

Restore image using acronis boot disc you will make earlier

Download paragon alignment tool

Bingo all done and 100% aligned

 

[ssnake51]

Putting a 64gb M4 in my Lenovo G570. Got the drive in the mail today and really itching to use it but I have a few questions..

Can I somehow use the recovery partition from my stock 500gb drive, or how would I go about Windows install? Do I absolutely need my Lenovo recovery disks? Have regular Win7 disk, but laptop did not come with them.

Do I also format it ol' NTFS on the Win7 install??

Doesn't your lenovo have a sticker on it with the reg key for Win7? Mine does and I used that to do a fresh install of windows with sp1 on it. After the install I simply went to Lenovo support site and downloaded and installed the drivers needed for my laptop.

I would do a fresh install rather than use an imaged file for the installation if migrating from a mechanical drive to ssd. That way Win 7 will automatically set itself up properly to use that ssd. No need to download and use 3rd party crapola utillity proragms.

 

[JRS]

Download trial of acronis true image home 2011.

Image your laptop

Install sad

Restore image using acronis boot disc you will make earlier

Download paragon alignment tool

Bingo all done and 100% aligned

This. Done this three times using a licensed version of Acronis. Once to a dual boot Vista/Win7 laptop. Once on my desktop from two stripped Velociraptors to a C300. Each time alignment came out fine. Each time Windows 7 defrag automatically removed the SSD from its disks to defrag, no need to completely disable defrag. I did have to manually disable hibernate on the laptops, but I'd rather do that then completely reinstall every app, completely setup my development tools and databases, or move docs, blah blah blah.

Heck, I've connected SSDs as secondary (internal and external) drives to a few Windows 7 machines and never has Windows 7 wanted to defrag them, so I think defrag is a non-issue.

I don't buy into the "do a fresh install of Windows to your SSD and flowers shall bloom and money fall from the sky". Once I did this to compare benchmarks between a fresh install and a restored image since all the "experts" on the intraweb swear by the fresh install... yea, no difference. That was a useful afternoon.

Whether or not you do a fresh install, I recommend checking alignment. If you don't want to use hibernate, either you cause you never use it, don't want to take up the space or want to save wear on your SSD, there are a million posts out there to turn it off.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/920730

At an admin command prompt, type powercfg.exe /hibernate off

If you enjoy installing Windows and reinstalling all your apps and copying over your internet favorites, setting up your shortcuts, recovering your documents, like re-dowloading your steam games, etc, then by all means, do a fresh install.