• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Is there a basic SSD FAQ somewhere?

E

evilsofa

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Jan 1, 2007
Messages
10,077
Like many, I'm considering getting my first SSD. But I have basic questions about the best strategy. I would be keeping my current internal 1TB hard drive for backing up the SSD. Is there a go-to post or web page that covers all the stuff you need to know? I just want to start out doing things right, and have something like a checklist to follow as I go along setting it up.

For example: whether to install Win7 clean or just copy it over, and if copy, how to do it right; where the pagefile should go; how to check stuff new to SSDs like alignment and TRIM; what drivers are necessary, appropriate and best; whether to have a small SSD just for OS and larger SSD for other stuff or just do it all on one SSD; what sort of WIndows 7 settings have an impact on SSD operation and performance.
 
Best bet is to install it (with the BIOS set to AHCI mode) and do a new install of Win 7 just like you would any other drive. Win 7 will automatically take care of the settings you need (except disabling hibernation, which you can easily do if you are using it on a desktop). Get a single large-ish SSD for the OS and games/applications, and use the spinning drive for bulk storage. Otherwise you don't really need to do anything special - you can treat it just like a really fast normal drive.
 
Forceman said:
Best bet is to install it (with the BIOS set to AHCI mode) and do a new install of Win 7 just like you would any other drive. Win 7 will automatically take care of the settings you need (except disabling hibernation, which you can easily do if you are using it on a desktop). Get a single large-ish SSD for the OS and games/applications, and use the spinning drive for bulk storage. Otherwise you don't really need to do anything special - you can treat it just like a really fast normal drive.
Click to expand...

Strange though, when I launched Samsung Magician software, after fresh installation of Windows, it was still showing that indexing, defrag, and all those things that should be turned off, were not turned off. Either was a glitch, or did miss some option while installing, but it would be good, that after installation of your new SSD, you'd check if Windows really turned the stuff off.
 
A clean install of Win7 is (imho) the best place to start. That should take care of the alignment and several other OS settings that either need to be or should be changed from what they would be set for a normal platter HD. I've also seen a couple machines though that didn't do that on their own, so it's always worth checking to be sure things like defrag are off, etc.

I still refer people to this MS tech blog article, even though it's old now, it's still got good information for someone who wants to know the "whys" and "hows" of an SSD.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx
 
The indexing and defrag service will still be turned on in Windows, they will just be inactive for the SSD. If you go to defrag, for instance, you can see that the SSD is grayed out so it won't be automatically defragged. The services still run in case you have other mechanical drives in the system.

The best advice is really just don't overthink it. Win 7 is SSD aware, and it will do what needs to be done for SSDs. From your perspective, just treat it like a normal drive and don't worry about it.
 
Forceman said:
....

The best advice is really just don't overthink it. Win 7 is SSD aware, and it will do what needs to be done for SSDs. From your perspective, just treat it like a normal drive and don't worry about it.
Click to expand...

I have a two year old install of Win 7, plus probably 40 GB of apps on my C: drive. (I keep data, music, photos, etc., in different partititions.

If I install an SSD to replace my mechanical hard drive, will Windows 7 "automagically" all necessary settings for the SSD? I'm trying hard not to "overthink" this, truly. :eek:
 
One thing to be aware of is that there's quite a bit of old, outdated information floating around the internet in regards to SSDs. the earliest drives didn't have trim, and Windows XP didn't have great SSD support, so you had to do a bunch of stuff to get them working right. Windows 7 is much better about it.
 
x509 said:
I have a two year old install of Win 7, plus probably 40 GB of apps on my C: drive. (I keep data, music, photos, etc., in different partititions.

If I install an SSD to replace my mechanical hard drive, will Windows 7 "automagically" all necessary settings for the SSD? I'm trying hard not to "overthink" this, truly. :eek:
Click to expand...

Are you talking about cloning the old install over, or doing a fresh install? Even if you are cloning, it should take care of the big things (like defrag and alignment [depending on what you use to do the cloning]), but a fresh install will set everything up correctly for sure.

I have cloned a normal drive to an SSD a few times, and it works just fine.
 
Forceman said:
Are you talking about cloning the old install over, or doing a fresh install? Even if you are cloning, it should take care of the big things (like defrag and alignment [depending on what you use to do the cloning]), but a fresh install will set everything up correctly for sure.

I have cloned a normal drive to an SSD a few times, and it works just fine.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I know that I need to take care of 4K alignment, so I plan to use a tool that is SSD-aware to first create the partition. Then I'll do the disk cloning.

My question was really about what else I needed to do, if anything.
 
If you have a spare drive, you can use the built-in Win 7 backup and restore to make and then restore a system image. Then you don't have to worry about alignment. But most cloning tools are SSD aware now and will do correct alignment also.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top