SSD boot drive setup

[Deacon_Jones1988]

I have just installed Win 8.1 on one of my SSDs, I also have windows 7 x64 on one of my other drives. I want to know is there anything different about using a SSD as a boot drive vs. HDD for boot drive that I have to do differently as far as setup goes?

I know that your supposed to move all of your Temp folder to another drive, I still haven't gotten around to that yet, I have never done it. If anyone has some insight into that I would appreciate it, if not I can do some research on it later.

Having said that, I know that SSDs shouldn't/can't be defragmented, is there any other precautions, steps I need to take to avoid a problem in the future with my SSD boot drive?

Thanks in advance.

Stay [H]

 

[Ocellaris]

Don't move your temp file to another drive. A lot of "advice" for using a SSD boot drives was written years ago when SSDs had questionable reliability and people were buying tiny SSDs since there were multiple dollars per GB.

Windows 7 and 8.1 will config a few things for you correctly when they detect they are being installed on a SSD. More people I know run into problems trying to custom configure things that don't need to be touched.

 

[FM_Fixxxer]

I've always liked this write up as a base and just read through and decide what you'd prefer http://www.overclock.net/t/1240779/seans-windows-8-install-optimization-guide-for-ssds-hdds

 

[westrock2000]

Having said that, I know that SSDs shouldn't/can't be defragmented, is there any other precautions, steps I need to take to avoid a problem in the future with my SSD boot drive?

SSD's are funny in that regard. Because they can access any point of memory at the same speed, the concept of fragmentation is of no consequence. Accessing block 873829 is no different than accessing block 238495. It's not like a traditional hard drive where the head has to physically be repositioned.

So you certainly can defragment it, but it doesn't matter to the drive. However the real reason not to do that is because each NAND cell (the flash memory) can only be written to a certain amount of times. That number may be 50,000 or 20,000 or anywhere in-between. So you don't want to "defragment" it because then your just putting more wear on one section of NAND.

But now your probably thinking "Well wait, does that mean I shouldn't delete stuff because other wise it's going to keep writing new data over the same NAND?". And here's where SSD's get really wonky. The controller inside the drive PURPOSEFULLY fragments the data all the time so that all the NAND cells are evenly written to over time.

The 1st generation of SSD's did not address these issues adequately from a hardware perspective. Nor was Windows XP prepared to deal with SSD's. But now all the drives are stable and Windows 7 and 8 (and OSX and others) are fully aware of SSD's and everything is right in the world. Do not treat it any different from a normal hard drive.

 

[teh_chem]

Just plug it in and go. You don't need to do anything.

 

[Chuklr]

...

Having said that, I know that SSDs shouldn't/can't be defragmented, is there any other precautions, steps I need to take to avoid a problem in the future with my SSD boot drive?

Thanks in advance.

Stay [H]

Hi, Deacon_Jones1988,

To ensure that the boot sector is on the SSD drive do the installation while all other disk drives are disconnected. Also, if you haven't already, before installing the SSD change the SATA Ports to AHCI and place the SSD on the Intel SATA Ports.

Hope this helps.

 

[Deacon_Jones1988]

Thanks all for the info, great advice. I haven't done anything as far as moving folders, temp files around so I'll just leave them as they are.

As for:

Originally Posted by Chucklr
...

To ensure that the boot sector is on the SSD drive do the installation while all other disk drives are disconnected. Also, if you haven't already, before installing the SSD change the SATA Ports to AHCI and place the SSD on the Intel SATA Ports.

Hope this helps.

I am running an AMD board m5a99x Evo to be exact, does that board have Intel ports? Also, I do have it set to AHCI, but I did not disconnect any of the other drives during installation, I just inserted my flash drive booted up, installed and BAM! was done in like 5-10 mins. Love SSD now that I'm there, Im jsut having some trouble getting everything moved over, I have 4 TB of stuff that I want to keep, some of the games and apps run in 8 without a re-install, but most of them won't work because the 7 C drive is now labeled by another letter. Any tips on this? Maybe not, I knew what I was getting into lol, Thats why I got it dual booted so I can switch between, so all my games are still there, but I gotta say, I really hate leaving the SSD, its just so much smoother and faster in boot times, load times, just regular operation. I love it.

Thanks in advance all.

Stay [H]

 

[Tsumi]

You have an AMD board, so you would plug it into the native AMD ports. Motherboards sometimes comes with extra SATA controllers for extra ports, to get the best possible speed, it's usually best to plug it into the native ports instead of the extra ones. Being an AMD board, there are no Intel chips on it... with the exception of Intel LAN controllers.

AHCI is enabled in the bios. However, make sure the actual driver is enabled first before enabling it in the bios; if the driver isn't enabled, you'll get BSODs on boot. To enable the drivers in Windows, google "Enable AHCI Windows 7". Instructions are the same for Vista, 7, and 8/8.1.

 

[Chuklr]

Double post.

 

[Chuklr]

... I just inserted my flash drive booted up, installed and BAM! was done in like 5-10 mins....

Hi, Deacon_Jones1988,

You can check to see if the boot sector is on the SSD by disconnecting all the other drives and then powering the system up. If Windows boots you're good to go, if you get the "boot sector missing" error you know it's on one of the mechanical drives. If it is, I suggest you leave the other drives disconnected and restore the Master Boot Record.

Hope this helps.