My system: Motherboard - ASUS P7P55D Deluxe CPU - Intel i7 -860 2.8- GHz GPU - ASUS EAH5870/2DIS/1GD5 Voltage Tweak RAM - Corsair Dominator GT 8GB (4 x 2GB) O/S HDD - Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB RAID Storage - Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB x 4 PSU - Corsair HX10000W Case - Antec 1200 I am wanting to upgrade my hard drive that I have my operating system installed on. Currently a mechanical drive. I already have a Corsair ForceGT 240GB SSD that I plan to use purely for the operating system, and little else, and then use the existing Samsung drive for all drivers/downloads etc... The question I have is, what is the recommended way of upgrading? I can think of different ways to approach this (ie image existing drive, or start from scratch). In some ways, I am keen to start from scratch almost like a new build, and make sure that I only have on the drive exactly what I want. I have also been experiencing BSOD relating to IOmap64.sys, so don't really want to inherit those issues. Think this is an ASUS software related issue. I am also wondering, is it worth updating to the latest BIOS? Never done this before, but of all times to do it, this is probably the best. What I do have in my favour is the fact that I won't be touching the existing hard drive, so if I do have any drastic issues, I can always replace it, plus I have enough PC's around the house if one isn't working for a short while, it's not the end of the world. Your advice would be really appreciated. Thanks
I'd start from scratch personally. Less potential problems and tweaking required to optimise the install. I only ever update a BIOS or firmware if the one I am using is missing essential functionality, rather than just because I can.
That was kind of the way I was leaning towards as well. Thanks for the info re the BIOS, bit of an unknown area for me really.
In my opinion, and many others, it is always best to do a fresh install when moving from mechanical to solid state, during the windows install, windows recognises it is being installed on a SSD and makes some tweaks for you such as turning of defrag and reducing the page file etc. The latest bios is probably recommended, have a read about what changes it has and see if you need them, although I tend to always keep my BIOS up to date. Make sure when you install windows that you have the BIOS set to AHCI mode not IDE mode, enables TRIM etc for your SSD. With regards to drivers etc, I would disconnect your existing OS install HDD, install windows to your new SSD, update windows, get AV installed etc then reconnect your old HDD. Then any drivers you can not find or any files you have pre downloaded you can move them across. Remember once you have windows up and running on your SSD there are a few things to do to prolong the life of the drive such as (although windows may have done most of these): Turn off disk defrag (this doesn't need to be done.) Turn off system restore Move pagefile to another one of your drives Set to never turn off HDD Ensure your power settings allow a good amount of idle time to let the drive clean itself. Anything i've missed i'm sure others will pop up with! Matt
use the onboard intel sata 2 ports rather than the jmicron ones (black ,navy blue and grey) - slightly lower latency as the intel ones are driven from the chipset , whereas the other 2 would go through another controller as well. set AHCI in the bios and off you go edit: http://uk.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1156/P7P55D_Deluxe/#download loads of bios updates fror your board
Thanks for the info. I think it was time, I had a bit of a tidy up. Will take a look at the SATA ports that are being used, and take the points on board. Want to get things right!
I can see the jmicron ones, and on the right, there are 6 other SATA connections, are all these 6 the Intel onboard sata 2 ports? They are all a lighter blue, so assuming yes?
A quick question about BIOS updates. Do you need to do every single one to get all BIOS updates, or will using the latest update provide all the other updates as well?
Thanks for the response. Just trying to install Win7, and it's taken a couple of attempts. Firstly stopped at the install screen saying it may take several reboots to install, and then secondly froze at 'setup is updating registry settings'. Third time seemed successful, but each time after it froze, I started the installation again, and reformated the C drive as it had copied some data onto it. I also noticed there were 2 small partition of about 100MB each. One on the 'new' c drive (drive 0), and the other on one of the other hard drives thatmakes up the RAID config (drive 1). I remember the one on drive 1 had MSR by the side of it. Both times of attempting to try again to install, I attempted to delete these. Partitions stayed there, but now empty. As I said beofre these were only about 100MB and 128 MB each. Wuld I have caused any issues by atempting to delete these? (If anyone understands what I'm talking about!!)
That 100mb partition contains the boot loader... can't boot windows without it. It also contains some pieces for the recovery console an other things. You can force the installer to put the bootloader on the primary partition, but it requires some additional steps and offers no advantage. Just leave it alone. Also if you manage to get windows installed, do not move the page file off the ssd to an hdd as it is a gigantic performance penalty. I also hope you haven't done full format on the ssd, as it is quite bad for them.
Don't think it was a full format, only the format when you come to install windows, and asit had part installed windows and failed, wanted to clear the 20 or so GB that was already written to the drive. So having the boot loader in a different location will not have any effect on performance? Also is there a way of finding out where this partition that contains the boot loader is located? Only worried about what drive it's on, and only out of curiosity more than anything else.
That's why it's reccomended to only have the drive you're installing the os on connected, so there is no mystery where the boot files are being placed. Otherwise the installer can occasionally install it elsewhere arbitrarily. If you only have the single ssd connected it will be on partition 0 at the beginning of the drive, and won't be assigned a drive letter and will be invisible outside disk management. This is normal and does not have any effect on performance. Allowing it to be placed elsewhere can cause a potential problem. Say if the storage drive the boot loader end up on fails later, well you won't be able to boot the os until you have completed some repair operations from the recovery console off the install media with cmd line bcdedit. If the install keeps failing, it's probably the install media, especially likely if using optical. If so, I would try using usb flash drive install method instead. This way is also a lot faster.
So, taking on board the last couple of comments, I have disconnected all other hard drives (except the SSD with the OS on it), and the PC boots fine. This must mean the boot files are on the SSD? Or should I be doubly sure and reinstall again, with no drives connected?
Seen quite a few recommendations to set BIOS to AHCI. As I am using RAID, this is set to RAID. Do I still need to set to AHCI before installing, and then set back to RAID?
Leave it at raid as that ahci as well. are you installing thev aid driver on install as an extra driver?
I do not have a lot of time to get in to this, but this is not a good idea. Modern SSDs have a lifespan that will out live your rig even if you were writing several gigabytes of data every single day. There is no need to protect your SSD like this and it will hurt performance. I would also not disable system restore (you might need it one day!). However you can change the setting so that system restore uses as little space as possible (enough for at least one restore).This is personal choice of course. You can also disable hibernation mode which will delete the hibernation file and save you several gigabytes of space. The advice about a clean install and AHCI etc. is spot on. I was in your position a few months ago and I found this article helpful. However there are a couple of points which were bogus so take it with a pinch of salt. http://www.overclock.net/t/1156654/seans-windows-7-install-optimization-guide-for-ssds-hdds Specifically, do not set power options to high performance or mess about with the page file. However as Matt said, I did increase the idle time for the SSD in power options to ensure there was time for garbage collection. In addition the advice about disabling prefetch and superfetch is also up for grabs. I did both of these things as it is specifically recommended by Intel on their SSD's (I have an Intel 330). It may not be the best course of action for every drive. Here is another thread where two Bit Tech gurus argue about how to set up an SSD. Here Pocket Demon and Goodbytes have a little discussion about what needs to be done. I would not say it is helpful as such, but I did find it interesting. http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=237377&highlight=speed+boot One thing to remember is that you do not have to do anything what so ever if you do not wish to. As long as you do a clean install in AHCI mode then your SSD will run absolutely perfectly fine and windows takes care of everything. Tweaking anything is not really required, it just makes anal tech enthusiasts feel better. But then, I guess that is why your here.
