Few Questions about setting up my SSD please

[malice19]

I have just purchased an OCZ vortex 4 from Scan (Great service as always) and just had a few questions before I set it up.


1)I have a ghost image of my current windows 7 boot drive… would it be possible to ghost it onto the SSD or should I do a fresh install onto the SSD?

2)When I initialize the SSD in disk management am I right that I should only do a quick format in NTFS and not full? what about the Allocation unit just leave as default and should I enable file and folder compression?

3)If I install from fresh windows 7 onto the SSD and then make a backup ghost image for the future that has all my office software and personal setup setting can I use this after apply an OCZ firmware update??? As stated on the OCZ site the firmware update is a destructive update which will wipe all data. Don’t need to do this now but for future firmware updates would it course any problems applying firmware update then restoring the OS from a ghost image that has been made before the applying of the firmware update?

4)Any other tips on optimizing my SSD?


Thanks for your time all!

[Phage]

1) You could do a ghost to the new SSD, but if it were me, I'd do a clean install for peace of mind.
2) Not necessary to do any formattibng for a clean install W7 will handle all that itself.
3) Yes. The system image will still work exactly the same with a new firmware on the SSD. They are two very separate things.

NB Use Windows 'easy transfer' to get all accounts settings and documents from one setup to another. You'll need an external drive.

1) Change storage to AHCI in BIOS (dunno why you wouldn't be using this in the first place though)
2) Unplug old HDD, Plug in new SSD to first sata port
3) Install W7 64 to SSD from DVD or download as per above.
4) Install all important system drivers (chipset, graphics, Intel RST).
5) Open RST in system tray and check that disk data cache is enabled
6) Disable file content indexing (optionally turn it off completely) for SSD and double-check that Windows has correctly disabled scheduled defrags for SSD
7) Run WEI
8) Plug old HDD back in and format it.

[watercooled]

1) If it's not too much trouble, you'd probably be best doing a fresh install unless the image is from another SSD. Aside from the actual process of copying the image i.e. possibly copying empty space, misalignment, etc, Windows 7 optimises itself for SSD use on install. It doesn't do a huge amount but it saves having to tinker with stuff. If you clone, deffo disable defrag and IMO disable hibernation (in elevated cmd, type: powercfg -h off) and system restore if you don't use them - unnecessary writes and a fair amount of wasted space.

2) Yeah just do quick format, full basically just adds a surface scan which isn't necessary for an SSD. Allocation unit can be left as default for most people, nothing special needed specifically for SSDs but it can be tuned depending on use - a smaller allocation size will be better for lots of small files (less wasted space) while a larger one is better for big files (less overhead). I'd probably leave compression disabled, turning it on shouldn't make much difference to wear and can add significant overhead (CPU work), however I've not read up on it much so take that with a pinch of salt.

3)Imaging the restoring to the SSD should be fine, just be sure the image is correctly aligned.

4)I mentioned a few above in point 1, I'd ignore most of these internet 'SSD guides', what they recommend doing is mostly nonsense. A lot of it isn't specific to SSDs (e.g. write caching - it can help SSD or HDD, but carries a more serious risk of data loss during a power failure), some of it can actually seriously harm performance (e.g. prefetch, superfetch, indexing - a lot of guides recommend disabling them without understanding how they work, leave them all as they are). Personally, I do what I said above + moving temp to a HDD, along with temp files of some programs like browsers which do a lot of writing. It's probably fine to ignore for most people, it does reduce SSD writes but can impact performance, I just like to go overboard.

Edit: Yeah as above, make sure you're in AHCI mode. However I stand by what I said about indexing, there's no reason to disable it, searching is FAR, FAR slower without it even with an SSD and the database is really quite small so nothing to worry about in terms of writes.

[malice19]

1) If it's not too much trouble, you'd probably be best doing a fresh install unless the image is from another SSD. Aside from the actual process of copying the image i.e. possibly copying empty space, misalignment, etc, Windows 7 optimises itself for SSD use on install. It doesn't do a huge amount but it saves having to tinker with stuff. If you clone, deffo disable defrag and IMO disable hibernation (in elevated cmd, type: powercfg -h off) and system restore if you don't use them - unnecessary writes and a fair amount of wasted space.

2) Yeah just do quick format, full basically just adds a surface scan which isn't necessary for an SSD. Allocation unit can be left as default for most people, nothing special needed specifically for SSDs but it can be tuned depending on use - a smaller allocation size will be better for lots of small files (less wasted space) while a larger one is better for big files (less overhead). I'd probably leave compression disabled, turning it on shouldn't make much difference to wear and can add significant overhead (CPU work), however I've not read up on it much so take that with a pinch of salt.

3)Imaging the restoring to the SSD should be fine, just be sure the image is correctly aligned.

4)I mentioned a few above in point 1, I'd ignore most of these internet 'SSD guides', what they recommend doing is mostly nonsense. A lot of it isn't specific to SSDs (e.g. write caching - it can help SSD or HDD, but carries a more serious risk of data loss during a power failure), some of it can actually seriously harm performance (e.g. prefetch, superfetch, indexing - a lot of guides recommend disabling them without understanding how they work, leave them all as they are). Personally, I do what I said above + moving temp to a HDD, along with temp files of some programs like browsers which do a lot of writing. It's probably fine to ignore for most people, it does reduce SSD writes but can impact performance, I just like to go overboard.

Edit: Yeah as above, make sure you're in AHCI mode. However I stand by what I said about indexing, there's no reason to disable it, searching is FAR, FAR slower without it even with an SSD and the database is really quite small so nothing to worry about in terms of writes.

Thanks for all the TOP Information mate very helpful. What do you mean on no 3) correctly aligned?

[watercooled]

Basically, HDDs used to be aligned to sector 63 which was fine in the days of 512B sectors. However, if you align a partition that way on a new 4k drive or SSD, logical sectors end up spread across physical sectors, potentially having a large impact on write performance. It's only really older software you need to be careful of, new stuff and anything supplied/recommended by the SSD MFR should be fine.

Edit: You can download this tool to easily check if alignment is OK: http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-St...mer/td-p/51198

[malice19]

Was also just wondering if it is possible to leave my current Win7 HDD partition dormant?

So currently i have my main 1TB HDD that is split into 2 partitions C: Win 7 and D: Backup.
Is it possible to disable the C: Win 7 OS instead of deleting it just in case Sh*T hits the fan and my SSD dies so i can fall back on the OS on the HDD?

Cheers

[malice19]

Was also just wondering if it is possible to leave my current Win7 HDD partition dormant?

So currently i have my main 1TB HDD that is split into 2 partitions C: Win 7 and D: Backup.
Is it possible to disable the C: Win 7 OS instead of deleting it just in case Sh*T hits the fan and my SSD dies so i can fall back on the OS on the HDD?

Cheers

[Agent]

To stop any alignment worries - just format it on a Windows 7 (or Vista) system. Job done. You can even do it from the recovery section when you boot the install disk.

Once you do this, you can just image the data across (not the partition).

As Mr Watercooled says - ignore any SSD optimisation guides. So many are full of nonsense. Just use it like a normal HDD.

[watercooled]

Was also just wondering if it is possible to leave my current Win7 HDD partition dormant?

So currently i have my main 1TB HDD that is split into 2 partitions C: Win 7 and D: Backup.
Is it possible to disable the C: Win 7 OS instead of deleting it just in case Sh*T hits the fan and my SSD dies so i can fall back on the OS on the HDD?

Cheers

You could remove the boot flag and/or make sure the SSD is first on the BIOS boot list. However, you may run into trouble with Windows activation if you switch back and forth between the different boot drives. After you have the SSD up and running, and are reasonably sure you've copied over everything you need, I'd either make an image of the partition or just backup/archive important folders + keep them somewhere safe for a while. It's quite annoying needing some old file only to remember it was in a strange location on the HDD when you formatted so you didn't back it up.

[malice19]

HAHA so true, Already made an image that i can mount in a virtual drive and pull off any game save or settings that i always use to miss once i had formatted the OS drive. (Easus to do backup great bit of kit!)

Cheers

[watercooled]

Yeah game saves are pretty terrible for it, why they can't all use the one directory is beyond me...