Corsair SSD's

[Subzie]

Hi folks

ok the time has come for me to finally get a SSD for my current build but i have a few little annoying issues that i wanna clear up first of all.

1. Im almost set on getting a Force GT 120gb from scan as its the best offer that ive seen which is fine and upon reading a few reviews seems to be one of the best on the market for the budget that i have which is about £100, im currently using a MSI P67-GD65 Mobo on a Core I7 2600k, my question is this: Upon installing the ssd into the case, for the duration of the fresh install onto the new SSD, should i disconnect the old HDD from the PC cause ive hear from some SSD videos that rather than storing the boot info on the SSD it would install the boot info on the HDD instead and then once the install is finished simply reconnect the old HDD to the sata cable? what is the correct procedure for installing stuff.

2. Once i have installed windows on the new SSD, my current 750gb HDD is about half full, how do i access the installed stuff on the other HDD for example, Games, MS Office, Steam stuff like that, also if i want to say install WoW, Diablo3 and Win 7 onto the new SSD drive, would i install them as usual then simply reboot the system and use the old HDD as the primary boot to uninstall them from the old HDD for which im gonna use as storage

3. I think i know the response to this question but i wanna make sure, do i use the SATA3 connectors that are set to the P67 Chipset and not the ones that are controlled by the Marvell Chipset as i heard something about marvells not supporting TRIM, also how is trim set up on a SSD, is it automatic or is it when i set the drive to ACHI instead of IDE its enabled then

Any input into these minor questions would be fantastic and greatly thanked

Regards
Scott aka Subzie

[csgohan4]

Firstly welcome to Hexus forums,

If you want to install windows from a fresh, the windows installation will ask you to select a hardrive, so you don't have to disconnect your other HDD.

Secondly You won't be able to access the programs on your HDD as you have just installed a new Windows onto your SSD, unless you clone your OS and associated partition which has your programs from your HDD to the SSD. There are plenty of cloning programs like Acronis for example. However I doubt your 120gb will be enough to hold all those programs. So your likely to lose them. Better to start with a new Windows install and make sure your save game files are keptsafe.

If you install your games and OS on your SSD, you simply delete them from your old hdd when you use your SSD as primary boot. However your HDD could be a backup drive, so if your SSD goes pop, you can still use your non SSD to boot up. Or you could just clone your SSD to another HDD if you want as well.


Thirdly, it's best to use the Intel based SATA III connectors rather than the marvell ones, they are faster and more reliable.

Finally before you install windows, please switch on ACHI from Bios. If your using Windows 7, TRIM should be enable by default.

To check TRIM is enabled, type in command prompt:

fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify
Results explained below:
DisableDeleteNotify = 1 (Windows TRIM commands are disabled)
DisableDeleteNotify = 0 (Windows TRIM commands are enabled)

IN addition, do not defragment your SSD, turn on hibernation, and do not schedule defragmentation for your ssd and make sure your hard drives are not turned off after a certain amount of time.

[IronWarrior]

Csgohan4 on your second point you are wrong. His new Windows install will see the other HHD just fine and allow him access to everything on it just fine as well, but I would move or reinstall everything again on the SSD.

[csgohan4]

So If i had installed diablo 3 on a seagate HDD and I installled a new OS on SSD corsair, I could still play diablo 3 from booting up windows from the new SSD ? is that what your are saying?

If that is, then I cannot do that, I need to reinstall the programs from the old Drive as the registry entries and programs weren't installed on the new Drive as the primary OS

Anyone else can clarify this?

[IronWarrior]

So If i had installed diablo 3 on a seagate HDD and I installled a new OS on SSD corsair, I could still play diablo 3 from booting up windows from the new SSD ? is that what your are saying?

If that is, then I cannot do that, I need to reinstall the programs from the old Drive as the registry entries and programs weren't installed on the new Drive as the primary OS

Anyone else can clarify this?

I can't comment on how Diablo 3 works, does that need to be run from an game client like Steam for example?

If so, I suspect it might throw up some headache about that, but if it's anything like Steam, it can easy fix that.

Anyway, back to the point, you should be able to start most software and games from the old HDD without the need to reinstall them. I know for a fact that about all my games (I have 1TB of them) on my Gaming drive don't need to be reinstalled, that's why I have them on a other drive, same goes for software, I never found something that complained about missing registry entries or whatever.

Steam does need to update itself again, but after that, games can be played normally without trouble or the need to be re-installed.

But if you going to want to play games on the SSD, then you might as well do a fresh install again or back them up from the old drive to move over and install if they can be done like that like Steam backup.

[csgohan4]

It's not just games as well, what about Office, photoshop, acrobat e.t.c? and non client software run games i.e non steam and origin games

[IronWarrior]

It's not just games as well, what about Office, photoshop, acrobat e.t.c? and non client software run games i.e non steam and origin games

I know Office 2007 works fine, my old version of Photoshop (Can't comment on the newest one) I don't use Acrobat, but that's not really a big demanding software, so that should boot up without trouble, but since I don't use, I could be wrong.

About 300GB's of my games are all disk games, they will boot up and play just fine. I think I did have one or two games that couldn't update online through the in-game download server, but these are really old games.

Even through I know it's possible to not install everything again, I don't do this anymore, I don't use as much software as I used to these days so re-installing the few I have doesn't take long, maybe 10 or 20 minutes and am doing that while am downloading Windows Updates if and whenever I go through the process of formatting.

Games, I slowly re-install over time just to re-add them to the registry again, only do that if am bored and got time, but they will work fine as they are.

[Subzie]

I know that diablo3 is on a seperate install which i need to backup which is fine, eventually ill just get round to uninstallinh old stuf from the hdd and just reinstall it to the hdd when the time comes

[peterb]

As this is not a specific mfr question, I have moved it to a more general section of the forums.

[DennisMenace]

Personally I'd consider the Samsung 830 128gb (£75.59 on Scan Today Only), ~£20 cheaper than the Force GT and NOT Sandforce-based...

I recently bought an Intel 520 120gb (£150) which is one of the best Sandforce drives - however I still got the infamous "Sandforce Bug" causing daily BSODs on sleep/wake. Thanks to an encryption issue with all SF-2281 drives not supporting AES-256, Intel offered a full refund (good ol' Intel, AFAIK no-one else has offered a refund despite using the same faulty controller). This bought me a 256gb Samsung 830 (£137.99 Scan Today Only), which has performed faultlessly so far and is just as zippy in use (marginally slower in benchmarks).

This isn't really an issue if you're not using Full Drive Encryption, but personally I'd steer clear of Sandforce anyway. The Force GT is one of the better SF drives, but £20 less for the trusty 830 makes it a no-brainer IMHO.

[Subzie]

ok decided to get the ForceGT in the end so all is good, 1 quick question though, do i need to install/update the Sata3 drivers after i install the SSD cause i know i had to do the same to my usb3 ports whcih was install the new drivers from the MSI site

[HalloweenJack]

make sure AHCI is enabled in the bios , and your motherboard has the latest bios and ssd has the latest firmware before you start

[fail_quail]

2. Once i have installed windows on the new SSD, my current 750gb HDD is about half full, how do i access the installed stuff on the other HDD for example, Games, MS Office, Steam stuff like that, also if i want to say install WoW, Diablo3 and Win 7 onto the new SSD drive, would i install them as usual then simply reboot the system and use the old HDD as the primary boot to uninstall them from the old HDD for which im gonna use as storage

Some of this got answered already, but my advice:

-win7: this will need to be re-installed if you want windows to boot off the SSD

-the old drive: should show up as a secondary drive letter after installing windows (eg. D:/ )
after installing windows, i'd suggest copying over everything from your my documents folder on the old drive to the new windows install to start with (contains most game saves)

-steam: just re-install the steam client and point it at the steam folder on your old drive, should pick it all up and not need to redownload anything
if you want to move individual steam games, search google for the 'steam mover' program, works lovely

-wow: just copy the game folder to your SSD and make a new shortcut, it'll work just fine. I assume diablo3 will be the same (though i haven't tried it yet)

-Office and most other programs: generally won't work by copying the folders, will need to re-install them