Do I need to do a reinstall with a new SSD?

[Geoff I]

OK I never have owned a SSD before and I am thinking of buying a 256MB SSD in a couple of weeks, just need to know do I need to Reinstall windows or can I ghost the drive, if a ghost is ok which ghost program would I need.
Cheers for any info.

[Phage]

If this is your first SSD, i.e. you're moving from a HDD to an SSD, then I a clean install is necessary. However, with Windows, easy transfer and/or backup it isn't a huge problem.

[Geoff I]

Thanks very much a clean install it is.

[Agent]

If this is your first SSD, i.e. you're moving from a HDD to an SSD, then I a clean install is necessary.

It absolutely isn't.

Moving from a spindle based drive to a SSD is trivial these days.

Format and partition the SSD from the Windows 7 disk so it's alignment is fine.
Copy the data (not the partition) from your old drive to the new one.
Run "fsutil behavior set disabledeletenotify 0" from an admin based command prompt once you've booted from the SSD. Might not be needed as W7 often auto detects, but it's a 2 second job.

Job done. There is nothing special about a SSD on its own that requires a reinstall.

The issue you might have is if you move to AHCI if you wasn't on it previously. If you are already using AHCI though, there should be no issues at all.

If you buy an OEM version of a drive, they also often include cloning software for you to do this.

[Phage]

1)Format and partition the SSD from the Windows 7 disk so it's alignment is fine.
2)Copy the data (not the partition) from your old drive to the new one.
3)Run "fsutil behavior set disabledeletenotify 0" from an admin based command prompt once you've booted from the SSD. Might not be needed as W7 often auto detects, but it's a 2 second job.
4) Possible issue if not on AHCI previously.

Job done. .

I didn't know that you could do that.
However, surely it's simpler to just re-install and restore ? Requires no specialised knowledge at all.

[Agent]

I didn't know that you could do that.
However, surely it's simpler to just re-install and restore ? Requires no specialised knowledge at all.

Depends on how much you have to reinstall and restore I guess
For me it would take at least a couple of days to set everything up I needed.

Some people would say that reinstalling Windows is 'specialised knowledge' to be fair. Your average user still won't know about drivers and so on...

[Phage]

Aye. Horses for courses, it depends on geoff's level of knowledge and the complexity of his system.
Heh - Does this mean I have specialised technical knowledge ? Yay !

[lapyiwin]

Why don't you clone it. I cloned mine from 128GB to 256GB no problem.

[bokawel]

Yes, I thought cloning is the most obvious way to do it.

[Geoff I]

Thanks everyone for the input, Geoff has a basic knowledge and my system is not complex only my brain is lol.

[KeyboardDemon]

Before ordering check that your system will work with an SSD. Older rigs such as those running the P5 chipsets won't work with SSDs without some BIOS mods.

[Agent]

Before ordering check that your system will work with an SSD. Older rigs such as those running the P5 chipsets won't work with SSDs without some BIOS mods.

Do you have any more info on this? Not come across it before.

[Geoff I]

Before ordering check that your system will work with an SSD. Older rigs such as those running the P5 chipsets won't work with SSDs without some BIOS mods.

Gigabyte GA-880GMA-USB3
AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 955 Processor, 3200 Mhz
12 GB Corsair Memory DDR3 1333 Mhz
2GB EVGA GTX 650 Ti
2 X 1TB Hard Drives not in Raid

Hopefully this will handle a SSD

[KeyboardDemon]

Do you have any more info on this? Not come across it before.

I read about it on the OCZ tech forums when I was looking up information on the Synapse drives. I have it bookmarked on my PC but I'm on Tapatalk at the moment so I can look it up tomorrow if you like.

Gigabyte GA-880GMA-USB3
AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 955 Processor, 3200 Mhz
12 GB Corsair Memory DDR3 1333 Mhz
2GB EVGA GTX 650 Ti
2 X 1TB Hard Drives not in Raid

Hopefully this will handle a SSD

That should be fine with an SSD.

[scaryjim]

I recently installed an SSD for a mate in an i915 chipset laptop, and it worked like a dream (once I realised that Win 7 doesn't have drivers for the specific SATA controller in that laptop and gave up trying to update it from XP ). You might not get the full benefit of an ultra-high-end SSD, but I'd be amazed if it didn't work at all...

[Agent]

I read about it on the OCZ tech forums when I was looking up information on the Synapse drives. I have it bookmarked on my PC but I'm on Tapatalk at the moment so I can look it up tomorrow if you like.

Yeah, I'd like to have a gander

A SSD is just a dumb device really. It shouldn't have any compatibility issues - that's exactly why the SATA standard exists.
If an entire chipset range has a bug in it which specifically stops SSD working, it suggests a major underlying bug in the SATA implementation. I'm not aware of any reason why a SSD shouldn't work over a normal HDD. The board doesn't care what happens at the end of the SATA chain.

I'm hoping it's just FUD, but would be in line with a lot of the other info on OCZs forums (if you can get past the mods deleting your posts of any criticism)