SSD Advice Needed

[Rufass]

Hi,

I have a Scan 3XS system which, despite being over 3 years old, is still giving great performance. That said I'm considering installing an SSD to run the OS from. What I'd like is some advice really. Which SSD should I consider and how difficult or easy is it going to be install the SSD and move my OS over to it? The case is a Silverstone and there are two 1tb Samsung Spinpoint already in there, the OS is Windows 7.

Thanks folks

R

[Philipp]

Hello Rufass,

Its possible to copy everything across however I would recommend reinstalling the operating system from scratch.... Did you purchase Acronis originally with your system? This software could be used to reinstall Windows as we shipped it onto your SSD drive rather starting afresh.

Email me your invoice number philipp@scan.co.uk and ill arrange for someone to give you a call.

Best Regards

[graphil]

The other approach to consider is use the SSD drive as a cache drive if your motherboard supports it.
This dynamically puts the most used files onto the SSD for faster performance rather than fixing a specific set such as the O/S.

[LaneyEFC]

I recently bought the Corsair Force 3 http://www.scan.co.uk/products/120gb...s-85000-iops-p and it was probably the best move I've made within building my pc, I would also recommend installing fresh windows on it and its just like a normal HD to install and comes with a bracket to fit the 3.5 drive which is just screws, windows now starts in 25/35 seconds flat

[Rufass]

Hi Laney

Thanks for that. May I ask what the steps you took were in installing the drive and reinstalling the OS?

[Phage]

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 sata ports
3) Install W7 64 to SSD from DVD
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

[Rufass]

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 sata ports
3) Install W7 64 to SSD from DVD
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

That's great Phage, really useful, thanks.

How have folks managed things like migrating their 'My Documents', emails etc. I'm thinking that if the users are on the old OS drive it mnight be best to:

- remove old OS drive and install SSD as per above
- make 'dcouments and settings' path go to the remaining 1tb HDD that's in there
- Plug in the old OS drive to spare SATA port and migrate data to the new location

[Phage]

Much simpler than that. If you have an external HDD, use Windows easy transfer.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...-easy-transfer

[Rufass]

OK. Drive ordered from Scan. Thanks for everyone's help so far. Will let you know how I get on next week.