Bought an SSD - What to do next?

popflop

So my SSD arrived today and i dont know what to do next.

Its a crucial m4 64GB and i want to put my windows on it but i dont want to completely reinstall my windows.

So my question is can i move my windows to the SSD without having to reinstall it? I downloaded a program called "Paragon Migrate OS to SSD" Which allows me to move my C: Drive to my SSD but its unable to do so because my C: Drive is 357GB and there is no way that i could manage to fit all of that onto my 64GB SSD.

If the worse thing happens and i have to reinstall will my overclock settings delete or will they be saved?

Thanks guys.

Monotype

Are your overclock settings with a windows program or in the BIOS?

The best thing to do is probably do the clean reinstall. It will make sure that you don't have junk on the OS drive as well as windows setting up everything it needs for an SSD.
You could clone your existing OS but you'd have to do a fair bit of tweaking to get it right.
You would need another drive or partition to move all those extra files to and uninstall as much as you can. This could be a lot of work and you should aim to have your c drive below 40GB. I think it could end up being more work than the reinstall, given that you will probably have to reinstall many programs anyway as they would no longer be on the OS drive.

If you do decide to go for a clean install, make sure you disconnect the old drive before installing; windows likes to put boot files on other drives without telling you.

Overheal

Prepare for glory and conquest.

Disable the windows splash



We have an SSD laptop at work that would boot in 5 seconds instead of 15 if we disable this useless ****er.

http://www.tech-plazaa.com/how-to/how-to-remove-windows-splash-screen.htm

Monotype

That's for older versions of windows. For windows 7, you have to use bcdedit.exe to modify boot settings and I'm not sure if /fastdetect is still relevant.

If it's the splash screen that you're after, you can easily change it with msconfig.
Start menu -> Type in "msconfig" -> Boot tab.

There's a few options there like "No GUI Boot" which will get rid of the logo (blank screen) and "OS boot Information" which shows various drivers and stuff being loaded.
Handy for checking problems but you won't save time. I measured less than a second with a stopwatch.

popflop

Monotype wrote: »

Are your overclock settings with a windows program or in the BIOS?

The best thing to do is probably do the clean reinstall. It will make sure that you don't have junk on the OS drive as well as windows setting up everything it needs for an SSD.
You could clone your existing OS but you'd have to do a fair bit of tweaking to get it right.
You would need another drive or partition to move all those extra files to and uninstall as much as you can. This could be a lot of work and you should aim to have your c drive below 40GB. I think it could end up being more work than the reinstall, given that you will probably have to reinstall many programs anyway as they would no longer be on the OS drive.

If you do decide to go for a clean install, make sure you disconnect the old drive before installing; windows likes to put boot files on other drives without telling you.

Thanks!

So to be clear on this, what i have to do is power off the machine unplug two of my drives and leave the SSD plugged in. Then boot up the computer with the windows CD inside it and do a clean install?

Now regarding the two drives i will unplug. When i unplug them there will be still information and programs on them. Do i need to delete the information before i plug them back in or what?

Sorry if these questions are silly but to be honest im quite clueless on this SSD technology

Monotype

Are you going for the clean install then?

Yes, it's a good idea to disconnect all your previous HDDs. That's assuming that you don't want to dual boot. You should still be able to boot to your old drive if you change the boot order in the BIOS menu.

1. Connect SSD and disconnect hard drives
2. Boot from optical drive
3. Install windows to SSD
4. When it resets as part of the install, change boot order to SSD first.
5. Windows finishes installing, so get drivers and essential stuff up to date
6. Turn off and plug out, connect old HDDs.
7. Check in BIOS setup that boot order is still SSD first.

Booting into windows, C-drive should be SSD and all your old drives should be listed. Your old windows should have some other drive letter. There'll be a lot of system files here so you'll have to dig around for your personal files.

You should still be able to boot to the old drive if you change the boot order to HDD first.


A lot of programs won't run from your old drive on your new install as the registry entries will no longer exist. You can install the small ones to the SSD, but larger ones need to go on a drive. I don't know what the layout of your drives are, but maybe if you have another drive, you could install there rather than creating more mess on the old system drive. You should sort through and be careful what you delete.
If you're using the same windows install (Vista or 7), you can use ABR to back up your previous activation (install windows with trial/blank activation and restore your other one).
You should unencrypt any files and move them to somewhere that you'll easily find with your new install.


So you shouldn't lose any files, but your old programs mostly won't work and you'll have to locate your personal files.
By the way, if it's a load of games with something like steam, if you install over the old folder, it should find all your installed games.


Maybe if you give a rough outline of what's on your drives, free space and current partions, we could give a strategy of how to approach moving your files.

popflop

Thank you very much for all the help Monotype.

Im after completing a full clean installation of windows on the SSD and its working great. Ive reconnected my two other Drives and reformatted them. Now my question is how can i lock/change the C: drive(ssd) to my secondary drive so everything i go to install goes to the Hard Drive instead of my SSD?

Also is there anything i should do after setting up my SSD on windows?

Thank you!

Monotype

Reformatted them? I thought that you wanted to keep the data!

If it's Windows 7, it handles most of the stuff itself.

There's a few ways that you could change the installations.

• Change your directory every time you install. This is usually under "custom install" when you install a program. Instead of c:\program files, you could have e:\program files.
• Change your default directory. This means that it will always install to a certain directory. You can change it in the registry. You can access it by typing regedit into the start menu box. Be careful as a messed up registry can f*** up your system! Browse through HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version
  On the right hand side, you'll see ProgramFilesDir with value C:\Program Files. Change this to something like E:\Program Files to put it on the e-drive. Again, be very careful and double check what you have. You'll also have to change the default directory for 32-bit programs. This is under ProgramFilesDir (x86) and the default value is C:\Program Files (x86). You could change this to E-Drive or even the same folder as the last if you just want to put them all in the same place. AFAIK, there shouldn't be any conflict issues with that.
• I'm not sure if this would work with installing programs but you could set up a mount point. You can mount a as a folder on the C-Drive. So c:\folder 1\XYZ could be the same as e:\XYZ. You can do by change drive letters and paths when you right-click on a drive in disk management. You can access this by right-clicking on my computer and clicking "manage".
• Finally, you could create links, like the mount points but on a smaller scale. Here's tool for it, but it could be more work if you're moving a lot of folders.

If you need more detailed instructions or better explanations, let me know.

You should install your main, regularly used programs on the SSD. Things like browsers, office or media players.

popflop

Yes, but it was just easier reformatting the drives as i put most of the data i use on my portable hard drive.

Thanks for the help on changing the installation directory, ill have a look at it tomorrow
thanks for everything

uploaded a video of the boot time, may as well share it here;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqKynDH_TNw (phone camera)

Monotype

Looks good. It's a major drawback of steam that you can't specify where you want the games installed. If that's what's taking up all your room, you should (a) install steam to the HDD and all the games will be installed there or (b) install it to the SSD and use your steammover tool to move games to the d-drive or e-drive or whatever. The second option will be faster but requires more maintenance.

popflop

Monotype wrote: »

Looks good. It's a major drawback of steam that you can't specify where you want the games installed. If that's what's taking up all your room, you should (a) install steam to the HDD and all the games will be installed there or (b) install it to the SSD and use your steammover tool to move games to the d-drive or e-drive or whatever. The second option will be faster but requires more maintenance.

Ye i have steam installed on my hard drive on the F: directory