Clean install with SSD

[unofficialPete]

Hi all,

Just picked up a SSD hard disk and want to start fresh to get my system flying again [along with sticking more RAM in].

Perhaps a stupid question, do I just plug the SSD into slot 1, boot up and it will recognise the blank disk and allow me to run my OS install?

Or do I need to run this as a second drive, make some changes and then make primary? It has migration software but I assume this is to just copy files over?

 

[Cup_Phil]

Windows? Linux? OS x?

 

[unofficialPete]

Windows 7 x64

I don't want to copy the primary drive over to the new disk, partly because it would be 120GB > 60GB!

 

[Cookie]

Just treat it as a normal disk Pete, it acts in the exact same way as far as Windows is concerned with installs.

 

[Martin_172]

as above windows setup will recognise it as a normal hard drive, nothing changes format as normal etc, its worth installing from a fast usb stick to see just how quick your SSD is at installing an OS, i think from the bios screen when i first turn on, to installing windows and then getting to the desktop takes about 8 minutes lol!

windows will recognise its an SSD and enable/disable any stuff to optimise it

 

[Darren S]

Just treat it as a normal disk Pete, it acts in the exact same way as far as Windows is concerned with installs.

Yep - no different - certainly with Win7 x64 being chucked on. I still haven't got around to sorting out an SSD for my PC yet!

D.

 

[Cookie]

as above windows setup will recognise it as a normal hard drive, nothing changes format as normal etc, its worth installing from a fast usb stick to see just how quick your SSD is at installing an OS, i think from the bios screen when i first turn on, to installing windows and then getting to the desktop takes about 8 minutes lol!

windows will recognise its an SSD and enable/disable any stuff to optimise it

It won't optimise everything though.

Pete - Follow this guide - http://www.overclock.net/a/windows-7-install-optimization-guide-for-ssds-hdds-by-sean-webster

I did a W7x64 reinstall last night (as my graphics card has died a death, but I digress), and even from a DVD it took less than 20 minutes.

<3 SSD

 

[Wilkeh]

If possible mate use one of the 6Gb/s SATA slots instead of a 3Gb/s ones, you'll see the full benefit then. It's still silly fast on 3Gb/s mind, but you want 100% out of it. As people have said you need to treat it just like a normal HDD, you may have to have a play with it in device disk management.

 

[Andy_con]

i made a thread on here last week abou ssd.

i purchased one at the end of last week and have installed W7 and everything is working just fine. but someone else mentioned this to me--

The current day SSDs are much more reliable and literally all that is necessary is to change the SATA mode to AHCI or RAID in the BIOS/UEFI, install, and you are good to go

ive not done this and not sure if im suppose to or how to?

 

[Wilkeh]

Do it in the BIOS mate, just boot your PC up into it and change the setting. You need AHCI not RAID, unless you have 2 SSD's?

 

[Andy_con]

nope single ssd in my laptop

 

[Uncle_Gravy]

The reason you switch to AHCI in the bios is that the TRIM feature will be enabled on the SSD, Win 7 should do this automatically.

TRIM is kinda important, google it if you don't know what it is.

 

[Wilkeh]

nope single ssd in my laptop

AHCI then mate as RAID is for multiple drives. If you RAID 0 two SSD's it's f**king lightning quick but has absolutely no tolerance for failure. If 1 drive fails you'll lose your data on both drives. How RAID 0 works is that the configuration utilises 2 separate HHD's or SSD's and writes "parts" of data to each one to minimise workload on each drive so therefore it will read/write data much faster. So in a sense each drive basically does half the amount of work, therefore faster.

 

[Andy_con]

ok thansk ill check it tonight

 

[Darren S]

AHCI then mate as RAID is for multiple drives. If you RAID 0 two SSD's it's f**king lightning quick but has absolutely no tolerance for failure. If 1 drive fails you'll lose your data on both drives. How RAID 0 works is that the configuration utilises 2 separate HHD's or SSD's and writes "parts" of data to each one to minimise workload on each drive so therefore it will read/write data much faster. So in a sense each drive basically does half the amount of work, therefore faster.

I thought RAID0 on SSDs was pretty much irrelevant?

D.

 

[Wilkeh]

I thought RAID0 on SSDs was pretty much irrelevant?D.

Not at all mate! Some serious performance from RAID 0 for SSD's - http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/kigston-hyperx-ssd-raid0_3.html#sect1 Although of course it has it's pros and cons.

 

[Munson]

SSD are crazy. In recent years we've been getting carried away with specs, and all along forgetting that the hard drive is now the limiting factor.

I have a Vertex 3 in my gaming machine and I've never seen Windows run so fast. I'm also using a 512GB SSD in my retina MacBook Pro, and I'm similarly amazed at the performance.

 

[Andy_con]

i purchased a vertex 3 last week for my laptop, seems very good. sadly my processor is owest of the low so could do with getting a slightly better one

** sorry i got the Agility 3

SSD are crazy. In recent years we've been getting carried away with specs, and all along forgetting that the hard drive is now the limiting factor.

I have a Vertex 3 in my gaming machine and I've never seen Windows run so fast. I'm also using a 512GB SSD in my retina MacBook Pro, and I'm similarly amazed at the performance.

 

[Cookie]

SSD are crazy. In recent years we've been getting carried away with specs, and all along forgetting that the hard drive is now the limiting factor.

I have a Vertex 3 in my gaming machine and I've never seen Windows run so fast. I'm also using a 512GB SSD in my retina MacBook Pro, and I'm similarly amazed at the performance.

5 second boot times and stupid quick game loading never gets old

 

[Andy_con]

5 second boot time....

i want that, how do i get that?

ive got windows 64b, 4gb ram, OCZ Agility 3 SSD

 

[Munson]

...game loading never gets old

For sure. Skyrim is pretty much seamless. No noticeable loading when walking into rooms.

 

[Rubicon_]

First time i used an SSD was in my Macbook Air. Still scary how fast it can restart and get me back on to a program, everything is just instant!

 

[Darren S]

5 second boot time....

i want that, how do i get that?

ive got windows 64b, 4gb ram, OCZ Agility 3 SSD

I was dubious myself. Then with that Vaio laptop we got last week (with 256GB SSD) - it got to the logon screen in under 5 seconds. Madness

D.

 

[Andy_con]

I've got a Dell inspiron 1750 which is a few years old now

 

[Andy_con]

sorry for the thread hijack

checked the AHCI thing and it is set to that already

just checked what processor i have and its the lowest of the low a t3000 dual core 1.80GHz

time for an upgrade to one of these bad boys

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Intel-Cor...Computing_CPUs_Processors&hash=item4d091762f5

 

[rdoxenham]

RAID0 with SSD's is definitely worth it...

soundwave:~ rdo$ sudo hdparm -Tt /dev/md125

/dev/md125:
Timing cached reads: 30658 MB in 2.00 seconds = 15352.26 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 2370 MB in 3.00 seconds = 789.75 MB/sec

-----

789.75 MB/sec... I'll take that for only two disks! ;-)

 

[Cookie]

One SSD is fast enough though, especially for home use (unless you've got some weird disk intensive app/service you need to run)

 

[Addicted]

One SSD is fast enough though, especially for home use (unless you've got some weird disk intensive app/service you need to run)

This, infact even a top SSD on Sata 2 is fine for home use, you won't notice the difference over Sata 3 unless you're benchmarking etc.

 

[Andy_con]

so if you were in the market for a good second hand laptop thats pretty fast (not a mac) any recommendations?

 

[unofficialPete]

That were a doddle, so glad I opted for usb 3.0 ports and an external 3.0 HD!

changed the setup to ahci in bios [not even sure what that means but i read it somewhere!] and now rocking SSD for primary software, another drive for data and a 3rd hard disk for less important software.

Photoshop CS5 opens near instantly :approve: although yet to see a mega fast boot up time?!

Next month, more RAM!

 

[Silent_Scone]

I thought RAID0 on SSDs was pretty much irrelevant?

D.

Depends, some controllers seem to surpass the bus limitations. I get over 1gb/s with two Samsung 840s

 

[rdoxenham]

Depends, some controllers seem to surpass the bus limitations. I get over 1gb/s with two Samsung 840s

SATA 3 is 6Gbit/sec (note, not gigabyte) which works out at a theoretical 572MB/sec. This is the theoretical maximum speed between the controller and the drive itself, not the entire controller; therefore RAID sets can exceed this drastically but will come down to the controller limitations, if you keep adding drives to a RAID set you'll likely reach the capacity of the controller (or the PCI-E connection to the motherboard).

 

[Steven103]

The fact that I'm still using an Intel X25-V somehow makes me feel old...

 

[iain187]

Got a SSD en route so going to see how fast I can make my PC boot tomorrow

 

[Darren S]

Chaps - I've got 2x 240GB SSD's with SATA 6gbps support. My mobo has two SATA 6 ports on it too. Is it worth just RAID Zeroing them together to get a single 450GB-ish drive? Or should I keep one strictly for the O/S and the other for apps usage?

Cheers,
D.

 

[Adam.]

Wouldn't recommend RAID 0 ever.

 

[Darren S]

Wouldn't recommend RAID 0 ever.

Not bothered about redundancy m8 - I never have anything important saved anyway. I'm more thinking of the practicality of getting the largest single drive I can with them.

D.

 

[Longy]

Not bothered about redundancy m8 - I never have anything important saved anyway. I'm more thinking of the practicality of getting the largest single drive I can with them.

D.

Go for it then, yeah you double your chance of failure but if don't mind losing the system then why not.

 

[rdoxenham]

Wouldn't recommend RAID 0 ever.

Out of interest mate, why not?

RAID0 will give you maximum performance but it comes with a lot of risk. If you lose one of your disks, you've lost all of the data across the entire array due to the way that it stripes the data across the disks in the set. If you have a desire for that level of performance and don't care that this may happen, e.g. you have frequent backups of the array then there's not *that* much risk. The ideal option is to use RAID10, i.e. both striped and mirrored, that way you get the performance benefits but also there's a mirror within the set, allowing you to lose a disk and have the array self-heal with a new drive.

I use RAID0 for my operating system and main applications that I use, gives me blistering performance but I make sure that I clone the entire array to a RAID1 set every few weeks. If I lose the array, replace the disk and copy the latest backup over the array and reboot