Windows and Solid State Drives

[rfdjr1]

Okay, I'm just trying to figure out these solid state drives. From what I've
read, an SSD is way faster than any mechanical hard drive? I understand the
concept, no moving parts. I currently have a 1Tb drive partitioned into 4
drives, C, D, E, and F (forgive me if my terminology is wrong.)

My Windows 7 Professional 64bit O/S is obviously on the C drive with a ton of
other stuff on the C and all the other drives, including over 25,000 mp3 files.

Could I buy an SSD drive and install Windows on it and have Windows boot up and
run a lot faster than it does on my machine now? Do I have to start completely
from scratch, reinstalling all my software because of their interaction with
Windows? Is this at all possible? And if so, how big an SSD would I need to
accomodate Windows itself?

I might be missing a question or two here, but I'm sure you can figure out what
it is I'm asking and can fill in the blanks. Oh, and as for all my music and
pictures etc, I have them backed up on two external drives. Thanks in advance.

 

[philo]

Okay, I'm just trying to figure out these solid state drives. From what I've
read, an SSD is way faster than any mechanical hard drive? I understand the
concept, no moving parts. I currently have a 1Tb drive partitioned into 4
drives, C, D, E, and F (forgive me if my terminology is wrong.)

My Windows 7 Professional 64bit O/S is obviously on the C drive with a ton of
other stuff on the C and all the other drives, including over 25,000 mp3 files.

Could I buy an SSD drive and install Windows on it and have Windows boot up and
run a lot faster than it does on my machine now? Do I have to start completely
from scratch, reinstalling all my software because of their interaction with
Windows? Is this at all possible? And if so, how big an SSD would I need to
accomodate Windows itself?

I might be missing a question or two here, but I'm sure you can figure out what
it is I'm asking and can fill in the blanks. Oh, and as for all my music and
pictures etc, I have them backed up on two external drives. Thanks in advance.

You should be able to clone your drive to an SSD and save reinstalling
everything

 

[Jan Alter]

You should be able to clone your drive to an SSD and save reinstalling
everything

Cloning will certainly work to get the programs moved intact but unless you
have a program that does the cloning to align the SSD correctly, compared to
the mechanical drive, some speed will be lost as well as possibly shortening
the life of the SSD. Many suggest installing Win 7 fresh as it will do the
alignment automatically.

http://dfarq.homeip.net/2011/07/why-you-should-align-your-ssd/

 

[Don Phillipson]

Could I buy an SSD drive and install Windows on it and have Windows boot
up and
run a lot faster than it does on my machine now? Do I have to start
completely
from scratch, reinstalling all my software because of their interaction
with
Windows? Is this at all possible? And if so, how big an SSD would I need
to
accomodate Windows itself?

If you connect your PC to www.crucial.com its software will tell you what
types of SSD can fit your PC, probably several of different sizes. Cloning
software (such as drive vendors distribute free) should enable you to copy
all your C:\ to a bootable SSD.

 

[Paul]

Okay, I'm just trying to figure out these solid state drives. From what I've
read, an SSD is way faster than any mechanical hard drive? I understand the
concept, no moving parts. I currently have a 1Tb drive partitioned into 4
drives, C, D, E, and F (forgive me if my terminology is wrong.)

My Windows 7 Professional 64bit O/S is obviously on the C drive with a ton of
other stuff on the C and all the other drives, including over 25,000 mp3 files.

Could I buy an SSD drive and install Windows on it and have Windows boot up and
run a lot faster than it does on my machine now? Do I have to start completely
from scratch, reinstalling all my software because of their interaction with
Windows? Is this at all possible? And if so, how big an SSD would I need to
accomodate Windows itself?

I might be missing a question or two here, but I'm sure you can figure out what
it is I'm asking and can fill in the blanks. Oh, and as for all my music and
pictures etc, I have them backed up on two external drives. Thanks in advance.

This'll give you some idea of the fun involved.

http://www.ssdfreaks.com/content/664/how-to-clone-hdd-to-ssd-with-windows-7s-own-software

You would only put the C: on there, if the SSD is particularly small
in capacity. That means, you need to keep the 1TB drive for D, E, F.

After the transfer is complete, and you're actually booting
from the new SSD, you can play with stuff like this. I suppose
you can also do this, after the cloning operation is complete.
(I.e. Booted from C: on the hard drive.)

http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/Checking_SSD_Alignment

In the example here, the user notes a 1,048,576 bytes offset,
which I refer to as a "megabyte offset". They use megabyte
offsetting for non CHS installs in Linux as well.

http://superuser.com/questions/132296/how-to-check-the-partition-alignment-on-an-ssd-drive

Depending on backup tools, sometimes the alignment is botched.

http://forum.acronis.com/forum/3823

Also, depending on how ancient your application software is,
some tools do not like megabyte alignment. My copy of Partition
Magic, would throw a hissy fit if it noticed such a thing.
I'd have to unplug the SSD, to work on the 1TB hard drive with
it. So moving to megabyte alignment, assumes the usage of
compatible tools. It's a good thing the Windows 7 built-in
feature, has what looks like proper support.

*******

Also, as the owner of an SSD, you should spend several evenings
visiting enthusiast web forums, and learning about optimization
recipes for SSDs. Alignment is pretty important. Windows 7
takes care of some other issues automatically. For older OSes,
there are even more tweaks to do, to help preserve SSD
performance and lifetime.

I present this as an example. It's not the best example, just
a link I happened to bookmark some time ago. You need many
pages like this, to get all the details. There is a lot to
learn, about the best config for SSDs. Some people use two
SSDs in RAID 0, and then they need to know what RAID version
to use that supports TRIM or not. Lots of trivia is available
if you have buckets of money to waste on hardware (multiple
SSDs).

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?43460-Making-XP-pro-SSD-friendly

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM

Paul

 

[charlie]

Okay, I'm just trying to figure out these solid state drives. From what I've
read, an SSD is way faster than any mechanical hard drive? I understand the
concept, no moving parts. I currently have a 1Tb drive partitioned into 4
drives, C, D, E, and F (forgive me if my terminology is wrong.)

My Windows 7 Professional 64bit O/S is obviously on the C drive with a ton of
other stuff on the C and all the other drives, including over 25,000 mp3 files.

Could I buy an SSD drive and install Windows on it and have Windows boot up and
run a lot faster than it does on my machine now? Do I have to start completely
from scratch, reinstalling all my software because of their interaction with
Windows? Is this at all possible? And if so, how big an SSD would I need to
accomodate Windows itself?

I might be missing a question or two here, but I'm sure you can figure out what
it is I'm asking and can fill in the blanks. Oh, and as for all my music and
pictures etc, I have them backed up on two external drives. Thanks in advance.

To add an SSD as a boot drive.
First, move what you can somewhere else. Usually, a typical SSD sold for
a reasonable price will be smaller than many of the current HDs.
Depending on what backup/restore software is used, it may be necessary
to "shrink" the boot partition if the SSD is smaller, before backing it
up. Win 7's built in backup is one of the backup methods that can have
problems with this sort of thing. It also doesn't like destination HD's
larger than ~ 2.2TB

Moving on, make sure that you have or make a Win 7 restore/repair disk
before you start.

Ideally, you want to be able to install or restore win 7 initially with
only the SSD and possibly the CD Drive or a USB stick. If this isn't
possible or convenient, A USB HD with the previously made backup is
perhaps the next alternative. Make sure that BIOS is not set to attempt
to boot from the USB drive. Naturally, it's also possible to create a
restore/repair disk on some of the USB "sticks". Obviously, in this
case, you'd want to be able to boot from "removable media" (Usually a
BIOS setting/option)

I prefer to pull the boot HD completely out before I start the process
of installing the SSD as the boot drive. Worst case is that I have to
reinstall the HD as a boot drive until I figure out what went wrong.

 

[Ken Blake]

Okay, I'm just trying to figure out these solid state drives. From what I've
read, an SSD is way faster than any mechanical hard drive? I understand the
concept, no moving parts. I currently have a 1Tb drive partitioned into 4
drives, C, D, E, and F (forgive me if my terminology is wrong.)

Your terminology is fine.

My Windows 7 Professional 64bit O/S is obviously on the C drive with a ton of
other stuff on the C and all the other drives, including over 25,000 mp3 files.

Could I buy an SSD drive and install Windows on it and have Windows boot up and
run a lot faster than it does on my machine now? Do I have to start completely
from scratch, reinstalling all my software because of their interaction with
Windows? Is this at all possible? And if so, how big an SSD would I need to
accomodate Windows itself?

I might be missing a question or two here, but I'm sure you can figure out what
it is I'm asking and can fill in the blanks. Oh, and as for all my music and
pictures etc, I have them backed up on two external drives. Thanks in advance.

See the other replies you've gotten and let me ask a question and add
the following:

Why do you have four logical drives? For most people, that's
considerably more than is needed, and my guess is that you would be
better of with an SSD of around 120 GB, and everything that's
presently on D:, E:, and F: on a *single* partition on your present
hard drive.

You might want to read this article I've written: "Understanding Disk
Partitioning" at
http://www.computorcompanion.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=326

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Cloning will certainly work to get the programs moved intact but unless you
have a program that does the cloning to align the SSD correctly, compared to
the mechanical drive, some speed will be lost as well as possibly shortening
the life of the SSD. Many suggest installing Win 7 fresh as it will do the
alignment automatically.

http://dfarq.homeip.net/2011/07/why-you-should-align-your-ssd/

Macrium Reflect can clone and restore to a properly aligned target
partition. It'll even create that partition for you.

Yousuf Khan

 

[charlie]

Your terminology is fine.





See the other replies you've gotten and let me ask a question and add
the following:

Why do you have four logical drives? For most people, that's
considerably more than is needed, and my guess is that you would be
better of with an SSD of around 120 GB, and everything that's
presently on D:, E:, and F: on a *single* partition on your present
hard drive.

You might want to read this article I've written: "Understanding Disk
Partitioning" at
http://www.computorcompanion.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=326

That was an interesting exercise! (Installing SSDs, that is!)
(Switching a Vista Laptop with two HDs to one SSD and one HD.)
(Switching a slightly older Win 7 32b desktop to an SSD boot drive.)
Win 7 can "shrink" a partition if needed, but it (So Far) will not give
me the option to setup the now "unused space" as a second partition, etc.

I ended up using some third party software to get things done.
Segate's disk utility (Acronis) supplied with a "GoFlex Desk" Segate
external drive.
Windows repair/restore CD/DVD
Paragon's free version of an easy HD to SSD migration utility.
(I downloaded it several months ago, and cannot find the current
download source.)
Resources
External HD/SSD to USB adapter
320 G HD (fits adapter)
1TB Segate GoFlex Home with ethernet adapter
3TB Segate GoFlex Desk USB 3.0 (both the laptop and the destop only have
USB 2.0, The next victim, another desktop, does have USB 3.0)
2 ea. Crucial 128G SSDs
2 ea. Kingston 240G black HyperX SSDs
Seagate/Acronis disk utility
Paragon Migrate OS to SSD 2.0 Special Edition (English)

Win 7s backup just does not like the 3TB Segate connected via USB,
even when I "shrunk" it to 2.1TB Eventually, a windows backup will error
out.

The Segate /Acronis utility works, but creating a boot able CD/DVD did
not result in a fully boot able disk. I ended up using the Win
recovery/repair disk to boot, then inserted the Segate/Acronis disk.
Some hunting around was necessary to locate the start up for the disk
utility.

The original idea was to use the 128G SSDs. Unfortunately, initially,
they were not large enough, and the available cloning software (Windows
Backup/Restore) did not want to load 110G into the 120G SSDs, because
the source disk partition was larger than 120G. (Bummer!) This forced me
to use the 240G SSDs.

I stumbled across a Paragon Utility that I had downloaded some months
ago, when I was first considering use of SSDs. It was reputed to make
migration to SSDs "easy". When I finally had the SSDs in hand, I had
totally forgotten that I had the Paragon utility, so I did things the
hard way, resulting in the need to use the 240G SSDs instead of the 120G
SSDs.

What this utility did for me this evening.
Migrated the boot 240G SSD's contents to one of the 120G SSDs fairly
rapidly, no obvious problems, etc. The software migrated was about 110G
or so. It can be made smaller when I get around to moving some large
"don't need to be on the boot drive" files. At the moment, the planned
destination drive is a bit full, and I need to clean it up.

The major benefits, when all is said and done.
Use the 120G SSDs
Free up the 240G SSDs for use on two "almost new" Win 7 Desktops.
Use of the Paragon software eliminated a large amount of hassle I
previously experienced. They currently sell the current version
(unfortunately) for all of 19.95 on the web site, with "free" trial
versions. Had I known, I could have saved myself a lot of time and
heartburn by using it in the first place.

Before you start such an effort, make sure that the existing boot drive
is on the first SATA port (Bus Number 0, Target Id 0, LUN 0), and that
you install the new SSD on the same port. (Saves potential problems with
BIOS boot sequence settings)

The Paragon utility I used, by default, will do in any software on the
destination drive, even if the drive is larger than needed. The later
purchased version may have more options.