About to buy a SSD - Help...

Nothing like an honest noob to bring all the other noobs out lol. Glad it will be helpful. We all start at the bottom. :)

RoEy
 
If you don't, Windows will probably install the boot manager to another drive rather than making a 100 MB partition on your SSD. It did this for me because I forgot and then I had to use EasyBCD to move the boot files to my SSD.
 
Never had that problem. Is it only with SSDs or have I somehow avoided a long running issue? I always try to put my OS drive on to port 0.

EDIT: My current SSD was getting too many errors so I reinstalled on to a spare 250GB mechanical drive. Even doing that I can see that Windows 7 has created a new boot partition on this 250GB drive and is ignoring the old one on the SSD.

The problem is maybe caused by step 3; not creating a partition or formatting manually. What's the point of this step as well?
 
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I have something called s.m.a.r.t. enabled in my bios and I've heard that mentioned before. Is it some sort of monitoring for ssds and should it be enabled? I'm sure I can hear a new sound in my system, a very low grinding noise that is constant. Not sure if it's coming from my 1tb drive and now I can notice it because I removed my 750 or if its coming from my ssd but I thought they were supposed to be silent.

RoEy
 
Same boat as the rest of you; I have my new Vaio and Vertex 120GB next to me all ready to go :). This thread should be of great help!

Quick Q: I am poking around in the BIOS at the moment but I can't see any options regarding IDE/AHCI. The laptop is a Sony Vaio E-Series (VPCEA3C5E). The BIOS area is titled 'Aptio Setup Utility - 2008 American Megatrends, Inc'. Will this be the same after I've put my SSD in or does the BIOS remain constant? If so, any ideas on how to enable AHCI before installing W7?
 
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Laptops usually have far less customisable BIOSs. It might be enabled by default but IDE might also be listed as "legacy" or "compatible" with AHCI as "SATA" or something. Are there any HDD-related options at all?
 
None whatsoever. The options are:

Main > no settings to change.
Advanced > Intel (R) Virtualization Technology, CPU C3/C6 Support.
Security > Password.
Boot > External Boot Device, Network Boot, Boot Priority.
Exit > no settings to change.

That's it for BIOS options.
 
Any available BIOS updates? If not then I guess you'll have to just try it and see. If it's set to IDE then you'll be stuck with reduced performance but it should still be noticably faster than any HDD.
 
Aye, I think I'll install it as it is and then see if I can change it to AHCI in Windows (if necessary) - is that possible? Changing the laptop to run as AHCI after the W7 install?
 
You can't set your controller to AHCI from Windows. It must be done in the BIOS.

A registry setting must be changed if you're switching from IDE to AHCI after Windows has already been installed.
 
The registry setting doesn't change your SATA controller to AHCI mode, it simply allows Windows to install AHCI drivers upon rebooting (instead of crashing) after you switch to AHCI in the BIOS.

Since you can't switch to AHCI in the BIOS, it's not relevant for you.
 
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