Just bought an SSD, help please!

franco_22 · 10 Jan 2011 at 08:52

It's arriving tomorrow

What are the Do's and Don'ts?

I know that you shouldn't defragg it or reformat it, anything else I should know?

How do I go about installing Win 7, same way I do with normal drive? Do i have to change anything in the bios?

Thanks

Ch3m1c4L · 10 Jan 2011 at 10:25

formatting is fine, just dont do a full format, which vista/win 7 wont do anyway.
When installing windows/formatting win 7 will align the partition correctly so that is fine

Justs check after that all the stuff is turned off and it should be fine.

franco_22 · 10 Jan 2011 at 16:43

So just don't full reformat and don't defrag?

Should I update the firmware on this one? It's an OCZ 60GB Vertex 2E ssd.

Ch3m1c4L · 10 Jan 2011 at 16:52

depends what it comes with, ocz forums will help you with all of that, they ahve very comprehensive guides on how to set up their SSD's for optimal performance.

franco_22 · 10 Jan 2011 at 17:07

thanks matey, i 'll start researching

dave_beast · 10 Jan 2011 at 17:34

After physically installing the drive in the highest SATA port, i.e port 1, set HD mode to AHCI as it gives better throughput than IDE.

If your installing Windows, after installing disable prefetching.

franco_22 · 10 Jan 2011 at 20:16

Thanks for the tip, will do!

Scuzzy · 10 Jan 2011 at 20:29

Check FW prior to installing OS & as others have stated dont Defrag, Windows 7 should also disable it from the scheduler automatically. Also enable AHCI.

franco_22 · 10 Jan 2011 at 21:34

What's FW?

Randomface74 · 10 Jan 2011 at 21:39

firmware
firewire
faction warfare
fireworks
fort worth

hash70 · 11 Jan 2011 at 03:27

dont defrag

franco_22 · 11 Jan 2011 at 08:55

If it's firmware, is it possible to update it before installing windows and would I need to do that?

Bubo · 11 Jan 2011 at 13:23

dave_beast said:
After physically installing the drive in the highest SATA port, i.e port 1

Does it actually matter which port you put it on, assuming all are the same speed? When I eventually put my PC back together I will have an SSD, a sata DVD and 4 sata HDDs. I was going to to put the SSD on 1, DVD on 2 and the HDDs on 3-6. Its not like the old IDE master/slave days is it? By that I mean it was reccomended to not have a fast and a slow device on the same "cable", or it sata terms, adjacent sata ports?

Ch3m1c4L · 11 Jan 2011 at 14:22

It is not like the IDE days, they are all master ports. I dont know why people say to put it on port 1. Mine isnt, its on port 5 as I had my raid 5 array already set up on the other ports and its fsking hard to get in and move stuff around in my case due to all the gpus/sata cables, and tubing.

OCDStevo · 12 Jan 2011 at 08:44

I just plugged mine into a free SATA port and followed one of the guides on this forum to setup and install.

All very simple and easy to install, loving my new drive

Roeg1 · 12 Jan 2011 at 09:38

how does one disable pre-fetching theres a lot of conflicting info on google and a lot of teh how to's all do it a different way whats the best/most common way of doing this ?

KIA · 12 Jan 2011 at 15:15

Roeg1 said:
how does one disable pre-fetching theres a lot of conflicting info on google and a lot of teh how to's all do it a different way whats the best/most common way of doing this ?

No need to disable it.

Dirk · 12 Jan 2011 at 16:47

fluff said:
No need to disable it.

This.

The only thing you need to do that you wouldn't with a HDD is to make sure scheduled defrag is turned off.

dmx07 · 12 Jan 2011 at 20:39

What about using S3 sleep mode? I've read somewhere SSD's dont like it for some reason?

DragonQ · 12 Jan 2011 at 22:15

S3 sleep will work fine (although a few do experience blue screens, it's fixed for most people by using the latest firmware and Intel RST drivers). The only down-side is that your SSD cannot do garbage collection whilst in S3 sleep mode, so you should set your system to shut down after maybe an hour of idle (rather than say 30 minutes) to give it more time to perform GC before going to sleep.