Help Installing SSD on Samsung 700G7C

Soldato
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I'm thinking of buying a Samsung 700G7C and replacing the Hard Drives with two 512gb SSD and have some questions

1) Does this laptop come with a install disc allowing a fresh install of Windows 7?

2) Is it best to do a fresh install or use Norton Ghost to clone the OS onto the SSD?

3) What would be the best process to disable the 8gb cache drive as with SSD installed i'll no longer need the cache drive?

4) Does the laptop offer SATA 6 on both hard drive ports?

5) Will there be any problems installing 7mm SSD drives?

Thanks.
 
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Comes with a disc with the generic OEM install of Windows 7. I highly reccomend this as the default install/recovery is loaded up with crap.

HOWEVER the disc that comes with it lacks the ethernet driver for the laptop so I highly reccomend downloading the network drivers for ethernet and wireless from the samsung website and sticking it on a USB drive or something to install after you do the fresh install. Otherwise you might have fun and games trying to get internet/network access after the fresh install.

Then install the latest versions of the samsung easy settings (can disable expresscache from here) and the samsung easy software manager (to get the bare essential drivers loaded up) I highly reccomend avoiding all the other extra software and samsung tools as most of its just bloat.

I reccomend using the samsung easy settings software to enable Samsung Fast Boot mode - with an SSD in it will boot like greased lightning.


EDIT: I've not done any tests but the expresscache may still be an advantage (assumings its not automatically disabled for SSDs) even with an SSD in due to the way it works but I'd have to look into that to be sure.
 
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Soldato
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Thanks for the info Rroff.

Does 'Samsung Easy Settings' or 'Samsung Easy Software Manager' come with the drivers to enable the performance switch on the laptop where you can change between green, desktop and game mode?

Also on the Samsung webpage for the 700g7c there are to MS critical updates listed in the download section. Should I install those?
 
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Man of Honour
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AFAIK those are hotfixes for Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer 9 so unless you use that they aren't essential (I would still run windows update and install any critical updates tho). You need to install some extra software if you want the flashy switching when you swap between performance modes but afaik it still swaps between them fine without it to - I just leave mine in turbo mode unless I'm doing windows update when it needs to be in balanced mode.
 
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I'm thinking of buying a Samsung 700G7C and replacing the Hard Drives with two 512gb SSD and have some questions

1) Does this laptop come with a install disc allowing a fresh install of Windows 7?
2) Is it best to do a fresh install or use Norton Ghost to clone the OS onto the SSD?
3) What would be the best process to disable the 8gb cache drive as with SSD installed i'll no longer need the cache drive?
4) Does the laptop offer SATA 6 on both hard drive ports?
5) Will there be any problems installing 7mm SSD drives?

Thanks.

As the advice above :)

1) It does come with a CD.
2) I would take an image of the machine loaded anyhow if you have an external drive, that way if anything goes wrong you can revert it easily but I would go with a fresh install on the SSD
3) I'm almost sure the express cache requires software to enable it that isn't on the base install but I could be wrong.
4) The latest BIOS enables SATA6, but I only found it to be downloaded using the latest Win8 Samsung SW Update software, so I'm not sure if it's a Win8 BIOS!
5) I've installed a M4 and a Samsung SSD with no probs.
 
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Oh for info, the ModeSwitch software isn't required. My machine is now running Win8 and I din't install modeshift. It still switches the keyboard backlit schemes without the software.
 
Man of Honour
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There was a recent BIOS update available on Windows 7 via the easy software manager which I assume is the SATA6 one (also mentions improved stability tho I've never experienced any stability issues).
 
Man of Honour
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Was reading on another site today where someone was testing the same type of solid state storage as is used for the expresscache on this laptop and they came to the conclusion that it should definitely be disabled if you have an SSD for the boot drive.
 
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