Reinstalling Windows 7 on SSD

Snykch

Snykch

Snykch

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I've got Windows 7 on a 128gb crucial c300 just now, but I'd like to do a clean install. There's very little else on the drive at the moment in the way of programs.

What's the best way to proceed?

I see people talk about do a full erase of SSDs to set everything back to 0s. Is this necessary, or should I just do a quick format when reinstalling?

Thanks.
 
This is adapted from my Vertex 2 setup instructions:

1) Enable AHCI in your BIOS. Follow this guide otherwise Windows will blue screen after you enable AHCI.
2) Attach the SSD as a secondary drive and use the Toolbox from the SSD manufacturer (e.g. OCZ Toolbox) to update the firmware and then "secure erase" it (this is NOT the same as a zero-fill or format).
3) Shut down your PC, disconnect all other drives and install Windows 7. Tell it to install to the raw, unpartitioned space on the drive - do NOT create a partition or format manually.
4) Download and install Intel RST 10 series drivers or AMD drivers (depending on your chipset - in this case, Intel RST will work on X58 motherboards) and restart.
5) Run Windows Experience Index and then make sure scheduled defragmentation is disabled for your SSD (click Start and type "dfrgui"). Do a benchmark or two using CrystalDiskMark/AS-SSD/ATTO/etc. (ATTO only for OCZ Vertex 2/3). Don't unnecessarily do more benchmarks than you need cos it might/will reduce performance depending on your drive.
6) Re-attach your other drives and away you go.

The drive's garbage collection coupled with TRIM should leave it running at near-maximum speed for the life of the drive. If you're paranoid about giving the garbage collection enough time to run, or you use the drive for particularly heavy use, you can leave the PC on but logged off for an hour or two a week.

P.S. AHCI is a sub-set of RAID and will take advantage of RST drivers.
 
Okay, thanks.

The first time I installed to the raw partition it worked okay on AHCI mode without doing anything. I was following another guide to install the RST drivers, but I did a manual driver update instead of using an installer, and that wiped everything and replaced with iastor.sys only. Maybe that is correct? I checked afterwards and TRIM had been enabled on the drive okay. That's on p67 chipset.

Anyway, I'll give this a bash, thanks.
 
DragonQ said:
This is adapted from my Vertex 2 setup instructions:

1) Enable AHCI in your BIOS. Follow this guide otherwise Windows will blue screen after you enable AHCI.
2) Attach the SSD as a secondary drive and use the Toolbox from the SSD manufacturer (e.g. OCZ Toolbox) to update the firmware and then "secure erase" it (this is NOT the same as a zero-fill or format).
3) Shut down your PC, disconnect all other drives and install Windows 7. Tell it to install to the raw, unpartitioned space on the drive - do NOT create a partition or format manually.
4) Download and install Intel RST 10 series drivers or AMD drivers (depending on your chipset - in this case, Intel RST will work on X58 motherboards) and restart.
5) Run Windows Experience Index and then make sure scheduled defragmentation is disabled for your SSD (click Start and type "dfrgui"). Do a benchmark or two using CrystalDiskMark/AS-SSD/ATTO/etc. (ATTO only for OCZ Vertex 2/3). Don't unnecessarily do more benchmarks than you need cos it might/will reduce performance depending on your drive.
6) Re-attach your other drives and away you go.

The drive's garbage collection coupled with TRIM should leave it running at near-maximum speed for the life of the drive. If you're paranoid about giving the garbage collection enough time to run, or you use the drive for particularly heavy use, you can leave the PC on but logged off for an hour or two a week.

P.S. AHCI is a sub-set of RAID and will take advantage of RST drivers.
Click to expand...

When reinstalling i did a partition of the SSD as i planned to dual boot it. i am using vertex 3 will i need to reinstall?
 
If you manually created the partitions, they may not be aligned properly. This will severely impact performance. Check the alignment with AS-SSD (don't have to run it, just open the program and look for "OK - 1024K" or "BAD - 63K" or something similar on the top-left).
 
so why cant you format and patition your vortex3 ssd on the windows7 setup screen?

Do ssd'd need formatting like spin drives? I really havent done enough reading on this subject!
 
Eggman said:
so why cant you format and patition your vortex3 ssd on the windows7 setup screen?

Do ssd'd need formatting like spin drives? I really havent done enough reading on this subject!
Click to expand...
If you format manually the partition you create won't be 4k aligned properly, so you'll get reduced performance. If you let Windows create and format the partition(s) automatically, it will align them all correctly. It'll also put your boot files on a separate (usually 100 MiB) partition, which is a good idea anyway.
 
So I have a 120Gb drive that I want to partition into 2 60gb drives and install windows on one of them and games on the other.

Its a new drive so ive plugged it into my computer, changed to ahci, booted onto the windows7 disk. Ive then partitioned the drive and done a quick format on each partition with the auto format button on the screen where you pick where u want the windows installation to go. Then ive installed windows by choosing the partition and clicking next and its then created a further 100mb partition for the boot files.

Is this wrong? i.e. will I have reduced performance this way?
Should I "secure erase" it and reinstall windows?

Cheers
 
After doing some reading I think it will be fine, TRIM should clean the drive up for me and the manual format button on windows install seems to be the same as if you leave it unformatted and just press next and let the installation of windows do it automatically...

please tell me if im wrong!?
 
Last edited:
TRIM has nothing to do with partition alignment. Check if your partitions are aligned - if not, you'll get permanently reduced performance (regardless of TRIM) and you should re-align the partitions (there are various tool to do this, Google will help).
 
ok, so when I created the 60Gb partition I might of split a 4k page which messes up my writing. Get it - Ill check when I get home. Ta
 
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