SSD Question

Archibald0

Archibald0

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Have windows 7 on intel X-25 80g at the moment
Bought new motherboard, cpu and graphics card and will be fitting once they get delivered
Now before I had an ssd I would have formatted the hard drive and installed everything fresh so there were no old drivers hiding away

But as I do have an SSD whats the best way to go about this. Is it best to format and install everything again
or when installing the new parts and the software for them will TRIM manage to delete all the old motherboard drivers etc as they are not being used?
 
Fire Wizard said:
From a performance perspective, if you have a solid state drive which has a firmware which supports TRIM, using the format option in Windows 7 setup process will actually TRIM your solid state drive and return it back to near new performance as stated on this page here from the The SSD Improv: Intel & Indilinx get TRIM, Kingston Brings Intel Down to $115 article by Anandtech. So, there isn't any need to perform a Secure Erase using HDDErase to restore your solid state drive back to it's peak performance.

Regarding the security side of things, if you are concerned about your data, then using the format command isn't going to get rid of all of the data on the disk. The command that will delete the contents of your disk though by specifying each and every sector on the disk to zero is the "clean all" command via Diskpart. Once you have entered the Windows 7 setup process, if you bring up a command prompt by pressing Shift + F10 and then enter the following commands:

  • Diskpart
  • List disk
  • Select Disk (Insert disk number here)
  • Clean all
However, there isn't really any need for the above when you can easily use HDDErase and the Secure Erase command which seems the most effective way of destroying the data on a hard drive: How to REALLY erase a hard drive. It will also restore your solid state drive back to it's peak performance too. If you haven't currently got a DOS USB stick, which you need to use HDDErase, simply follow the instructions from this page here.
Click to expand...

When you format the drive during the windows installation, it only removes the data on the SSD. You will not need to reinstall the new TRIM enabled firmware prior to reinstalling windows, which I encourage you to do to fully remove any old drivers.
 
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