SSD without system tweaking?

[bryn]

I'm considering putting SSDs into 2 older PCs (an Athlon 64 with XP and an i7 with Windows 7) and I don't want to do a complete Windows reinstall in either case, but just use something like the Corsair Transfer kit to move the files over, plug in and go. I know I won't get the super fast performance improvement that you overclockers enthusiasts aim for, but will I still get a reasonable performance boost (especially in things like system boot up time)?

I realise also that I won't be able to enable AHCI - if I have understood correctly this has to be done before Windows is installed. I'm not sure how much difference this will make in my case.

Thanks for any advice.

-
Bryn

 

[DragonQ]

You can enable AHCI after Windows is installed but you have to change a registry key first.

In terms of performance, you'll need to make sure your partitions are aligned to 4k boundaries. There are many pieces of software to do this, although sadly most are not free. Once you've done this and enabled AHCI, the Windows 7 PC will be sorted.

The XP machine, however, will get slower over time because you won't have TRIM. Not much you can do about that unless the SSD you're thinking of using has a manual TRIM utility that you can run every shutdown or something.