Moving to a SSD. Any words of caution from those who have?

Mugsy

Posts: 772   +203
Even though I'm still using a SATA-II motherboard with AM2+ Phenom X4 processor, I couldn't pass up Newegg's "One day only Black Friday deal" of a 120GB Corsair "Force GT" SSD for only $145 (after $30 rebate).

I currently have a 1TB HDD as my boot drive, and Win7 (64bit) now takes an agonizing 1:48 to fully boot (no viruses or adware. Things just have a way of getting bogged down after a year of steady use), which I'm hoping to (at least) cut in half with the new drive.

I've already decided my best course of action is to simply move my current HDD to my second SATA connector when I make the SSD my boot drive, install a fresh copy of Win7 to the new drive, then "relocate" (reinstall) my most infrequently used Program files to the old HDD.

It will certainly take some time, but I'm thinking doing it this way might be the fastest route to getting back up & running with nearly the same configuration as before with minimal muss/fuss.

Any advice from other Win7 users that have made the move to SSD? Thx.
 
A clean install of Windows is definitely a good idea. Since you're going with a 120GB drive I would load all programs on the system drive rather than splitting them across two drives. At this point Trim support should be a given (I'd still double check) but remember to enable AHCI since this is required for Trim to work.

I've redirected all the data folders (Documents, Videos, Music, Photos, etc.) to a traditional hard drive to simplify recovery in the event I need to reload Windows.
 
Apps.

I would load all programs on the system drive rather than splitting them across two drives.
...
I've redirected all the data folders (Documents, Videos, Music, Photos, etc.) to a traditional hard drive to simplify recovery in the event I need to reload Windows.
Thanks for the reply.

I've read the same thing about relocating the "My" folders to another drive. Is there a program, script or set of REG files to do this easily?

I've also read a recommendation for setting "Internet Explorer" to store all wasteful temporary cache files on the HDD rather than the SSD.... which is easy to set from IE's Settings. But I use Firefox and can find no such setting. The same Tips Guide suggested redirecting all Windows "Temp" folders to the HHD as well. Generally, anything that wastes space for short-term temp storage. But I can't help but wonder if there'd be a performance hit by doing that?

What apps do you find benefit most from being on the SSD? Another big question: reinstalling/reconfiguring all those apps after a fresh install? Any of them balk/crash/complain? Thx.
 
Relocating the default folders on Windows 7 is pretty straightforward, just right click on your user name in the start menu and select open. In this window you'll see all the default folders, right click on the ones you want to move and select the Location tab in properties. Should look like the following snapshot if you navigate to the right place:

DocProperties.jpg


Forgot to mention that defrag, indexing, prefetch and superfetch should be disabled for the system volume; beyond that you can tweak a host of other options but I no longer mess with these. There some temporary application specific folders that I do redirect such as Nero but that's on a case by case basis.

I've not encountered any issues installing software on an SSD, just loads a little quicker. Think you'll find that the main benefit of going SSD are faster boot times, better load times and just a much more responsive feel to the system.

When I first got started with SSD's there was this concern about wearing it out overnight, not something I worry about anymore :)
 
SSD Tweaks

just right click on your user name in the start menu and select open.
Thanks for the reply. My username does not appear on my Start Menu, but I found the info on getting to the same place here. The procedure was made more difficult :) by the fact I had disabled showing "Documents" on my Start Menu.

Forgot to mention that defrag, indexing, prefetch and superfetch should be disabled for the system volume; beyond that you can tweak a host of other options but I no longer mess with these. There some temporary application specific folders that I do redirect such as Nero but that's on a case by case basis.
I found info on how to alter those settings here, but I wasn't sure if they were even necessary any more. They seem to be more geared towards cutting down the number of "writes" to your SSD back when wearing out the Flash memory was more of an issue. But as you note, excessive writing is not really something to worry about anymore. So, is there any speed/performance gains to be made from tweaking fetch instructions? Thx again.

PS: Same link above has info on redirecting Firefox cache files using "about:config" commands.
 
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