Re-installing Win7 on SSD... format?

[jetpack]

I'd like to reinstall my Win7 OS that's currently running on my recent intel SSD.

Mostly because I swapped out a faulty Gigabyte motherboard and replaced it with an Asus but am now left with some of the old Gigabyte drivers/software that won't uninstall cleanly. I imagine I could manually delete everything or run some utility that might figure out how to remove all traces of it but I don't mind doing a fresh install as this is still a pretty new build that doesn't have all that much on it yet.

I'm wondering though, during the re-install should I reformat the drive and what affect will this have on my SSD lifetime/performance if any?

Thanks!

 

[sminlal]

I would reformat the drive during the install by deleting all of the existing partitions and then recreating them. If you do this with the Windows 7 install disk then it should issue TRIM commands to the drive to release all the space on the SSD, which is a good thing performance-wise.

Remember to do the install with no other drives connected to the system so that you don't end up with the "Recovery" partition (which is the boot partition) on another drive (unless you actually want this).

 

[foscooter]

You could use the "HDDErase" utility to wipe the drive before re-install. I don' tlike it personally, too complicated to set up...

Windows format should be fine (I did it) during install. It does a quick format, which is what you want for a SSD.

And follow what sminlal said, too.

 

[jetpack]

Ok, thanks guys. I will keep these pointers in mind during my re-install.