Booting Windows 7 on SSD?

[Guest]

So, basicly I'm going to purchase a SSD. I want this SSD to be the C:\ disk and I also want my computer to boot on it. How do I do this?

Is it possible to just insert the windows disk and make it remove the files that was on the previous disk, then add them to the new one?

Also: will there be any damage to the software on the computer if I make my C:\ a D:\ ?

Thanks.

 

[warezme]

So, basicly I'm going to purchase a SSD. I want this SSD to be the C:\ disk and I also want my computer to boot on it. How do I do this?

Is it possible to just insert the windows disk and make it remove the files that was on the previous disk, then add them to the new one?

Also: will there be any damage to the software on the computer if I make my C:\ a D:\ ?

Thanks.

This is not a problem. Just make sure to unplug your old C: drive before installing Windows 7 to your new SSD or Windows 7 will look for and find your old installation and copy the MBR to your old drive and possibly system files. When Win7 is done just reconnect your old drive and it becomes D: with all your old files intact. Actually it may become drive E: because of you optical drive so you may end up doing some drive shuffling to get it set to D:.

 

[Guest]

So, what about the winows files that are allready on the C: drive? Should I just keep them in case something goes wrong some time?

Also: What should be installed on the SSD for the fastest computer experience?

 

[Zenthar]

If you feel lazy, you can also just clone the old HDD to your SSD, everything will work (then you can tweak some stuff).

 

[Guest]

I'm just going to buy a 60GB harddrive most likely. What should I prioritize?

 

[JackNaylorPE]

1. Unplug your HD
2. Install the SSD
3. Install Windoze
4. Plug HD back in
5. Delete Windows off HD or just leave it there .... unplug the SSD and it should return to booting from HD.

 

[warezme]

So, what about the winows files that are allready on the C: drive? Should I just keep them in case something goes wrong some time?

Also: What should be installed on the SSD for the fastest computer experience?

You can, it's up to you if you want to leave your old HD system files intact. This is why you want that drive disconnected when you do your new SSD install.

Your Win7 OS is usually all you need and any programs you want accelerated by the SSD quickness make sure they are installed to drive C:.

Depending on the size of your SSD you may want to be careful with that as by default most programs get installed to drive C: and if you have a small SSD you could run into problems of space quickly. You can always do custom installs and tell your software to install to your D: drive just make sure you specify your folder location or it may drop them into your prior program folder and muck things up if you are keeping your old folder structure.

To optimize your SSD make sure to disable, file scanning, disk defrag options and windows search as the less read/writes to the SSD the better. There is some good info on the web on optimizing your SSD on windows7 just google.

 

[cadder]

If you want to retain programs that were already installed on your C: drive, then you will have to clone that drive to the new SSD, the remove that drive and install the SSD.

If you want to keep the original drive as D:, then remove it, install the SSD, install Windows onto the SSD from scratch, then re-install the second hard drive. You may have to tell the bios which hard drive to boot from and then set the second hard drive to not be the active boot drive through drive manager.

 

[Tim the Enchanter]

So let's say you want to keep Windows 7 on your HDD as well as booting from the SSD... for safety sake in case your SDD goes bad you could still boot from the HDD with a slight BIOS change.

In that case, what happens when Windows updates are done? You know, like security updates, etc. Are the updates written to both drives?

Thx in advance!

Tim

 

[Zenthar]

If you want to keep the possibility of booting from the HDD, I would say just create an empty partition large enough for your OS on your HDD, but don't use it, then make regular backups. If the SSD ever dies, you just restore the backup to the empty partition, fix the MBR (all can be done with the installation disk) and you are probably good to go.