New SSD. need to reformat the old?

[inerax]

Hello everyone. I am getting a new SSD sometime this week.

I currently have dual 1TB WD black carver drives. They are not in any raid setup.

I am running windows off one of them and the other is just extra space.

Am I going to need to reformat that drive or can I install windows into the SSD and set bios to boot from that drive?

Will it be better to reformat the drive? Any issues by not reformatting the drive?

Thanks for the help and your time!

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hello there,

Congrats on getting a really fast drive! They are wonderful.

The best way to set up the SSD, is to use the Custom Install Mode, and install Win-7 from the installation DVD. You don't need to format the SSD, as Windows will do that for you. Don't have any other HDD connected to your computer temporarily, until you complete the installation. That way the system reserved partition and boot blocks will be placed optionally on the drive. Have to initially set the DVD as the first boot for installation, then when complete, reset it back to the SSD in the BIOS. I'd also place the SSD on the first SATA port connected to the Intel PCH, usually SATA_0 or possibly SATA_1 depending on the MB.

What size SSD will you have?

As a second best way of installing Win-7 on the SSD, would be to clone over your system drive to it. However you would have to shrink the 1TB partition down to the SSD size or smaller, to make that work. Possible, just trickier.

If you can endure a new clean install, you will for sure have a better setup down the road.

When the install is done, and working properly, you can connect up your backup drive to a higher numbered SATA port. And after testing a few days, then you can delete the older Win-7 installation on the WD 1 TB HDD, to use for more data storage.

 

[inerax]

Hello there,

Congrats on getting a really fast drive! They are wonderful.

The best way to set up the SSD, is to use the Custom Install Mode, and install Win-7 from the installation DVD. You don't need to format the SSD, as Windows will do that for you. Don't have any other HDD connected to your computer temporarily, until you complete the installation. That way the system reserved partition and boot blocks will be placed optionally on the drive. Have to initially set the DVD as the first boot for installation, then when complete, reset it back to the SSD in the BIOS. I'd also place the SSD on the first SATA port connected to the Intel PCH, usually SATA_0 or possibly SATA_1 depending on the MB.

What size SSD will you have?

As a second best way of installing Win-7 on the SSD, would be to clone over your system drive to it. However you would have to shrink the 1TB partition down to the SSD size or smaller, to make that work. Possible, just trickier.

If you can endure a new clean install, you will for sure have a better setup down the road.

When the install is done, and working properly, you can connect up your backup drive to a higher numbered SATA port. And after testing a few days, then you can delete the older Win-7 installation on the WD 1 TB HDD, to use for more data storage.

Thanks for all the info! I am getting a 240GB SSD.

I think I will go with a new install just to ensure it is a clean setup.

Thanks again for all the help!

 

[John_VanKirk]

Ideal size, and big enough to hold most of your data files.
I'd use the one WD HDD for data storage, like images, videos, music, etc if you need additional space.

The second WD HDD, you could use as a backup drive, and set up the Win-7 BackUp and Restore Applet to Image, then incrementally back your SSD on a schedule. Or you could shrink your WD Data HDD Partition down to say 500GB, and create a second Primary partition on it for the BackUp.

Either way you are going to really enjoy speed of the new SSD.

 

[inerax]

Best answer selected by inerax.