[SSD] Updating vertex 3 FW from a freshly built computer

jackal32

Honorable
Oct 17, 2012
3
0
10,510
Hello guys, I've got myself a new computer after my 6y.o. computer broke up, the new rig had the following specs:

CPU: Intel core i5-3470 Ivy bridge 6M
MB: Asus P8B75-V
RAM: Kingston 8gb DDR3 1600 x 2
Display: Asus GTX660 DC2 2gb
SSD: Ocz vertex 3 120gb MLC plugged on sata3 port
HDD: Seagate 2TB Barracuda + 2 x 150gb from my old computer (plugged on sata2 port)
PSU: Antec HCG 620W 80+

The computer was fresh out of box, nothing had been installed yet, I plan to use vertex 3 as my boot drive (probably windows 7 home premium as OS)

I've read on the forum that the firmware of vertex 3 is quite buggy and require updating before the SSD could be used properly, and to update the FW the SSD couldn't be the boot drive.

So my questions are,
1. If I just use my old HDD as boot drive now (contains window XP 32bit as my old OS, yea I know it's old), could I download the updated FW from ocz and execute it under the winXP system? If I use my old HDD now, would it affect my future installation of windows 7 on the SSD?

2. Besides the conversion of the sata3 to AHCI (the MB only has 1 sata3 port), what other settings in the BIOS that I should be aware of?

3. Should I update the BIOS of my motherboard as well before installing the new OS?

4. I've heard that to prolong the shelf-life of the SSD we should disable superfetch, defrag, pagefile, and system restore, how do I disable it? is it a function in the windows 7? how would it affect my computer?

It's my first time buying a computer (the specs was recommended by others), and honestly I don't have much knowledge in this field, so any advice would be much appreciated.
 
Solution
Hi Jack,

If you have just the old Win-XP, I'd go ahead and install Win-7 using the Vertex 3 as the C: boot drive. You do need to set the BIOS SATA configuration to AHCI before installation, so it will go smoothly. Do a custom install, let Windows use all the unallocated space in a single partition on the SSD, and have no other HDD's connected until completed, the BIOS is updated, the SSD is updated, and all the Windows updates are done.

Don't use superfetch, & in my opinion, leave the pagefile and system restore points alone. Don't remove the pagefile, and sooner or later you will be glad you had several restore points. You can afterward if you want, move the pagefile to a separate HDD. Not really necessary. Windows will see the SSD...

John_VanKirk

Distinguished
Hi Jack,

If you have just the old Win-XP, I'd go ahead and install Win-7 using the Vertex 3 as the C: boot drive. You do need to set the BIOS SATA configuration to AHCI before installation, so it will go smoothly. Do a custom install, let Windows use all the unallocated space in a single partition on the SSD, and have no other HDD's connected until completed, the BIOS is updated, the SSD is updated, and all the Windows updates are done.

Don't use superfetch, & in my opinion, leave the pagefile and system restore points alone. Don't remove the pagefile, and sooner or later you will be glad you had several restore points. You can afterward if you want, move the pagefile to a separate HDD. Not really necessary. Windows will see the SSD and turn off defrag automatically.

Check the BIOS version on the MB or in SysInfo32, and if it's more than say 6 months old, or if more recent versions have features relating to SSD's or large HDD's, then consider flashing the BIOS once. Then only flash it if there is a problem.

Regarding the SSD, the best way in your case to update it is using the Linux small applet Ocz has on the website. You download it as an ISO file, burn it to a CD, then run it, and it will update the Vertex 3 SSD, even though it is your OS boot drive with the OS on it. It's running Linux temporarily as it updates the drive.

Lots of things to do to get a new computer running smoothly, but you will be amazed how fast your new SSD is!



 
Solution
You can load your windows on the SSD because according to OCZs forum page the firmware update can be done with windows loaded and it won't dirupt Windows. Even if it did do some sort of corruption as long as the firmware was successfully updated then you can always reload the OS, since the OS is new and you haven't loaded any personal data yet. The OCZ toolbox is what's used for the update.
As far as Super-fetch and pre-fetch and all those things, leave system restore alone and diable the others, the page file (virtual memory) can be set to a low amount because Windows will set the page file to match the ram amount and with 8gb you don't need a 8gb page file so you can set it to 1024 mb. The page file is hard drive space that is set aside by the OS to be used as virtual memory and that hard drive space is on drive C , so unless you want to move the page file to the secondary hard drive change it.
Updating the bios on the motherboard will depend on the bios that is shipped with the board. You go to the board makers web support site and look up your MB and the selection of available bios files and you find the one you have. Then looking at the next few files you can see what the files change for the MB and if you need any of them. If a file that is two or three spots above what you have and will change something on your board that is needed then you can load that bios file and you don't have to load all the ones in between
Having a SSD of 120gb is going to mean paying attention to what you are downloading and where it's downloading to. Unless it's absolutely neccessary you should download to the secondary drive , because the OS is on the SSD your computer will still be as fast if a program is loaded onto the secondary hard drive.