Formatting SSD

[ski]

Just decided to make jump to SSD so I bought Corsair Force Series GT 240 gig along with a Biostar Sata 6 add on card so I can run SSD at 6 Sata speeds. It appears the SSD is not formatted so how do I format it? I have read that you do not format SSDs the same way as HDDs. I know I have to set AHCI in bios and then there is a number of other things to cancel like hibernation, indexing, etc. but did not find how to format before doing fresh install of Windows 7. Also learned that a fresh install is better then cloning although cloning would be so much easier. Didn't realize there was so much to do to set up SSD. Thanks for any advice to setting up SSD.

 

[Zap]

THREAD MOVED TO MORE APPROPRIATE AREA

1) SSD formats the same way as a hard drive. If you are installing a fresh copy of Windows on it, just let Windows take care of it. If it will be a secondary drive, just go into Computer Management to create a partition and then format it, just as if it were a HDD. Note that you will probably need a driver for the SATA controller if Windows does not see it.

2) AHCI in BIOS will only affect built-in ports.

3) Yes, fresh install is better than cloning. The reason is a matter of alining the partition. Cloning software usually doesn't get it right, but Windows 7 on a fresh install does just peachy.

4) Disabling Hibernation and Indexing is optional. People recommend that for better performance (and Hibernation takes up disk space). Neither is required.

tl:dr Treat an SSD as you would a HDD.

If you have any more questions or concerns, first go to this sticky and see if it answers anything.

 

[ski]

Thanks Zap. Good point about add-on card and AHCI. If card doesn't work somehow I will just use on SATA II until I get new board.

 

[Coup27]

The card should work. At worst you will have to install a driver at Windows installation stage which you can get from the Biostar website.

Couple of other points. Disable the scheduled disk defrag and also the defrag service from services.msc. Defragging murders SSDs and is totally unnecessary given their design.

Also you should disable prefetch and superfetch.

 

[ski]

Thanks. Will do.

 

[ski]

Well I installed the Corsair 240 gig SSD and like Zap said it was easy. Only problem is the Biostar SATA III add on card did not function in SATA III but would only perform at 1.5 gigs per second like SATA I. So right now I have it running at SATA II 3.0 gbs/sec. Wondering if it would be worth upgrading to X58 newer board with SATA III and USB 3.0? Don't know if I would see a lot of difference with SATA III but I'm not using all the speed of the Corsair 240 SSD either. My 980x at 4.4 performs well so I might just skip next Intel processor update. Any thoughts appreciated.

 

[LokutusofBorg]

Couple of other points. Disable the scheduled disk defrag and also the defrag service from services.msc. Defragging murders SSDs and is totally unnecessary given their design.

Also you should disable prefetch and superfetch.

You can safely ignore this bad advice (it has been debunked multiple times on this forum). Windows 7 knows how to handle SSDs... just let it do its thing.