Tweakboy just bought a SSD. Alert!

[tweakboy]

Finally after 4 years of not being able to buy SSD due to other payments,, very little money for rig.

Crucial M4 512GB for 399.99 to the door.

I will report next week on how things go for me.

Im going to disconn all hd's and only leave M4 ,,,,, and I want to put my image to that drive. But this drive is 512K sector I dont know what SSD is......

Its my windows image on external with 512k ,,,,,,, Will I run into problems, or I should be good to go, once windows image is on the ssd , connect all drives back and put that as boot first device,,, and enjoy ride!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[KingFatty]

It just feels good to do a fresh install, like taking a shower and washing away all your concerns and coming out fresh and clean. Putting an image on the drive is like going from that clean showered state and then putting on your old clothes without washing them.

 

[Shmee]

grats tweakboy

 

[Burner27]

Ensure you have AT LEAST the 0309 FW installed on it. If not go all the way to 000F. It *should* come with 0309 installed on it already. Just check the label.

 

[tweakboy]

Thx shms thanks to all. thx burner27 thx all,,,,,,,

Let the SSD come next weeek.

What is this align tool ,

 

[Charlie98]

If you want to image your current drive, use Acronis; it accomodates different sector sizes.

I would take King Fatty's advice... clean install. I'll be upgrading my 60GB SSD soon, and I plan on a clean W7 install.

 

[bryanW1995]

Clean install for sure. As others stated, update the firmware. Congrats, welcome to the club!

 

[Dark Shroud]

Congrats, I hope to buy a 512GB SSD by Christmas for use as a gaming drive.

Acronis is worth it, my Samsung 830 128GB came with Norton Ghost and it was useless. I used to love that software 5 years ago.

Fresh Install is the way to go to make sure everything aligns properly. I had to redo my installs a second time because an error on my part.

 

[tweakboy]

Well Im going to use Windows Image Backup

on external,,, insert repair CD and place the image on the SSD. My question is does it matter if sector is 512k or 4096kb ? Thanks again for replies guys.......... I have soo much stuff on my rig bunch of Audio stuff for my studio. ,, all apps will fit so will data.

Ill make my hard drives backup or something else maybe..

 

[E6700]

you gonna love it.

 

[Blain]

Finally after 4 years of not being able to buy SSD due to other payments,, very little money for rig.

Crucial M4 512GB for 399.99 to the door.

I will report next week on how things go for me.

We will expect exhaustive benchmarking test results.

 

[Old Hippie]

We will expect exhaustive benchmarking test results.

Who's gonna believe them?

 

[bbhaag]

Congrats man. I just switched to a Plextor ssd and I cant believe the difference.
Check this thread out on the Overclock forums. It has some great info on setting up and maintaining your ssd.
http://www.overclock.net/t/1156654/seans-windows-7-install-optimization-guide-for-ssds-hdds

 

[tweakboy]

If you want to image your current drive, use Acronis; it accomodates different sector sizes.

I would take King Fatty's advice... clean install. I'll be upgrading my 60GB SSD soon, and I plan on a clean W7 install.

Its just hard for me cuz this is my DAW, soo many installed plugins and synths .... Im not doing it until I upgarde my COMP , which is going fine since nov 2007.

just a video upgrade. everything works,, Tt pump everything...

What I can do is convert this 512 up to 4096kb, then throw the image at it.. hmmmmmmmm its coming Thursday... I will check the firmware hope its latest and I dont have to do a thing.

 

[mv2devnull]

What I can do is convert this 512 up to 4096kb

What exactly do you have as "512"?

 

[Makaveli]

Congrats welcome to the best improvement to computers since we got dual core cpu's.

 

[tweakboy]

Sorry 512 ,,,,,,,,the image is going to be 512k on ssd. Is there a problem there or should sector size be 4096kb

 

[mv2devnull]

The problem might be obvious to professional psychics, but you should read first. This is very helpful too.

 

[bbhaag]

Sorry 512 ,,,,,,,,the image is going to be 512k on ssd. Is there a problem there or should sector size be 4096kb

Why 4096 as partition offset?
SSDs: It is best to use 4K (4096) alignment (partition offset) over the default 1K (1024) because of how SSD's perform their read/write operations. SSDs are erased in 4K blocks.

 

[tweakboy]

Ensure you have AT LEAST the 0309 FW installed on it. If not go all the way to 000F. It *should* come with 0309 installed on it already. Just check the label.

Thank you burner27 once again.. Ok so if I see its a 0309. What I connect drive power and sata and boot with the repair cd and put my image on the drive which is 512 cluster size

 

[mv2devnull]

What I connect drive power and sata and boot with the repair cd and put my image on the drive which is 512 cluster size

Is that a statement or a question? If it is a question, what do you ask? What do you mean by "cluster size"? Do you refer to the "image" or the "drive" with the "cluster size"?

 

[tweakboy]

The drives clusters I changed it from 4096 to 512 on both of my F4 single platter

Now I cant change it back to 4096. I have paragon suite. It says to reboot and when you come back it will continue with process. There is no process happening ?

 

[Batmeat]

The drives clusters I changed it from 4096 to 512 on both of my F4 single platter

Now I cant change it back to 4096. I have paragon suite. It says to reboot and when you come back it will continue with process. There is no process happening ?

What do you mean? did the process even start up after the reboot? Did it show you the screen where the process starts, but then hang? Did it just boot straight to Windows? My advice to restart the machine again. I like and use Paragon for mall my drive partitioning needs cause Partitioin Magic got dropped a long time ago. I've had it hang as well. I haven't ever had the issue with an SSD though.

Other advice, in my experience with Win 7 and SSD's is that it doesn't always optimize itself for SSD use. Use google and search for Windows 7 SSD optimizations. I know that the forums on OCZ and Corsair site have good guides there. Two things that come to mind are disk defrag and superfetch.

 

[mv2devnull]

The drives clusters I changed it from 4096 to 512 on both of my F4 single platter

What are "drives clusters"? Explain them to us.

 

[nk215]

The smallest unit of space in a HD is called a sector which is usually consists of 512 bytes.

To better manage these sectors, sectors are combined into group call clusters or allocation units.

Every file must be stored on an integer number of cluster. For example, if your cluster is 4096 bytes and the file is 4097 bytes, the file takes up 2 cluster and the remaining space on the second cluster is wasted.

SSD write/read data in 4096 byte chunks. So it makes sens to make have a cluster size equal to a multiple of 4096. A larger cluster just results in more waste space.