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[Data]

This 7.8 WEI score was achieved on a SATA 2 motherboard, as the drive is SATA 3 a higher score might be achieved on a SATA 3 motherboard but the procedure remains the same.  

This topic is mainly aimed at computers that already have Windows 7 installed and the owner wants to replace the HDD with an SSD.  


So in as few words as possible and before I forget  

1. Back up all your work, as if you are going to re install windows 7.

2. Download the latest Firmware up-date tool from OCZ:
http://www.ocztechnology.com/ssd_tools/OCZ_Vertex_3,_Vertex_3_Max_IOPS,_Agility_3,_Solid_3,_RevoDrive_3_and_RevoDrive_3_X2/

3. Make a restore point in Win 7 (just in case)

4. Enabling AHCI, if it isn’t already.  
Check in the BIOS to see if its enabled, if it isn’t DO NOT enable it yet, just boot back into Windows, If it is enabled already then go to number 5.


   Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.
   Locate and then click the following registry subkey:

  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE / System / CurrentControlSet / Services / Msahci
 
   In the right pane, right click Start in the Name column, and then click Modify.
   In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.
   On the File menu, click Exit to close the Registry Editor.
 
After this, restart your computer, go to the BIOS and enable AHCI. When you log in to Windows again, you’ll notice the installation of drivers for AHCI. Another restart will be required to finish the driver installation.


 5. Turn off the PC and connect the SSD then boot into Win 7, now Run the OCZ Firmware up-date tool and up-date to the latest version. (This must be done with AHCI enabled)

6. Using the Windows 7 built in disk manager, make a partition on the new SSD for your new Windows install (DO NOT FORMAT IT YET), I made a 40 GIG partition leaving about 70 GIG free for the second partition.

7. Turn off the PC and disconnect all other drives, even any external, leaving just the SSD connected and a DVD drive for the Windows disk.  

8. Install Windows 7 onto the new 40 GIG partition  (or what ever size you made it), let windows choose all the formatting options for you, it knows the drive is SSD and will format it accordingly.

9. Once Windows is installed you can format the second partition, again let windows choose the formatting options.

10 Turn off the PC and connect your other drives, make sure to connect the old HDD to a higher number SATA port than the SSD, so if your SSD is on SATA port 1 put the HDD on SATA port 2 or above.




Post installation checks.

Once Windows is installed and running on the SSD you might want to check windows has detected the SSD and set some optimisation settings accordingly.  



TRIM
To check if windows has enabled TRIM (recommended for SSD drives) do the following.

Run command prompt in administrator mode and type in:
 
fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify

Press enter then you should see one of these:

DisableDeleteNotify = 1 (Windows TRIM commands are disabled)
DisableDeleteNotify = 0 (Windows TRIM commands are enabled)




Prefetch Parameters

Windows should have turned off Prefetcher and Superfetch (Old technology for HDD)

Navigate to the following registry,

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters

If the superfetch and prefetch features are disabled, their registry value should be 0, please check if EnablePrefetcher and EnableSuperfetch are both set to 0, if the aren’t then set them manually to 0.



Disk Defragmenter

SSD doesn’t need defragmenting nor should the drive be defragmented.

Navigate to Disk Defrag, if the SSD drive is shown in the list of drives then make sure the Scheduled defrag is turned off.  





 

[Freddy]

Thanks, I will bookmark that and print it out should the opportunity arise 

[DaveMorton]

Good info to have. I think that come the first of the year I'll remove the "current" Win 7 drive, and try following these instructions (with suitable modifications, of course, since I only have a 60GB drive), and see how it goes. I won't get into the 7's, or even out of the 4's (can't afford a better graphics card), but at least my SSD won't be sitting idle.

[Snowcrash]

I feel I have more work to do on my dad's machine. Hmmmm! 

[Data]

You could enable ACPI, steps 1 to-and-including 4, if it isn’t already, then see what is or isn’t enabled and then manually change the settings, sounds like a worthy challenge.

[Data]

Been running the SSD for 10 days now, have all my programs installed and the rig is back to where I want it, had no problems what so ever, all that worrying and concern seems to have been unnecessary but maybe that’s the SSD being a good one and the way I’ve setup the system using the method I did.

Making the 40 GIG partition seems to be working well too, running with 17 GIG free and that includes the page file which I have left on C: drive, apparently the best place to have it (performance wise).  

Have turned off hibernation, never use it, that gave me 4 GIG back.

Deleted all the backup pre service pack files using disk clean-up, recovered another 1 GIG.  

On the attached image the SSD is C: and D: drive.
C: is Windows and just a few programs like MSE that insist on being installed to C:.
D: holds games and programs.  

[DaveMorton]

Sweet, Data! It's great that everything seems to be working right from the start!

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