Fitting an SSD

ecc83

Well-known member
Hope to do this in the next day or so.
I have an Asus home build that I use in my living room for printer and other duties. The incumbent 950 drive has started groaning and I have bought a 240G Crucial BX200 SSD to replace it.

Since there is far more than 240G on the old drive I cannot simply clone it so I shall simply (ha!) install W7 on the new drive. The old drive I shall re connect and sort/copy data from or, if that causes issues, put it in a USB 3.0 caddy. Yes, I COULD clean off the data from the 950G drive and then clone but tis a lot of work!

Any ideas, hints, questions, tests anyone wants or has, please shoot.

Dave.
 

I am obliged DM but I am a bit of a old klutz with software whereas I have re installed XP many times and W7 a couple. I would also like THE cleanest OS version I can get on the new drive.

My biggest dread is getting the "soundcard" up and running again. It is an ESI 1010e and ALWAYS dicks about when installing the drivers. Once I crack it it remains stable forever but I always forget how I got there!

Cheers again,
Davw.
 
Well it's in! No trouble at all installing W7/64. The whole process seemed vey quick, faster than my last W7 setup (maybe faster than XP pro? ) but now it is done I cannot, hand on heart, say the SSD has made much difference to the PC? Boot time seems about the same but shut down certainly seems quicker.

I do have some issues for the PC gurus to contemplate..

1) The PC does not go into the protracted update mode that I recall from other OS installs. I "tell" W7 to search for updates but is just sits and scans forever and never finds any. By contrast my other W7 desktop is still finding updates (22 the other day) and so is this 6yr old HP laptop.
Is there a way to FORCE W7 to find updtaes? This might impinge on my next problem...

I have a USB 3.0 PCIe card and it is no longer working. W7 tells me the best driver is installed but still no go. I have downloaded and run the manctrs driver, still no joy. I seem to think I had this problem with USB 3 and W7 before?

Finally, I have fitted the old hard drive back in and it works fine, no longer growls but I would like to stop it spinning until and unless I need to read from it. I can do this with my NAS drive, it sleeps after 10mins non use. I want something similar for this internal drive if possible.

So, bottom line? SSD is silent, cool and MAYBE a bit faster. Recommended IF doing an upgrade/new build.

Dave.
 
Things have moved on/improved.
Did I mention that the newly loaded OS would not find updates? Well a few days (at ten to bloody midnight!) it did!
205 of 'em. After sorting Hamsteads etc it had still only done 1/2 way so I left the PC running and pitted.

06:30 next day it took all of brekky prep' and consumption to load and install updates, rebooted a couple of times but the USB 3.0 PCIe card was STILL not working. I downloaded the drivers once again and ran them. Bazinga! It has found the card!

I cannot say, hand on heart, that the SSD has made a massive difference. The PC always booted up pretty promptly and maybe it IS even a little faster? Shuts down perhaps a little quicker too?

But I have a silent system drive now and one that consumes much less power. My last improvement is to replace the case fan for something quieter. I bought a nice "BQuiet" 80mm jobbie from Maplin a year ago. Yesterday the store had F'ALL in 80mm save a bog S thing for a fiver that I doubt would be any quieter than the incumbent? Maplin are getting 'king useless for the DIYer. The sales guy said 80mm fans were no longer as popular as peeps were going for bigger cases but I suspect he was shitting me.

SO! Local store...Amazon will win again!

Dave.
 
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