First SSD Installation - Questions!

[blakebee]

Hey Gang,

Just got my Mushkin Chronos 120G SSD in today and I'm about to install it (first SSD installation) -- wanted to double check on a few things just in case I'm missing something...

Mobo is a ASRock P67 Extreme 4 -- Ultimately, I want to boot Windows 7 from it and have it host my frequently played games n such.

Sooooooo, here's my game plan:

1.) Unplug my current 500G HDD, for OS installation purposes.
2.) Plug in my 120G SSD
3.) Go into BIOS, enable AHCI and boot priority to disk
4.) Clean install of Windows 7 Ultimate x64 bit
5.) Restart (after plugging in my old HDD), change boot priority to SSD first.

How's that sound? Anything I should check on, as in drivers, firmware, etc?

Also, what's an easy process/program for transferring my games, programs, etc. that I want to be hosted on the SSD?? Re-installation? or is there a better method?

Thank YOU!!

 

[rolli59]

Looks like a plan. I would reinstall at least no registry problems afterwards. Some useful info and tweaks http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/270102-32-useful-articles-part

 

[blakebee]

Alright... So, the installation went fairly successful. I made sure to unplug my old HDD prior to installing the SSD, but I had some problems upon plugging my 500G hdd back in. First, the BIOS failed to recognize it for the longest time BUT it would still show up within Windows 7! Finally, after playing around with various sata cords and ports, I got it to recognize it within the BIOS.

Hopefully someone familiar with the ASRock mobo's and BIOS will stumble upon this -- I've beenhaving some complications with booting from my HDD now -- as in it WON'T HAPPEN lol

To start, when I'm looking at the boot priority slots and click the drop down menu, ONLY the optical drive and my Mushkin 120g SSD show up. To even become aware that my HDD is an option, I have to go into a folder called something like "Hard Drive BBS Priority" which is right under the boot priority slots. Then, there's two "Boot Options"; In order to boot from my 500G, I change the the first option to my 500g (naturally) -- then back out to the boot priorities. Now the Mushkin isn't an option, just my Seagate 500g and optical drive, no big deal I guess.... But, last night after setting everything up, when I wanted to boot to my HDD (after making the above changes) it would BSOD, back to UEFI screen, I'd play around with the boot options again (sometimes even switching SATA controller back to IDE) and then it would finally boot into my HDD.

Since last night, I went in and tweaked some settings within Windows 7 to optimize my SSD (using the Tom's hardware tweaking article)... Now, no matter what, I can't seem to boot from my 500G hdd. I've tried F11 > selecting HDD > and it still boots SSD; i've tried BIOS boot priority 10 times, still SSD; I've unplugged my SSD, so it only recognized my HDD and it hits me with "Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot media in a selected Boot device and press a key"!! I'm still able to view and browse all my HDD data once I'm safe on the OS of my SSD -- which leads me to a whole new set of questions and confusion lol, but I'll save that for another post in a bit.

Any info would be GREATLY appreciated gang Thank you.

SYSTEM SPECS:
ASRock p67 Extreme 4
i5 2500k @ 3.3 ghz - OC'd to 4ghz
Sapphire Radeon HD 6870
8g Corsair Vengeance @ 1600mhz
Antec EarthWatts 750W
Seagate 500GB @ 7200rpm
Mushkin Enhanced Chronos 120gb SSD

 

[rolli59]

You using the same win 7 install on both drives?

 

[blakebee]

Nope, totally different... Both of them were Windows 7 Ultimate x64, but different copies.

 

[blakebee]

Overall, I'm a little confused on how to interface between the SSD and HDD...

In my head, prior to installing the SSD, I viewed it as one and the same system, just with two "storage units" -- the SSD hosting my OS and frequent apps (which it does/will) and the HDD having everything else.

But it seems like my HDD isn't as easily accessible as I thought -- for instance, iTunes, CPUID, HWMonitor, pretty much every game all hit me with various messages and errors. Seems like they're all still localized to that copy of W7 and the drive itself.

Games give me errors like "The program can't start because d3dx9_43.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem." and iTunes says something along the lines of support was not found. Basically everything is not too accessible...

I'm sure I'm overlooking some process; my partitioning/disk management acumen isn't quite "up to speed" lol.

The help is greatly appreciated!

 

[rolli59]

Yep you will have to reinstall all of those with the new install on the SSD (it needs those in the registry to function). They can go back on the drive they are on!

 

[blakebee]

Ahhhhhhhhh... Thanks for the responses, y'all -- makes much more sense now.

So what do you think my best course of action from here is??

Back up my old HDD, wipe it clean, re-install the same copy of Windows 7 and THEN it'll be able to function like I originally expected? Only real things I care to keep are my movies, music and pics -- re-installing the games is no biggie.

BUT what about booting to my HDD! Won't even let me atm... I could last night, did it several times, but for whatever reason (possibly the various tweaks to optimize my SSD) I can't now.

 

[blakebee]

Best answer selected by blakebee.

 

[Soda-88]

why would you want to reinstall windows on hdd again? makes no sense

general rule of thumb with reinstalls is as follows:
1) apps should be reinstalled without thinking too much about it
2) games, although might not work on a reinstall (usually the case with older games) will work once you reinstall all the runtime libraries (such as directx found on installation medium of the game that won't run, or even within the game folder on your hdd - most often within folder called Redist; so when for example your cod:mw3 gives you directx error, just drop in the dvd and open it, inside is the folder called Redist, and inside that is folder called directx; once you get there, you'll see bunch of compressed files and an executable called dxsetup.exe which you run and let it install all the missing libs)

 

[Mousemonkey]

[:thegreatgrapeape:7]