Installing an SSD

Oblivion

I have decided to replace the Sata hard drive in my 6 year old Dell M1530 laptop with a Samsung Evo SSD.


Because the laptop originally came with Vista I purchased a Windows 7 Ultimate upgrade disc so it's now running W7 Ultimate 32 bit. It would appear that this disc can be used to do a fresh install and I think this time I will probably use the 64 bit disc (my processor supports it).


Now a question before I embark on this little project. My existing hard drive has a Recovery Partition of 10GB. I would like the new SSD to also have a Recovery Partition. Will this be automatically created by the Windows installation process, or do I have to Partition the drive first and somehow (I haven't a clue how) create it myself?

debitcardmayhem

If your recovery partition is already there it will be 32 bit so no good

Stooby2

Oblivion wrote:

It would appear that this disc can be used to do a fresh install and I think this time I will probably use the 64 bit disc (my processor supports it).

Whilst the disc will support a fresh install, the licence key won't as it's an upgrade disc. Microsoft don't make this clear and it's b****y stupid that the disc will allow it - even to the step of formatting the Vista partition. When you try to activate Windows 7 it will show an invalid licence key. (And they still allowed it happen with the Win 7 to Win 8 upgrade discs - madness).

However, there is a work around - if you Google "re-arm Windows 7 upgrade" there are various steps you need to take to get it to work properly with the key you've got.

Oblivion

debitcardmayhem wrote: »

If your recovery partition is already there it will be 32 bit so no good

Sorry, didn't really understand that response ... the SSD will be completely new and unpartitioned out of the box.

Actually, I've abandoned the idea of installing 64 bit W7 anyway and will install 32 bit instead as the paid for software I bought with the laptop, e.g. Office 2007 is only 32 bit. Also the laptop only has 4GB RAM so no huge advantage in 64bit anyway.

Right, so back to the original question ... will the W7 install disc automatically create a Recovery Partition?

debitcardmayhem

What I probably would do is install your win 7 on there first and then update it, and install any software (necessary ones only) . Then create a system image on your old disc (in the caddy you have ) Then if you need to recover use your dvd and that image. Probably take a copy of the image to dvds too or to another spare external/nas etc

debitcardmayhem

Oblivion wrote: »

Sorry, didn't really understand that response ... the SSD will be completely new and unpartitioned out of the box.

Actually, I've abandoned the idea of installing 64 bit W7 anyway and will install 32 bit instead as the paid for software I bought with the laptop, e.g. Office 2007 is only 32 bit. Also the laptop only has 4GB RAM so no huge advantage in 64bit anyway.

Right, so back to the original question ... will the W7 install disc automatically create a Recovery Partition?

No , plus the recovery partition is probably for Vista. Don't forget to download the wireless/network drivers first

Mankysteve

debitcardmayhem wrote: »

No , plus the recovery partition is probably for Vista. Don't forget to download the wireless/network drivers first

Recovery partitions are an OEM thing instead if giving you a full windows disk. If you install a new partition using a windows disk you won't get that partition.

One way would be to plug both new drive and old drive into a PC and clone the old drive onto the new one.

Oblivion

Mankysteve wrote: »

Recovery partitions are an OEM thing instead if giving you a full windows disk. If you install a new partition using a windows disk you won't get that partition.

One way would be to plug both new drive and old drive into a PC and clone the old drive onto the new one.

Ah, ok so no recovery partition will result from a clean install. I'm ok with that.
I don't want to clone the old drive onto the new because I've never really been happy with the Vista to 7 upgrade that resulted ... I think it may have left some Vista garbage behind. That is why I'm going for a fresh install on a fresh disc.

Oblivion

Stooby2 wrote: »

Whilst the disc will support a fresh install, the licence key won't as it's an upgrade disc. Microsoft don't make this clear and it's b****y stupid that the disc will allow it - even to the step of formatting the Vista partition. When you try to activate Windows 7 it will show an invalid licence key. (And they still allowed it happen with the Win 7 to Win 8 upgrade discs - madness).

However, there is a work around - if you Google "re-arm Windows 7 upgrade" there are various steps you need to take to get it to work properly with the key you've got.

Top tip, thanks Stooby. I've bookmarked an excellent article on that thanks to you. If it doesn't work first time, I'll probably try the registry hack first and if that fails then I'll go for the 'upgrade' as a second pass.

cookie365

Oblivion wrote: »

Sorry, didn't really understand that response ... the SSD will be completely new and unpartitioned out of the box.

Actually, I've abandoned the idea of installing 64 bit W7 anyway and will install 32 bit instead as the paid for software I bought with the laptop, e.g. Office 2007 is only 32 bit. Also the laptop only has 4GB RAM so no huge advantage in 64bit anyway.

Right, so back to the original question ... will the W7 install disc automatically create a Recovery Partition?

Office 2010-32 runs fine on W7-64 (in fact its the recommended way to install) so I'd have thought there'd be no problem installing Office 2007-32.

bluesnake

Oblivion wrote: »

Also the laptop only has 4GB RAM so no huge advantage in 64bit anyway.

Not strictly true in all cases. When a 32 bit processor handles a more than a 32 bit string, it gobbles multiple 32 bit chunks of data, and in processing and saving these individual chunks takes time, so not only will 64 bit give you more addressable memory access, but a well written program should be a good bit faster.


Also not sure if 7 fully supports ssd by default without tinkering a bit, due to ssd being newer than 7. http://www.maketecheasier.com/12-things-you-must-do-when-running-a-solid-state-drive-in-windows-7/

As many people have found, a recovery partition is often useless when the drive fails. Do a popper backup onto another disk.