Getting Ready to go SSD

[Pinecone-sw]

1) Which one? I am looking at the Crucial M4 and Samsung 830, with a slight look at the Intel 520. All in the 120GB range.

My current system has 2x 150GB Raptors in a RAID 1 for OS and programs. 4x Hitachi 1TB drives in RAID 10 for data.

2) Is it worth getting the drive with the Transfer kit, or just get the latest Ghost? Crucial seems to want about $30 for the transfer kit.

3) How to go from my RAID setup to the SSD. I turn off the RAID and disconnect one drive, will the system still work to put the SSD on the other channel and clone? Or should I use another method.

4) Anything else I should need to know?

Thanks.

 

[Zap]

1) They are all decent drives and perform close to one another, so I would just get the cheaper one. Alternately, check out the Plextor M3 series. It is near identical (same controller) as the Crucial M4 (model name is coincidence) and has a 5 year warranty to go with low prices.

2) You want to clone the Windows install from your RAIDed drives to the SSD? I personally would just reinstall. Otherwise, you'll need something that can back up a RAID partition. Are you using Intel RAID or a 3rd party controller?

3) You can have a drive hooked up to a RAID controller without being part of the array.

4) I personally would rather just install Windows fresh.

 

[KentState]

I'm very curious about which of those three drives is the best for the price. The M4 is currently $164 and the Plextor is $189 on both Amazon and Newegg. My biggest concern is which manufacturer is easier to deal with down the road. Three years is long enough for a warranty as that is my typical upgrade cycle.

I will be doing a fresh install as my Vertex finally died on me.

 

[exdeath]

If your RAID partition isn't aligned right for SSD, you'll need partition management/backup software that can realign.

First clean up the disk, temp files, Windows Update caches, service pack uninstall backups, restore points, blah blah blah, make sure chkdsk /f is clean, and begin setting the current environment as if you had an SSD already. Finally do a defrag to speed up the next step that you may have to do more than once. Install any vendor software for the SSD and run the Windows tweaks to prepare the environment, eg disable defrag, prefetch, auto boot optimize, hibernate, etc. Most important, if you are changing your controller config (disabling RAID, going from IDE to AHCI, etc) make sure you install the drivers for it now or you will get unmountable boot volume.

When it's all set and ready to go just like you want it on your SSD, run something like Paragon to align the partition on your disks. Start partition at align=1024 (K) is great as it's divisible by any possible conceivable power of 2 block and page size of any SSD out there. You can skip this step if the imaging software is able to realign on the fly. Just use diskpart to verify that it did what it was supposed to and it's aligned.

And finally make a image with a Ghost/Acronis tool. While you wait for your SSD to arrive, you can image a spare single HDD with your partition backup for final testing, and boot from it via BIOS boot device hotkey to make sure you can boot in AHCI mode with proper drivers, etc if your non RAID ports require a non RAID driver. You should be able to boot to Windows, log in, with the test drive being C: and your RAID being D. Boot back to your RAID, make changes if needed, redo the partition backup, etc. until all you need is your SSD.

Doing this before hand gives you some final quality time with your loyal RAID and saves your SSD from 100s of GB of pointless wasteful rewrites on the first night. Not really a wear and tear concern so much as writing over the capacity right away and putting the garbage collection into overtime (even with Win7, doubtful that the partition copying over and over is sending TRIM for the 100s of GB etc).

Then when your SSD arrives, you're up in mere minutes with a SATA to SATA image restore from your RAID to SSD and reboot with the new boot device.

Then put the image you used when it's all done on an external as backup in case you experience failures with the SSD in the first couple weeks/months of use and update it periodically. And be sure to supplement it with regular daily/weekly incremental/differential backups.

Finally, break the RAID and wipe the drives or whatever you plan to do with them.

The transfer kits will be terrible if they are USB 2.0 cables.

 

[capeconsultant]

Nicely said EXDEATH! There is a whole lot of good info in your post.

 

[jobz]

After migrating to ssd, I think all you need to do is to rerun Windows Experience Index to make sure Windows recognises it is now running on a ssd, if it has not already done so. In which case, Windows will tweak itself to disable defrag, etc.

 

[exdeath]

Nicely said EXDEATH! There is a whole lot of good info in your post.

Yeah, useful info for a change instead of just hating and nerd raging on HDDs

 

[Shmee]

welcome to the forums! And I would also recommend a fresh install.

 

[Dadofamunky]

I'd go for the M4 over Plextor 10 times out of 10. Especially given the Newegg prices. Crucial M4 is a proven commodity with tons of users giving it a consensus thumbs up. Why pay more for something that isn't the consensus choice? Go for the M4. you will never look back.

 

[Pinecone-sw]

I managed to get the M4 at $160 with transfer kit. They had them on sale, I put one in my cart, to think about, and 20 minutes later, it wasn't there, and was listed out of stock. I came home from wokr, jsut figured I would check again, and it was in stock, so I ordered.

The only issue with a reinstall is that I have to migrate all my program info, again (did the Win XP to Win 7 last summer).

If I turn off the RAID for those two drives, will I be able to run one as a single drive, without losing data?

Thanks for the help. I will need to take a bit to read and ponder exdeath's post, but thanks.

 

[KingFatty]

I'd go for the M4 over Plextor 10 times out of 10. Especially given the Newegg prices. Crucial M4 is a proven commodity with tons of users giving it a consensus thumbs up. Why pay more for something that isn't the consensus choice? Go for the M4. you will never look back.

I think the Plextor comes with a 5 yr warranty. I'm guessing Plextor thinks they can get away with charging more because they stand behind their product more? Even if the drive never fails, it says something about confidence in their product when a company is going above and beyond the average warranty period.

But I'm biased, as I recently got a Plextor M3 and it's my first SSD so blowing off my socks compared to the HDD.

 

[KentState]

Well, I found the Plextor for a good price at a local Fry's and picked one up today. The 5 year warranty was the main factor since I went with a 256GB model and expect a longer life out of it. The Crucial was only $13 less online with a shorter warranty and the Samsung was more. Thanks Zap for pointing it out!

 

[GoStumpy]

Plextor made some seriously high quality CD burners way back in the day, that's a brand-name I trust

 

[bryanW1995]

That marvell controller is excellent, it's also in the m4 (as mentioned) and the intel 510 series. I'd probably lean towards the m4 as it is a bit cheaper and has a longer track record of quality service, but the Plextor is a bit faster and has the better warranty.

 

[Pinecone-sw]

Drive arrived.

OK, I have EASEUS Partition Master 9, but it doesn't seem to have an align function. It does have Clone disk function. Or should I buy Ghost or Acronis (Migrate Easy???) or other?

I can't play with a spare hard drive as I have no connectors left. 2X Raptors RAID 1 and 4x Hitachis in RAID 10.

That is why I was asking what would happen if I turned off the RAID 1 and removed one drive. Would the remaining drive work (to boot and have all its data)?

 

[Pinecone-sw]

OK, an update of what happened. BTW I DO tend to over think and over plan things.

I used the Crucial transfer kit to clone the hard drive (RAID 0 array). They supply EZ Gig IV with a USB cable. It worked fine. It took around 1.5 hours to do the clone (I went shopping).

I disconnected both hard drives that were the RAID array and hooked up the SSD and booted to check things out. Everything worked fine.

So I reconnected one of the RAID drives and when booting, used the RAID utility to delete the RAID array. I got a warning about all data being erased on both drives, but figured I had backups and the other RAID drive. But no problem, once booted, both drives were seen and no data loss.

One question, the drive had two partitions. Once everything was up and running, I deleted the second partition on the SSD and expanded the C drive to the entire usable drive space. Should I still do an align?