upgrading C drive on PC

LCPete

LCPete

Suspended / Banned
Messages
9,785
Edit My Images
Yes
a year ago I upgraded my c drive on my PC (DELL XPS 8300) to a 256Gb SSD using macruim reflect and with the help of the great people on here it worked a treat:)
am now planning to do video editing with pinnacle so am going to install a larger SSD (1TB), Samsung SSD 850 EVO which arrived this morning :)
I,m going to fit the new SSD to one of the internal drive cables and use Macruim reflect to clone the C drive like I did before then fit the new drive to the same place as the existing SSD drive
I think its fitted to a sata port if memory serves me right:D
just checking that I haven't forgotten anything, I assume that this should be straightforward ?
I have also ordered a total of 16 GB of memory from crucial
 
Last edited:
Hi LCPete.

Looks good. That SSD is a great drive! :-)

Once you're all set then perhaps check that your motherboard is set to AHCI rather than IDE over that SATA port as that will speed up the SSD a noticeably (Using current standard rather than Legacy IDE standard). Do read up on your particular OS version and workstation to ensure you won't need to install an AHCI driver in order for it to be recognised in the OS though!!

The Samsung Magician Software is great, It has a lot of optimisation options. If you have a poke around the software and get stuck then let me know.
 
rich_ said:
Hi LCPete.

Looks good. That SSD is a great drive! :)

Once you're all set then perhaps check that your motherboard is set to AHCI rather than IDE over that SATA port as that will speed up the SSD a noticeably (Using current standard rather than Legacy IDE standard). Do read up on your particular OS version and workstation to ensure you won't need to install an AHCI driver in order for it to be recognised in the OS though!!

The Samsung Magician Software is great, It has a lot of optimisation options. If you have a poke around the software and get stuck then let me know.
Click to expand...

Thanks very much Rich sounds like I'm on the right track:)
I did notice that the SSD comes with a CD I will check out the soft ware
The new drive is a larger version of the one I've already got which has been excellent it transformed the PC when I installed it so much faster :)
I will check the motherboard settings too
 
Thanks Rich will do the swap when my memory arrives from crucial should be this week :)
 
All done is a relief started it up and works perfectly :banana:
had a worrying moment as I forgotten to set the partition for the new drive and it was only showing 231GB the same as the old one but its spot on now have a 931 GB SSD C drive and also 16GB of ram memory:)
 
rich_ said:
Hi LCPete.

Looks good. That SSD is a great drive! :)

Once you're all set then perhaps check that your motherboard is set to AHCI rather than IDE over that SATA port
Click to expand...

That has to be done BEFORE you install the OS, so if Windows was initially installed with the motherboard's BIOS set to IDE, then the drive will never really be using SATAIII speeds. It may even crash if you change it in BIOS after installing Windows set to IDE.

If Windows was initially installed with the BIOS set to IDE, then instead of cloning, I'd ensure it's on AHCI and do a fresh install.

If you installed windows with it set to IDE, there is a workaround here...

http://winaero.com/blog/switch-from-ide-to-achi-after-installing-windows-7-or-windows-8/
 
Last edited:
Pookeyhead said:
That has to be done BEFORE you install the OS, so if Windows was initially installed with the motherboard's BIOS set to IDE, then the drive will never really be using SATAIII speeds. It may even crash if you change it in BIOS after installing Windows set to IDE.

If Windows was initially installed with the BIOS set to IDE, then instead of cloning, I'd ensure it's on AHCI and do a fresh install.

If you installed windows with it set to IDE, there is a workaround here...

http://winaero.com/blog/switch-from-ide-to-achi-after-installing-windows-7-or-windows-8/
Click to expand...
Thanks David I will have a look at that
to be honest though I don't really want to mess with the PC if it's still set to IDE
it's significantly faster than it was before I installed the first SSD a year ago and am happy with that
I'm not exactly an IT expert am just happy that I've swapped over the main board and memory and it all still works:D

Thanks for the help tho its appreciated :)

It's the same with the windows 10 thing I'm on 7 at the moment my PC is really fast and does everything that I need it to do
I can't see the point of upgrading to 10 and risking buggering it all up and I wouldn't know where to start if it needed fixing
 
Last edited:
Microsoft are supporting Windows 7 for another five years so, who knows, Windows 10 might be finished by then.......
 
Yes you can change the AHCI settings before or after dependent on whether you follow either method. Not good to recommend before if you're cloning drives though. A fresh install may seem easy to some. But others won't be as comfortable installing all the drivers etc again.
Looks like Pete had it all under control.


To add Pete.

The windows 10 install is pretty painless and you can roll back. However if you want to wait then Win7 is just as good as it always was. It just means you have to buy win 10 after around August 2016.
 
Last edited:
[QUOTE="rich_, post: 6999877, member: 78945"


To add Pete.

The windows 10 install is pretty painless and you can roll back. However if you want to wait then Win7 is just as good as it always was. It just means you have to buy win 10 after around August 2016.[/QUOTE]

Thanks Rich yes my friend has tried to convince me too about windows 10 may actually give it a try when I've got more time and as you say I can roll back to 7
Also I have kept the old smaller SSD as a backup, it's still got the operating system and the other programs on it
 
Cool. Something to be aware of is that if you upgrade your win7 license then it won't be able to legally licence a computer as 7 once you have a computer set up on 10 (and not rolled back to 7 within the month).

The update nulls the windows 7 license key or at least to that effect for windows activation.

Haven't tested this myself but from what I've read this is the case.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top