Please help - installing w7 on SSD

Hi. I've just received my precision m6500 from dell, but they installed the OS on the hard drive not the SSD drive. I want to move it to the SSD drive.

I put the OS cd that came with the computer in, and am now installing windows onto the SSD (doing this within windows, rather than booting from the cd). Once this is finished, will I have 2 versions of windows (one on the hd and one on the ssd)? If so, can i just chose in BIOS to boot from the SSD, then format the HD?

If anyone's done this before please let me know.

Thanks a lot
Jack

 

In principle, you can do this. Press F12 at the BIOS screen to select the boot drive.

However, the installation procedure you are following may not make the SSD bootable. I would hope that the W7 recovery disc could do this for you.

John

 

Hi John. Thanks a lot for the reply. You are right - it installed windows onto the SSD but then wouldn't boot from the SSD. I've now physically removed the HD, and am installing a fresh install of w7 onto the SSD from the recovery disc as you suggested. I then plan to put the HD back in and format it.

 

That should work out perfectly for ya...

When done, download Crystal Disk Mark and post a score and we can make sure all is well.

 

That's the way I'm going to do it when I get my SSD.....I have the m6500 also.

 

hi jack880,

I am planning to do the same.

Currently I have the 500gb in slot a
I wanna take it out and put the ssd in slot a start computer with the dell reinstallation disc and install fresh windows on this ssd, and then put the hdd in slot b later and format it for storage.
Is this the correct way to go?


Can yo tell me how you do it? thanks.

 

Good plan. I suspect different machines/BIOSs/drive controllers/install orders behave differently, but I've had issues trying to boot from an OS on a secondary system device with a primary system device present... Windows kept wanting to use system files from the other disk... which ultimately failed. The situation needed better boot management than I had set out to deploy.

So, unless you intend to properly setup for booting multiple OSs, I would stick to the basics... clean install the OS on the SSD in the primary device location. Then install and wipe the OEM HDD in the secondary location.

GK