Installing an SSD Drive & reinstalling Software

I’m looking at installing an SSD drive and moving the HHD to the 2nd bay. Are there any issues with what I’m looking at doing with the SSD & HD drives. With this being basically a clean install of all the software, are there any known issues with reloading the Alien software like Alienware Command Center. If there is a guide to reinstalling, that would be appreciated too.

Thanks,

SMS1295

 

i done this on my r3 a few months ago.
rather than formatting my old drive, i kept it as it was but moved it over to the second drive bay and made it a secondary drive, i installed the ssd into the main drive bay. everything detected fine and i done a clean install of windows ( i downloaded the exact version of windows that my machine came with and used my legit serial ) after all this i decided to reinstall all the alienware stuff that i wanted and left it at that.
the reason for not formatting my original hd was in case everything went up with the install or the drive if it did i could just swap the drives back into their original slots.

there is a guide in this forum somewhere i followed some of it, but to be honest its pretty straight forward.

 

When you install your new SSD, install it into the HDD 0 bay, then install your old hard drive into HDD 1 bay but wait to install until after you clean install Windows on your SSD. Then once your OS is loaded, you can install the old HDD in bay 1, but make sure you change your boot device order in the BIOS (under the power tab) setting your SSD first above everything else. As far as the driver installation, refer to this thread for instruction:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...er-install-order-guide-alienware-systems.html

 

Also make sure to change your interface to AHCI in the BIOS BEFORE you install Windows. I made the mistake of trying to do that after and it wouldn't work for me.

 

Installed the SSD drive yesterday and installed Windows, all the drivers etc. Wasn't too hard if you follow the instructions carefully.

 

You can change it afterwards, through the registry. But I just can't find the guide that I used to do it. I'll post the link once I find it. I know it's useless for you, but may help someone else out one day....

 

Shows how to do it here in this SSD optimisation guide:-

The SSD Optimization Guide Redesigned - The SSD Review The SSD Review

 

is achi mode an absolute must? i got to confess i missed this part and i am in raid mode, on a none raid system
also can i alter this setting on an installed drive?

 

I was told in a previous thread that stated even though you are set to RAID in the BIOS, if you're not running a RAID array the BIOS will default to AHCI. I don't remember if you can change it from RAID to AHCI without reinstalling EVERYTHING on your SSD, though.

 

thats a good question. I'd like to know if AHCI is a must as well when installing a new ssd as main drive

 

The information that has been provided will be helpful when I start. I have a few more questions:

1) Can I change the interface to AHCI even if I don’t install the SSD?

2) Can I install the SSD drive in bay 1 and change the system to use bay 1 to boot instead of bay 0?

3) Can I use AlienRespan to copy the factory image to a external source and use it to reimage the SSD drive with ?

 

I did mine exactly like ^ and it worked great with no issues. I did not switch to AHCI before the install but was able to use the guide to change it to AHCI in the BIOS and registry and my CPU temps averaged about 13 C higher than normal and slight performance loss. I switched back to Raid in BIOS and registry and it's back to normal.

 

I installed a Samsung 256GB SSD on my R3, and install the OS and all the Alienware software. I still have have the original drive that came with my R3 completely intact. I just moved it to the other bay. It's been running fine so I'm tempted to wipe my original drive and use it as storage only.

My question is about RAID and AHCI. Will it harm my computer that I kept it in RAID? I never changed it but now I read some posts that say you have to change to AHCI. Is it crucial to do that? I haven't had any problems, so I don't really want to mess with the registry to change this setting.

Does anyone know if I'm losing performance, (or hurting my computer in any way), by not changing the RAID to AHCI prior to installing my SSD?

 

If you change from RAID to AHCI in the BIOS (or vice-versa) then you will need to reinstall Windows. It's something to do with the Master Boot Record that changing that setting after the fact causes a BSOD. I know that having the BIOS in RAID when you do not a have a RAID setup will not cause a problem to the system. If the BIOS is in RAID, yet detects no RAID array, then it just defaults to AHCI anyway.

 

Just to clear up questions about Raid or AHCI, you would be best advised to install under Raid mode wether it's a single drive setup or not. It makes for a lot less work further down the line if you wish to add a second SSD. If you install the OS under AHCI and add a drive to be raided later, you will HAVE to reinstall the OS again from scratch, as switching mode from AHCI to Raid is not possible to do - the machine will not boot the OS loaded under AHCI.

The only real difference in using Raid mode is that you will add a second or two to your boot time as you will briefly see the option to enter the Raid Configuration Menu when you see the Bios splash screen. Having installed under Raid does not mean you have to have raided drives - you would only create a raid array/disk association with drives you WANT to put in a Raid array...if you do not set this up, everything will still work just fine and dandy for a single drive or two single drives (one for OS and maybe one for storage).

 

Thanks to everyone who responded to this thread. The information was great. I ended up trying the restore from my image created from AlienRespawn when I purchased the laptop. This failed, so I tried a clean install. I made it to where I got the message ‘Setup is checking video performance”. The install hung at that point for over an hour and I just shut down. Tried a couple of other times getting to different place of the install. I even reformatted the SSD before my last attempt which hung at the message ‘Setup is preparing your computer for first use’ for an hour, so I’ve given up for now. Any suggestion at this point would be appreciated.