advice on clean install of windows on new r4 seperately bought ssd

hi there, i bought a new r4, and today i ordered an m4 ssd and some ram for it

the specs are :

210-40039 Alienware M17x : Standard Base 1 SR
338-16738 Processor : 3rd Generation Intel Core i7-3630QM (6MB Cache, up to 3.4GHz w/
Turbo Boost 2.0)
1 SR
230-12513 Display : 17.3" WideFHD (1920 x 1080) WLED LCD 1 SR
319-10774 Camera : Integrated Skype HD Certified FullHD Camera with dual digital microphones 1 SR
320-12437 LCD Back Cover : Soft Touch - Nebula Red 1 SR
340-29313 Ship Accessory : English Docs 1 SR
340-29317 Placemats : Placemats (Eng, Gre, Pol, Ara, Rus) 1 SR
340-29314 Resource DVD : Alienware M17x 1 SR
370-20086 Memory : 6144MB (1x2048 + 1x4096) 1600MHz DDR3 Dual Channel 1 SR
400-25920 Hard Drive : 500GB 7,200 RPM + 32GB mSATA Caching SSD 1 SR
429-16501 Optical Drive : BluRay Combo (Blu-ray read only, DVD, CD read & write) 1 SR
450-13572 Power Cord : UK 250V 1 SR
450-16348 Power Supply : Alienware 240W AC Adapter 1 SR
451-11606 Battery : Primary 9-cell 93W/HR LI-ION 1 SR
490-14105 Graphics : 2GB GDDR5 AMD Radeon HD 7970M


when it comes im wanting to put the ssd in it straight away, does the caching drive take up one of the two hd spaces (ie will i need to remove that?), and basically
i need to know what to do then. Ive never formated any pc before let alone an expensive laptop and frankly its a bit daunting, ive had a look on google, but
couldnt find anything specific to this so i wanted to ask people who knew about it.

Assuming i can even get the ssd in the right place, what order do i need to do things in? do i format the drive thats currently got the operating system on it (and is there a guide?)
or do i put the new operating system (again hoping the windows disc comes with it), and then format the 500gb hard drive after?

im going to use the 256gb ssd for my games, songs, op system and apps, and im going to use the bigger drive for my wifes stuff and photos etc, so not sure if it needs an
operating system

i really do appologise, im a complete noob, and im so out of my depth its not funny, can someone either advice me or point me in the right direction for some kind of guide or
tutorial

please have pitty on me and help me!

 

Quick question before I answer, windows 7 or 8?

 

Buy acronis true image and reimaged it on your ssd. Takes half the time and is far easier.

This is what I did with mine and it was very easy.

 

Windows 7 64 bit service pack 1

 

Ok thanks for that, right there are quite a few settings etc to be done but basically when you receive your system first them I recommend is to power it on, and update everything possible. Do not change any hardware on the system. I would recommend you create an 'alien respawn' DVD/USB so you always have a factory image to fall back on if anything goes wrong.

I would then update or make sure you have the latest BIOS (A10).

After that, its a matter of personal preference. Personally dissassembling the M17x is pretty easy 2of4 ram slots are under the bottom cover, and the 2 HDD bays are under the bottom cover too. The mSATA is quite awkaward to get to, it requires a bit more of a strip down. You should have 1 free HDD bay when you receive your laptop, the mSATA is located elsewhere.

I would remove the 500GB HDD and install the SSD alone by itself, keep the HDD to one side for now. Now you may require a few BIOS tweaks for personal preference. You might have legacy boot. I would personally use UEFI, partially because its faster and because if you ever do choose to use Windows 8, you can and it will be fast boot/ secure boot ready. I for example can boot from cold to login screen in less than 8 seconds.

You also need to ensure you have RAID controller mode selected as you will need that to setup your mSATA to cache your HDD later. (after a windows install).

With just a SSD and the alien respawn media you made before I would insert the alien respawn and boot the comptuer, obviously there will be no OS on the SSD but the alien respawn should boot and you should be able to start the windows installation.

If there are issues with the alien respawn then you will have to do a clean install. (Which is my preferred way). Then you will have to install drivers etc manually which may be time consuming.

I personally went with windows 8, but I went through the same procedure, my laptop came with windows 7 but i pretty much upgraded it the day I got it.

 

Where do I get Uefi bios from, and is there a step by step thing for working in the bios you can suggest ? ( it's the settings in the bios that's scaring me , don't want to mess anything up permanently )

 

UEFI bios should be pre installed on new M17x builds. Not many step by step, dont worry about the BIOS its trial and error really some people like RAID SATA operation mode whereas some use AHCI, depends on your situation (RAID = mSATA cache enabled). You can't really go wrong since yo ucan always revert the bios to its defaults. Your OS will be installed in a certain way e.g. under legacy (old style) vs UEFI (new / macs use it actually I think). Only problem is at the time of installation to get it right. otherwise you can't change it after you've installed windows, without a lot of hassle.

Honestly theres not much you can mess up software/settings wise, you can always clean install / revert to defaults

 

Ok so in the bios I'd set the SSd as the c drive (is that correct) , then what would I set the cache drive and other hard drive as (so that the cache drive is speeding up the ordinary hard drive still)

 

You can follow this guide for the installation.

 

Thanks for the link mate, will be very helpful if I need a clean install , hopefully cloning drive will work

If I do a clean install do I need to put drivers in certain order (or do I just do the latest ones from net rather than install ones on disc, then update them), think my wife has driver reviver or something similar

 

There is a certain order to install them. On the same link you'll find at the end the order to install the drivers by platform. Select yours and follow the guide.

 

Ditto with a 840 pro ... I mean if I had nothing to do, iwouldnt have even contemplated an image, but with work...Naaah.....got nearly 75% of the rated speeds with a fully functional OS...now to get AW to fix up the R4

 

Is AW planning to do a Win8 guides well... Might help others who go for 8

 

Woot my laptops out for delivery today , I'm excited and very scared

 

ok did the alien respawn thing, installed 16 gb ram (my first time - took me ages to get it to slide into place the first time, i was being so so careful lol), couple of questions

now that the ssd is in and its doing windows updates and stuff , i am wanting to put the original drive back in, i noticed the other hard drive caddy was missing two of the screws to hold the hard drive, im worried about putting the original hard drive back in with 2 screws (im also hoping the 2 screws wernt dropped into my components by dell given i havnt touched that bay yet


when i get it that far is a case of doing what you said with the raid, loading up windows from my ssd then right clicking the d drive (or whichever the original 500gb hard drive is) and clicking format?

for some weird reason also when i inspected my computer it says ive got 22 gb of ram (correct - had 6 with it, just put in the 16gb i bought), but its saying only 16gb usable) is that something i have done wrong?

the other thing how do i check what driver my graphics card has (its a 7970m) and which version should it have?

thanks again guys
cant believe i actually did it tbh(well got this far) - thanks so much

 

I assume you installed the 16gb under the keyboard (the hard slots to get to?) call dell about the 2 screws, it will still work but 4 is the most stable etc. . You shouldn't need RAID I assume our OS is on the SSD? Did you install under UEFI or Legacy boot, UEFI is faster is all and the newer standard which macs use.

What windows are you running?

 

Running windows 7
I used alien respawn, took out ordinary hard drive ( I'm assuming the cache drive is placed elsewhere) , installed SSd into the place I took out the 500 gb ordinary hard drive, installed from the USB recovery stick I made, and I was going to put in the 500gb hard drive in other slot but screws were missing. Bought some screws from a computer shop today

When I put the hard drive back in later I want to connect it to the 64gb cache drive again, I've no idea what bios are in ( whatever came with it) , how would I check and change it?

The ram I put in the two slots near the hard drives (not under keyboard, I'm thinking that must be where the dell ram is)

 

If your running Win 7 Home Premium, the reason your only using 16gigs is because the OS cannot utilize more than that. Only Win 7 Pro and above can utilize more than 16gb. It shouldn't cause an issue leaving the Dell stock ram under the KB, it just won't get used but it will be recognized - as you can see. I'd leave the Sata operation set to Raid because if you ever decide to add a 2nd SSD later on down the road, you would have to re-install the whole OS if you changed from AHCI to Raid. It's much simpler to leave it as Raid and then you can simply extend the volume to include your (potentially) new 2nd SSD.

Dunno if you got my PM but this is a fairly straight forward method of setting up your mSata as a Cache drive for your HDD: How to Enable Caching on mSata SSD for Alienware Laptops? | Dell

To check your driver version, you can open Catalyst Control Center by right clicking on the desktop and opening it from the pop-up window. Once open, you can go to the software information section and it should tell you there. If you have respawned to the SSD, you will probably have Dell's latest version installed.

Hope this helps out.

 

Thanks Stevie just checked your message

 

ok we are nearly there guys then i can stop pestering you all for now

ive just installed the 500gb hard drive, it still says its got the os on it (i dont know, but am i right in thinking its still got the alienware partition on?)
what is the best way of formatting it first? or do i try to put it in raid first (if indeed raid isnt already set up, it was when i bought it i think as standard with the cache drive, im pretty sure thats what a tech guy told me ) ?

i watching a video on you tube and the guy said if you enable raid it will wipe everything on the machine, so how do i make sure that raid isnt on my ssd so that only my cache and 500gb hard drive (not the m4)

im pretty sure raid was enabled before i installed the ssd, does that mean in theory it still should be and i can just do the intel thing?

i went into disk management and its showing my m4 ssd as disc 0 then its showing -


disk 1
basic
465.76gb
online

39mb healty (oem partition) recovery 8.73 gb ntfs healthy (active primary partition) , os (E 456.98 gb ntfs healthy (primary partition)

if i format it will it format all of it like i want to?

 

Well, your Sata Operation Mode should still have been set to Raid when you installed the SSD as it shipped with the caching drive configured - you can check it if you like by entering bios (F2 at the big alienface at boot - enter to access settings, cursor arrows to navigate to advanced tab, cursor down and you should see the Sata Operation - you can then exit).

If you open Intel RST control panel, you should see the option to "accelerate" at the top, from then on, you can follow the instructions from the link provided earlier (Dell's guide).

As for formatting the HDD, you can do that via disk management. Make sure you select the correct disk as you don't want to bin off your new OS install - it's entirely up to you if you wanted to keep the recovery partition, you don't have to but it won't cause any harm leaving it there....it will just use up that bit of space, which on a 500gb HDD isn't that much really. Did you ever manage to successfully create recovery media? - if not, I'd maybe be tempted to keep the recovery.

 

i checked last night in the intel thing and it was saying the 500 gb drive was already accelerated by the cache (and it had a symbol i think like a clock or something on top of it, im assuming this is clarification that its accelerated)

if i leave the partition on it

:

(the 39mb healty (oem partition) recovery 8.73 gb ntfs healthy (active primary partition) , os (E 456.98 gb ntfs healthy (primary partition)

if i just click the right bit in disk management (456.98 gb) then that should be that then?

im still having trouble burning the second disk for the system recovery, but i got it on the pen drive i bought now, since i put the ssd in i tried reinstalling alien respawn again, but still the same problem, im thinking it probably is some drivers or something im not doing right, but i thought a reinstall would have fixed it (it hasnt), but i might keep the healty partition on the 500gb just in case

if its got windows on it, its not going to cause problems is it, so far my alienware laptop has known to boot from the ssd (which im glad about) the less messing about in bios the better

thanks again guys - going to right click and format the 456.98gb tonight, i know that cant be my ssd as my ssd was only 256gb to start with so even i shouldnt be able to mess this up

 

Easiest way to make 100% sure your SSD isn't touched is to remove it haha. SSD is boot drive? HDD+mSATA SSD for caching right?

 

yes mate

ssd is m4 i installed with operating system and it came with the msata ssd cache and 500 gb hard drive already with it

at the moment both are in and the 500gb is accelerated by the cache, im in two minds if i should keep the operating system and alienware back up on it, but i have no got a copy of the back up on a usb drive so im thinking it will be ok, if i do format the partition on the 500gb one, will it be automatically joined to the rest of the 500gb drive?
(and im hoping it will still be in raid 0 with the cache )

 

You should be ok, you might have to restart the cache on the 500gb because your editing the partitions, but not 100% sure. The partition should be able to be stretched to fill the whole drive once the recovery partition has been removed, not 100% sure though.