confused on asus g73w-a1

sorry this is the asus g73sw-a1 republic of gamers 17.3 inch off of amazon


I just received this computer today. I wanted to do a clean install. First thing I did was backup the factory settings, on 6 disks. After a bunch of reading on the steps, I went for it. I put in the windows 7 disk and it said if I wanted to redo the partitions before moving on that I would need to restart with the cd in the drive. I downloaded a oem copy off the internet, the one I need, the home edition. I restarted and it was going straight to windows. I restarted again and thought I had to hit the f8 button, I saw options to restore but it looked like factory default stuff. So I exited,but once It loaded to windows it started to restore the factory defaults, I didnt't want to mess with it, as I figured halting this would cause more harm than good. THe only thing it gave me an option to choose was how to set up the installation on the harddisks. I decided to slightly change it that I would not have the os partitioned from the rest of the drive. After everything was done, everything is exactly the same, except it doesn't look like the SSD is involved in the installation and it is not recognized in the disk management. This computer was to have the 4 gig ssd for the os, then two 500 gb harddrives each split into two partitions. Now I see no SSD, and one of the regular harddrives has 25gb partition which says its all free space, and no file system recognized, I am assuming this is the hidden backup. The os (c is 440gb with 404 gb free space. Then the other drive is split into two partitions which is all free space. What am I suppose to do. Redo the factory install with my disks, or the hidden partition. Or what? I didn't know I could download windows legally until now, but looking at the additional directions is confusing. What would be the best route to get the os back on the ssd. I feel like I wasted all day on this. Any help would be great. Thanks

 

That computer only has two hard drive slots. They both have a 500GB HD in them. If your model happens to have a Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive, then that drive will have an internal 4GB "ssd like" storage area available to it. I say available to it because you can't see it at all. The hard drive's firmware identifies the most commonly accessed files on the disk and stores them there automatically. There are some good writeups on how this works and even measurements of how much if any that it speeds up your computer over at Tom's Hardware.

The short answer is that you don't have two 500GB drives and a 4GB SSD. You just have two 500GB drives. I think the sticky has a link to the clean install procedure.

I hope that helps.

 

omg, this is all suspect to me, i use to know computers 10 years ago, and guess what this is my first new pc in 10 yrs, this stuff is over my head. Since I can't see it I feel its not there. THanks Is there a way to search on my PC to know if its the Seagate Momentus ? I ask because the windows experience gives me a 5.9 for the harddrive. Would this be normal for the dubious Seagate Drive? THanks again

 

That's no problem at all. That's what we are here for is to help each other out.

You need to run the WEI twice in a row to find out if you have a hybrid drive. The second time it will give you a bigger number because the files that were tested will have been moved into the ssd area of the drive on the first run and will get accessed a lot faster on the second run.

If you look in the device manager, the hybrid drive is a ST95005620AS and if you have one, you want to be running the SD25 firmware. SD24 is OK too but you definitely don't want to be running SD23 since it causes stutters. It's very easy to upgrade if you need to. Seagate has an automatic tool that does it pain free.

It's not a bad drive. I bought one. My G73 predates the hybrid drives. The newer ones all have those drives. Mine only had one 500GB drive. I needed another drive so I bought the hybrid drive later. The gist of the performance is that the hybrid drive will cut your boot time in half. Once your computer is up and running you will see very little performance gain unless you happen to be opening and closing the same three programs all day long. Otherwise what you click wasn't cached so it is just going to load from the disk. It's a little bit better than the average 7200 RPM drive but not even in the same ballpark as an SSD.

If you see two 500GB drives in the drive manager then everything is fine there. The clean install procedure is here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...lk-through-doing-clean-windows-7-install.html

Don't even worry about that 4GB. It takes care of itself. It is supposed to tune itself all the time to boot and run windows as fast as it can. If you had a real SSD like some of the guys and gals around here your programs would open in one or two seconds... even things like PhotoShop and such.

 

Thanks for the info, I read all about it and completely understand that harddrive. I have another problem now, I knew this clean install would be a problem. I loaded windows 7, deleted the partitions and to move on its asking for device drivers for my harddrive. I put in the driver disk that came with pc and nothing is coming up. I am on the asus site for my pc profile to download the drivers and I dont even see anything for the hardrive ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support- Drivers and Download G73Sw Am I suppose to go to the Seagate website? I searched this issue on google and this has happened and most people were baffled. What I searched did not have a solution for me. Thanks for the assistance

 

nevermind, had to do like 8 attempts to work,

 

There are no device drivers for a HDD to install, just the SATA controller.