Installing msata as boot drive

I have a Crucial M550 on order and was wondering if someone could point me to the best method for transferring everything over to the new drive. I have a new Gigabyte P27GV2, so the the hard drive doesn't have a lot on it at the moment. Would it be possible to use the OEM recovery and select the new drive for a fresh install or should I clone it?

Thanks

 

Create recovery disks from the old HDD/installation.

Remove all power sources including the battery. Remove all drives.

Insert the new SSD and install with the recovery disks (or USB key) you just created.

Connect the old HDD with an external enclosure (USB 2.0 or 3.0) and copy the data you have to the SSD.


Enjoy!

 

Tiller I'm reading a few reviews regarding the Samsung Xp941 M.2 SSD.
I've read this drive was not usable as a boot drive i sthat correct? Any reason for that?
How about RAID configuration?

 

I'm keeping the original drive for data, not replacing it with the new drive.

 

Do you realize how many of them tiny screws are involved in that procedure Bub?

Anyway, I've been thinking about maximizing performance on my system for video editing and believe the faster drive would be much more efficiently used as a work drive in that process rather than merely holding the OS/applications. Just waiting for a good/best deal on a TB (or 1/2 TB) mSATA.

 

It's still worth removing the old drive during the OS install, to make sure all the boot partitions are on the SSD. Then put the other drive back in.

 

I just want to verify one thing, the recovery discs (usb) created in Win 8.1 can boot and install to a new drive? I saw several posts in other forums stating that it only gave options to repair or reset the original install and was unable to install fresh to an ssd.

 

that is an absolute must! otherwise the stupid Windows installer will put the boot files on the 2nd drive for God knows what reason and if that drive is an HDD, the boot will become slower, not to mention trickier to image

 

If you remove the original drive and just keep the mSATA and use the recovery partition, under normal situations, it should restore everything onto that mSATA SSD, unless it's some buggered kind of recovery.

 

If you create a Recovery Disk and not a Repair disk, it should install to any drive that is connected to that specific model of computer.

 

Disk drive numbers may not correspond to the SATA channel numbers when you install Windows on a computer that has multiple SATA or RAID disks

 

yes I know, not all recovery environments are the same. Like on my previous ASUS G750JX, the restore would simply take place on any available disk there is

 

It's even harder than that...
When using diskpart and pre-setting up all the specified partitions on properly enumerated disks, Windows will still switch them right in front of your eyes and install to the unintended disk and switch the channel numbers. Therefore, until Windows installs the boot files and OS - all other drives should be removed.

 

THanks for the advice guys. I ended up doing a clean install. Everything is running a lot better with the new drive.

 

Clean install is always better even if it's harder to do

 

Not hard at all. I used the Microsoft Web based media creator to make a Bootable drive, it installed in less that 10 minutes. I didn't have much on the laptop since it was new.

 

Good for you ... My install's usually take 20 mins or so because I have an SSD...