Upgrading to an SSD, using old HDD as a secondary drive

Hey guys,

so I just purchased an OCZ Vertex Plus R2 120gb SSD and it's on its way, want to install it in my HP dv6t but this is my first time so I have no idea what to do. I also want to take my current hard drive and place it where the optical drive currently is, so I bought a caddy as well. Can anyone with experience help me walk through this process? I can install the OS easily on the SSD, but I don't know of specifics that I'd have to deal with, if any, and also how would I go about formatting my old hard drive? Do I need to wipe it, can I just place it in the second bay and it's good to go, or what?

Sorry for all the questions and thanks a lot for all of your help!

 

For the SSD, first thing is to make sure that you have the latest firmware installed on it. Check the version (should be mentioned on the box or on the sticker on the drive) and compare to the latest that's available on the OCZ website.

To make sure that the SSD drive partition is aligned, let the Windows 7 installer make the partitions.

Since you are doing a clean install, Windows 7 should detect that the drive is an SSD drive and do a number of optimisations for you automatically. For instance, it will disable the scheduled automatic defrag for the SSD. The SSD drive should not be listed under the following menu in the Disk Defragmenter program: Configure schedule-> Select disks, though your other hard drive should be listed there.


After you install the old hard drive in the optical drive bay and have Windows installed, it's up to you if you want to erase the drive or not. There will be the old copy of Windows on there and your files as well if you haven't already moved them off to another drive. You can decide to format/erase it to get rid of any old crap on it that remains that you don't need. There might be hidden partitions remaining on the old drive that you can get rid of in "Disk Management." (type this in the Start Menu)

 

As an aside, that's not going to be an issue for the drive the OP mentioned. The Vertex Plus R2 is a SATA II drive based on a revised version of the old-school, yet very mature, Indilinx Barefoot controller. The only firmware available is the one that the drive ships with.

 

So I will be able to access all my old files regardless of whether or not Windows is installed on the HDD, so I can just leave it alone right? Just looking for clarification.

Thanks for the help! I'll keep this posted as my stuff arrives and I install it


So got both drives in. SSD was fairly straightforward and boot up time is fast! HDD caddy doesnt reach the outer edge of the laptop so cosmetically there is a gap, but otherwise things are working great!