Question about SSD Installation

I currently own a Sager NP8170 and have ordered an SSD. I am kind of a newb with this stuff, is there a chance someone can go through the steps to installing the operating system (faster boot) so that it boots from the SSD rather than my old hard drive?

 

You either have to mirror it over to the new drive or reinstall onto the new drive.

 

A clean install is much better. Also make sure its not in IDE mode in the BIOS. Its pretty easy otherwise, Windows 7 plays nice with SSDs and will install without much effort on your part.

 

You will want to access your BIOS (tap F2 I believe) for Setup and in the BIOS under Advanced you should see a SATA Mode Selection with one of three (IDE, RAID, AHCI) to the right.

Be sure it is set to AHCI and as Tmets has mentioned, it is better to just do a clean installation with Windows.

To do a clean installation, be sure you have the Windows 7 OS disk with you and insert it into the optical drive and then reboot your system. Alternatively, you can just use a paperclip to open the optical drive and insert the disk before powering on your system.

Tap the F7 key (Boot Options) to get to the boot menu. In Boot menu, you will want to select your optical drive (not sure what you have but it should read something like Slimtype DVD, TSSTcorp, Mata UJxxx (xxx is just in place of digits). and select it and press Enter.

After you press enter, be prepared to hit ANY KEY on the keyboard to boot from DVD/CD drive.

It should then go to a black screen for loading Windows.

Everything will be obvious choices until you reach a screen asking you two choices, the second one being the Custom (advanced) option, this is the one you want to select.

In the next menu to follow, it should ask you where you want to install the OS. Click on the option at the bottom right that reads (Options) something along those lines and then the Delete, New, and Format should come up. Select your partitions one by one and then select Delete.

You should be left with Disk 0: Unallocated partition and Disk 1: unallocated partition (assuming 2 drives still in the system)

Select your SSD and then click Next, it should just install the OS from there.

After OS is installed, you will need your Drivers & Utilities disk for your system. Install the drivers in the order they are listed on the disk and restart your laptop each time it asks you to.

 

This is actually something I wanted to ask about. But I have a bit of a different situation. I have an mSATA drive and a 500GB 7200rpm HDD. But I want to install a SSD drive into my main bay and move my 500GB to my second. If I do this, will it mess up any of my programs or will the mSATA give me trouble? and what do I do once I put the SSD in and turn on my computer? Is is automatically working or is there set up involved? Thanks for any help, guys.

 

What are your intentions with the mSATA drive? If it is just to add more storage to your laptop, you shouldn't have any issues as the computer should still be able to locate your boot records and the like for the OS.

If you plan on using the mSATA as the boot drive for the OS, that would be a different story.

Additionally, if you plan on using your mSATA for caching for your 500GB drive, that will be a different story still that will require you to configure RAID in the BIOS to use the IRST caching.

Back to the original statement though, you should only need to go into your disk management in Windows to format your newly added drive in order to use it for storage. The setup is fairly straight forward and takes only 2 minutes at the most.

Type disk management into your search box after you click on the Windows start orb and it should bring up your drive list with some boxes at the bottom to indicate drive capacity and if they are formatted (blue line) or unallocated (black line). Right-click on the black line unallocated space and select New Volume and go through the wizard setup, just clicking Next and then Finish. It will take a moment to format and assign the drive letter. Then you can start using your new drive.

 

Ok well I don't honestly know what would be best. Haha
Abe from PowerNotebooks told me to get the mSATA because it moves programs automatically and makes them perform better. So is there a possibility that my mSATA isn't set up properly or something? I haven't messed with it. It's just however it came out of the box.

 

Do have your msata set up as a boot drive or cache drive?

 

When I do a clean install on the SSD, should I be placing the new SSD in the primary drive or the secondary drive?

 

primary i guess if by secondary you mean the optical hdd caddy bcz that one would be sata II, so won;t be as fast.

 

It doesn't matter as both bays are SATA 3 (6gbps) and the only difference is it would appear as either disk 0 or disk 1, etc. the only SATA 2 bay is the optical bay and the msata slot.

He has stated in the OP that he has the NP8170 so it has 2 hard drive bays as standard.

 

Yeah, it needs to be the main drive.

Pop off the cover, and slide out the drive (no screws holding it in). remove the 4 screws and the plastic protector. Screw this protector to the SSD and insert. Replace the cover. Open the bottom left cover and remove the screw holding the CD drive in place (just 1). Slide out the CD drive and you have access to the second bay. Screw your old drive into this spot with the screws that came in a little baggie with your laptop. Slide the CD drive back in and resecure. Close the Cover and tighten. Follow directions above for BIOS set up. Simple

 

Considering you are getting an NP9170, it shouldn't really matter which bay you install your SSD into as both hard drive bays should be at SATA III 6Gbps speeds. Your computer won't really notice anything either as it will just look for a device that it can boot from.