Upgrading my Computer - Formatting Drives Questions

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^^ Greetings everyone.

I believe that I am very excited as I shall be visiting a happy computer store tomorrow in order to purchase some new little friends for my computer and wondered if I may ask for a little advice. I believe I am currently using a 500GB hard drive (HDD). I believe that I shall purchase a new 120GB Solid State Drive (SSD) tomorrow to use as a primary drive (with Windows 7) and use my HDD as a secondary drive. May I please ask, may this be happier to format my HDD now? Alternatively, may this be possible to install Windows 7 onto my new SSD, set to boot from this drive within BIOS and then format my HDD from Windows 7 within my SSD?

In addition, shall I require to format my SSD before using this?

I am very sorry if this is a silly question. Thank you very much for any advice.

You can always d/l Windows 8 Preview from MS, put it on a thumb drive, and install it to your SSD from there. I've been using W8 for 2 months. It's pretty complete for a preview.

Do you actually like Windows 8 so far? I wasn't all that impressed, honestly.

^^ Greetings redrobin62 and Kinme.

I am very sorry as I believe that I decided not to use Windows 8 for the moment. I believe that I really enjoy playing video games upon my computer and therefore perhaps this is best for me to use an operating system that has been present for a little time in order to ensure compatibility with many games.

Yes, you can install Win 7 to your SSD, then format your existing hard drive. The easiest way to do this would be to install Windows 7 with only the SSD connected, then connect the HD and format it once you reboot (only plug/unplug things internally when your computer is off ). Windows 7 will format the SSD for you as necessary when you install it.

Also, you may as well wait to format your HD until you're sure Windows 7 has installed properly to the SSD and everything is how you want it.

One note: you don't have to reformat your HD. If you want to get the original OS off of it, you can do it without a full reformat, although it does require some permissions changes to delete everything. I'm sure there are guides on the internet about how to do it.

Another note: there are companies that make programs to transfer your existing OS install to another hard drive/SSD (drive migration software). Some SSDs come with such software. One company is Acronis, and there are others. They tend to cost money, though.

Enjoy

Yeah, don't bother with Acronis unless you want to pay. I waisted time Downloading and installing thier "free" software only to find out that in order to use the clone feature you have to shell out $50.

I've never had an SSD, but i've read in linux forums to place temporary and cache directories on a normal hard drive due to limited write endurance. Is this typically done under Windows?

Yes, although from reading tests people have done, it sounds like modern SSDs are at least as write endurable as standard hard drives. Still, browser caches are basically useless nowadays with fast connections.

I actually turn off virtual memory entirely under Windows. Even with 4 GB on Windows 7 x64, I never have any issues, and I tend to simultaneously run a bittorrent client, multiple browser windows, various Explorer windows, email client, word processor, and whatever other miscellaneous programs. Most games are still 32-bit and so they won't use more than 2 GB.

And 4 GB is considered 'entry level' nowadays.. with 8 GB, it would be even less an issue. I suppose I'd turn on virtual memory for 32-bit OSs, though, since they can't even really use 4 GB.

^^ Yaye thank you very much mglosenger. I am very sorry as I believe that I upgraded my computer a little time after my original message. ^^ I believe I was very silly as I installed Windows 7 to my solid state drive whilst my hard disk drive was also plugged to the motherboard, with Windows XP installed to this drive.

Therefore, I believe I encountered some little problems as my computer considered this hard disk drive as the system drive. I therefore required to install Windows 7 to my solid state drive again with the hard disk drive unplugged.

I'm glad to hear that it mostly worked

^^ Yaye thankees mglosenger. ^^ I believe that my little solid state drive may have been blessed by some little errors following this as I often experienced a number of blue screen crashes for some time. ^^ However, I believe that I performed a disk check upon this and now this is working happily.