Installing windows 7 on SSD

[mardig88]

I just received my Crucial M4 128Gb today in the mail.
I'm really excited to install it and make it my boot drive.

I found the following instructions. Are they good enough?
Is there something else I need to do or I shouldnt do?

Thanks!

The red posts are all you really need unless you are an advanced user and enjoy tweaking.

Windows 7 SSD installation procedure: (starting with a new or secure erased SSD)
(1) Check the board is in AHCI mode, if no option is available there is nothing you can do.

(2) Check if S1 and S3 sleep are supported in bios, I usually set S1 but S3 should be ok also....if they are not in bios there is nothing you can do

(3) Check ACPI 2.0 is in bios and enabled, if its not in bios there is nothing you can do.

(4) Let win7 installer create and format the partition, all you do is hit NEXT even though the installer sees the drive and reports the drive space is RAW. Win7 will create a primary partition and quick format all on its own.

Immediately after installing Windows:

(1) Turn Off Hibernation File: Type cmd in search, right click cmd symbol that comes up and choose "run as administrator". Type “powercfg -h off” and press enter.

OPTIONAL BUT RECOMMENDED SHORT STROKE DRIVE 25%: control panel/administrative tools/computer management/storage/disk management/ right click on C drive/ shrink volume follow instructions to shrink volume shrink so you have 25% unallocated space minimum. Helps drive maintain its self at higher performance and helps overall drive life.

(2) OPTIONAL BUT HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: Turn off paging file: control panel/ system/advanced system settings/performance settings/advanced/virtual memory/change click no paging file, click set, apply, ok. (Restart later) Note: if you want to use a paging file for some reason set the minimum size to 1000mb and the maximum size to 1000mb. (Restart Later)

(3) OPTIONAL BUT HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: Turn off system protection: control panel/ system/system protection make sure all drives are off especially C. You can make system images so system protection is just a giant waste of disk space.

(4) Turn off drive indexing: Right click all drives and uncheck drive indexing, click apply (ignore all when comes up) Also go to windows storage manager select the system reserved partition right click uncheck drive indexing, click apply (ignore all when comes up).

(5) OPTIONAL: Turn off Recycle Bin or reduce in size.

(6) Turn Off Reliability Monitor: Admin tools, open task scheduler. expand task scheduler library, then Microsoft, then Windows. Scroll down and click on RAC. Go to the top and select View then show hidden tasks IF RACTASK is not showing. Right click on RacTask and select disable. To re-enable it, you right click it and select enable.
Here is the good part.... disabling it stops it from PROCESSING reliability data and errors for reliability viewer. The data is still collected in the logs, just stored efficiently. You can re-enable it and see the reliability stuff when U wish. Disabling it saved RAM and some drive churning until U need to look at it.

(7) Set the power state to high performance and set the machine to never sleep, HDD power down to OFF (off is before 1 minute).

(8) Disable SuperFetch: Type regedit in search, click on symbol then go HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchPerameters right click EnableSuperfetch hit modify and change to 0 and hit OK.
(NOTE: alot of people also disable prefetch as well as superfetch but I find system runs better with prefetch enabled).

(9) Enable Large System Cache: Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management right click LargeSystemCache hit modify and change to 1 and hit OK.

(10) Go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\FileSystem right click NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation hit modify and change to 1 and hit OK then right click NtfsMemoryUsage hit modify and change to 2 and hit OK.

(11) Disable SuperFetch in services: Go to Control Panel select Administrative Tools\Services double click SuperFetch select startup type as disabled then click ok.

(12) While in Services double click Disk Defragmenter select startup type as manuel then click ok.
Now Restart Your System For The First Time then:

(1) Install Chipset Drivers.

(2) Use win7 native AHCI (Will be automatically installed by windows during installation) driver for AMD. Use the newest Intel RST driver (Download and install after windows installation. Note INTEL Chipset Drivers should be installed first then RST driver.)for INTEL systems.

(3) RESTART

(4) Enable windows write back catching on C drive: right click C drive/hardware/your drive/ properties/change settings/policies/ check turnoff windows write-caching buffer flushing.......................

(5) Install Windows Updates Including Optional Hardware Updates.

(6) Install any additional drivers as necessary.

(7) Install Software

(8) NOW ENJOY YOUR SUPERFAST SSD

this is what i do for every ssd installation its a compilation of what i have found to produce the best results

[Squeetard]

Once you've done all that and patched the OS up to date. Make a restore point and then turn off system restore.

[Zer0]

Looks like some people are having issues with the M4.

Re: 0x00000f4 error on M4 64GB - Page 9 - Crucial Community

[enaberif]

hibernation can be turned off in advanced power options. the way mentioned is from the vista days.

[JD]

Originally Posted by enaberif

hibernation can be turned off in advanced power options. the way mentioned is from the vista days.

"powercfg -h off" still works fine in Windows 7 though, and I thought it was the only way to truly disable hibernation? If you disable it from the power options, I think the hiberfil.sys file is still created?

[mardig88]

How do I check the firmware version and update it to the latest ?