If anything things have gotten easier. I just built two new systems in the last 6 months. A lot of the tweaking needed to get a system running is no longer needed. UEFI is a lot better than the old BIOS.
If you're installing Windows, it does all the partition stuff for you. If you want to do something creative or manual, I suggest getting a program called Gparted and putting it on a bootable USB or disc. If you are upgrading to a new drive, you need to use some cloning software to avoid the problems with changing the drive mapping. I just upgraded to a bigger Samsung SSD and it came with cloning software. ------------ Brian Sent from my iPhone On May 18, 2013, at 10:12, DSinc <dsinc...@epbfi.com> wrote: > Steve, > Thanks for the view of your conversion/installation. You have demonstrated my > biggest fear of > moving forward until I create a roadmap of "How to..." with what to use, why > use it, what to expect. > It has been 4 years since I have built a PC from scratch. I recall in the > good-ole-days, we all used > a program post Format to set a Primary, Active partition. All other > partitions were set to Extended NTFS. > Sadly, I have forgotten the name of this program and don't even know if I > still have it archived. > Now I just use the Windows install media to create (I believe?) the 'new' > initial Primary and Active > partition and then use the Disk Manager in the Administrative tools post > install to add/shape the remaining > partitions. > It does seem to me that you could possibly edit your boot.ini file to point > Windows back to whichever drive you choose to > boot from. I have done this in the dim past with some success. > From your decription, Your old EM drive is/was your %SystemRoot%; and, it > contained partitions c:\ and d:\. And, > I read that your new SSD is now e:\. Am I correct? > Otherwise, I am very confused! > Duncan > > > On 05/18/2013 07:03, Steve Tomporowski wrote: >> Understood that a fresh install will align everything for the fastest >> performance. However, Windows here just made sure that it loaded everything >> from the old drive. For some reason, it never bothered trying to load >> Windows from the SSD. >> >> On 5/17/2013 9:06 PM, Dave Gibney wrote: >>> My laptop drive was giving me signs of eminent failure. I has a local guy >>> install a SAMSUG SSD and clone to it. It worked, but I wasn't happy with all >>> the results. >>> The next weekend, I did a fresh install Win-7 Ultimate, Office 2010, etc. >>> Cycling through all the updates and getting the drivers up to date took a >>> while, but no real problems. >>> >>> It is much faster on boot and the quiet is scary :) >>> >>> -----Original Message----- >>> From: hardware-boun...@lists.hardwaregroup.com >>> [mailto:hardware-boun...@lists.hardwaregroup.com] On Behalf Of Steve >>> Tomporowski >>> Sent: Friday, May 17, 2013 5:48 PM >>> To: hardw...@lists.hardwaregroup.com >>> Subject: [H] The SSD and how Windows can make your life miserable >>> >>> Last weekend I cloned my main drive over to an SSD and then booted. Some >>> things looked faster, but I wasn't blown away by the speed. I have found >>> out why. It began on Patch Tuesday. 4 of 6 patches failed. >>> Windows update threw some errors, but as I had a design review coming up at >>> work, I was too buys obsessing about that to work on it. Today, a day off! >>> I decided to look into the errors. Ran update again, same problems. >>> Searching on the errors, it seemed to indicate that Update has a problem >>> when you move stuff from C: somewhere else, like when you install an SSD. >>> The only thing I really fudged with there is that I moved the Temp and Tmp >>> folders. I moved them back, same problem. I wondered if I didn't do >>> something else and forgot about it. Back to System and Advanced Settings. >>> This time I looked a the lower half of the window. Half of my windows >>> variables were pointing to my old boot drive which is now E: ! When I >>> booted to the SSD the first time, I kept the old boot drive in the system, >>> just changed the boot order in the BIOS. Wrong! Windows apparently got >>> confused and I ended up with a mishmash. My %systemroot% was now E instead >>> of C! >>> >>> Just a word of caution. Going to clone the drive again (it wouldn't boot >>> properly on it's own) and this time remove the old drive. Well, that's how >>> ya learn.... >>> >>> Steve >