Windows 7 clean install to SSD - gotchas?

Factual Questions
1

My Windows 7 desktop PC is taking an age to boot, sometimes slowing to a crawl when opening an application, and generally running like a sick dog. It is also full of redundant software which is out-of-date or just not used any more. It is my intention to start with a clean slate and do a fresh install of Windows and I have purchased a new SSD, keeping the existing HDD as a secondary drive.

Can I just do the install whilst leaving the existing drive untouched? I don’t want a dual boot system but it would be so much easier to transfer files across from an internal drive than the backups on my network drive.

Will the OS installed on the old drive cause me any headaches, and is there a way to remove it without wiping the rest of the drive?

Finally, should the new install go wrong, could I just reinstate the old drive as the boot drive, getting me back to where I started from?

2

Just my two cents… I did the same deal a while back. Loves me the SSD.

Just to make it easy, I disconnected the original drive and then installed the new drive on it’s own. Once it was up and running fine with it’s clean install, I shut the system down, plugged in the old drive, restarted the system, and Windows immediately set it up under a new letter (F in my case) and I was good to go, no questions asked.

I left the old Windows installation on the old drive for a couple of weeks until I was confident everything was cool and then cleaned it out to recover the space.

This way, as you say, should the new install end in tears, you can just plug the old drive back in and it will be as if nothing ever happened.

3

make sure the new SSD is the only drive attached while installing Windows. otherwise it might be unpredictable where it puts the boot manager.

after you re-connect the old drive, you might have to “take ownership” of the files on it.

4

Thanks Ornery Bob and jz78817, disconnecting the old drive during the install sounds like good advice.

5

I’m not an expert on this, but I’ve heard that SSDs have shorter lifespans than regular drives. Be sure you have a regular backup schedule in place just in case it dies unexpectedly.

6

Flash memory has a limited number of times it can be erased before cells become non-functional (remnants of charge stay behind making it difficult to ascertain whether a bit is a 0 or a 1.) But with the wear-leveling and over-provisioning of modern SSDs, you’re not likely to reach the end of its life for quite a long time. The Tech Report has been beating the shit out of various SSDs for a while now with some interesting results.

besides, it’s not like traditional hard drives are all that reliable/durable either. although the sample size is small, I’ve had more hard drives die prematurely (3) than I’ve had SSDs die (0.)

7

Also, the limited lifespan is mostly for writes. It will still READ data largely without issue long after you have exhausted its write capacity.

8

I’ve done it, install Win 7 to SSD. Works fine. However, while all your pictures, videos, MP3’s and such will be fine on your old drive, you’ll have to re-install your programs. Your registry on a clean install is, of course, empty.

Oh, and Windows runs noticably faster.

9

this. ever since switching my home systems to SSDs, I now find it incredibly aggravating when I have to use a computer with a conventional hard drive.

#firstworldproblems