I want to reinstall Windows to a blank SDD drive

I have a 128G SSD drive. It was installed before I was aware of the
bios setting AHCI. When I try to enable AHCI I get an error. Now I
have bought another 256G SSD drive.

I guess to enable AHCI I will have to reformat and I am OK with that.
When I run Win7 setup what can I expect to see?

Do I have to reformat the drive? I understand that I wont' keep my
old data, but I want to be sure there are no relic folders and I have
a clean new system.

On Sun, 06 Aug 2017 18:03:21 -0600, KenW wrote:

On Sun, 06 Aug 2017 19:28:43 -0400, Seymore4Head
wrote:

I have a 128G SSD drive. It was installed before I was aware of the
bios setting AHCI. When I try to enable AHCI I get an error. Now I
have bought another 256G SSD drive.

I guess to enable AHCI I will have to reformat and I am OK with that.
When I run Win7 setup what can I expect to see?

Do I have to reformat the drive? I understand that I wont' keep my
old data, but I want to be sure there are no relic folders and I have
a clean new system.

Been a long time since Win 7, I believe there was a way to change it.
Search for Windows 7 change to ahci may work


KenW

Thanks. I really don't like changing registry entries, but since that
is easier than having to re install. I will give it a go.

One other thing I was reading is that you need drivers for SSD. I
don't think I ever installed a driver and if I did, I am not sure I
still have the driver disk. Is it true that I should be using
drivers?

KenW wrote:
On Sun, 06 Aug 2017 20:22:49 -0400, Seymore4Head
wrote:

On Sun, 06 Aug 2017 18:03:21 -0600, KenW wrote:

On Sun, 06 Aug 2017 19:28:43 -0400, Seymore4Head
wrote:

I have a 128G SSD drive. It was installed before I was aware of the
bios setting AHCI. When I try to enable AHCI I get an error. Now I
have bought another 256G SSD drive.

I guess to enable AHCI I will have to reformat and I am OK with that.
When I run Win7 setup what can I expect to see?

Do I have to reformat the drive? I understand that I wont' keep my
old data, but I want to be sure there are no relic folders and I have
a clean new system.
Been a long time since Win 7, I believe there was a way to change it.
Search for Windows 7 change to ahci may work


KenW
Thanks. I really don't like changing registry entries, but since that
is easier than having to re install. I will give it a go.

One other thing I was reading is that you need drivers for SSD. I
don't think I ever installed a driver and if I did, I am not sure I
still have the driver disk. Is it true that I should be using
drivers?

An ssd is just another drive as far as Windows 7 is concerned. I never
heard that other drivers are needed. In fact, a few years ago I cloned
a hdd to an ssd with Win 7. This laptop with an ssd uses the same
drivers from 2006.
You may want to watch this thread in case someone thinks I have it
wrong.
I believe a clean install will take care of all the weird things an
ssd needs.


KenW

You might need a driver for NVMe. That could be an M.2 drive
(PCI Express x4 on horizontal screw-mount installation). Or such
drives can be purchased as a PCI Express plugin card (same shape
as a video card housing).

For the others, the OS has AHCI and IDE drivers. And a
"driver re-arm" using the registry can be done, so that
the OS "re-discovers" where the hard drive is at boot time.
You generally want to set the re-arm registry entries on
enough entries, to cover both cases. Maybe re-arm MSAHCI
and MSIDE or something, so that if you screw up on the next
boot and don't alter the storage setting in the BIOS in time,
the system will come right back up. Re-arm varies slightly
from one OS version to another - I look that up when I need it.

Both the AHCI and the IDE driver may have TRIM, so you might
not need to change from one to the other. In an Administrator
Command Prompt you could check. What this one does, is check
that the OS is set to send TRIM commands, not that the driver
level actually has TRIM

https://www.howtogeek.com/257196/how...it-if-it-isnt/

fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify

-- DisableDeleteNotify = 0 # TRIM is enabled
-- DisableDeleteNotify = 1 # TRIM is disabled

OS ---- disableDeleteNotify? ---- Driver TRIM passthru? --- drive_gets_TRIMMED

There are also some programs (like SSD toolkits) that can
functionally check that TRIM is actually working under
test conditions. There are a number of tools (i.e. some
amateur programming projects) for actually verifying
it is working. TRIM helps the drive keep track of which
clusters are re-usable. The drive would work without it,
but there would be less slack space for optimization
and packing when the drive is idle.

The drive should have megabyte alignment for partitions,
as flash blocks are on power_of_two boundaries, whereas
the virtual geometry of MSDOS partitioned drives is at
multiples of 63 (bad for Flash). The Windows 7 installer
DVD makes this choice without your help. I did have a case
where I got a bit too clever, and formatted something in
WinXP before installing Win7, and the drive actually ended
up mis-aligned. And then I had great fun fixing it. I
used Macrium Reflect Free, and it has a dialog for setting
the alignment on a restore. Generally, you have nothing
to worry about, if you just booted the Win7 DVD while
a brand new drive is present and let Win7 make the choices
instead of forcing them like I was.

You can use Macrium to clone from one SSD to another if
you want. A re-install can correct a lot of sins, but
you also have the option of fixing everything the hard
way. During a Macrium Reflect Free clone, you can re-align
to megabyte boundaries if you want.

Some drives don't even have TRIM, and have their own
internal heuristics for keeping track. And some SSD
toolkits have a "re-trim" operation, to do a bulk passing
of info about the file system(s) to the SSD. You can
apparently blast the drive with a ton of TRIM commands,
but it can be a struggle for the drive to keep up.

*******

Regarding the "clean install will take care of all the weird things",
you'd want to set the BIOS SATA port setting to the desired
value (like AHCI if you want), just before booting the Win7
installer DVD, as then when selecting a driver it's going
to have the AHCI one as the final choice. In effect, the
OS installation has all the drivers re-armed, before the
first functional boot. Once a driver choice is made by the
bootup process, the re-arm bits are adjusted so that no time
is wasted on subsequent boots, choosing a driver. If you want
to change modes, then you have to manually fix the Registry
settings to make it possible on the next boot.

Paul

On 08/06/2017 06:33 PM, KenW wrote:
On Sun, 06 Aug 2017 20:22:49 -0400, Seymore4Head
wrote:

On Sun, 06 Aug 2017 18:03:21 -0600, KenW wrote:

On Sun, 06 Aug 2017 19:28:43 -0400, Seymore4Head
wrote:

I have a 128G SSD drive. It was installed before I was aware of the
bios setting AHCI. When I try to enable AHCI I get an error. Now I
have bought another 256G SSD drive.

I guess to enable AHCI I will have to reformat and I am OK with that.
When I run Win7 setup what can I expect to see?

Do I have to reformat the drive? I understand that I wont' keep my
old data, but I want to be sure there are no relic folders and I have
a clean new system.

Been a long time since Win 7, I believe there was a way to change it.
Search for Windows 7 change to ahci may work


KenW

Thanks. I really don't like changing registry entries, but since that
is easier than having to re install. I will give it a go.

One other thing I was reading is that you need drivers for SSD. I
don't think I ever installed a driver and if I did, I am not sure I
still have the driver disk. Is it true that I should be using
drivers?

An ssd is just another drive as far as Windows 7 is concerned. I never
heard that other drivers are needed. In fact, a few years ago I cloned
a hdd to an ssd with Win 7. This laptop with an ssd uses the same
drivers from 2006.
You may want to watch this thread in case someone thinks I have it
wrong.
I believe a clean install will take care of all the weird things an
ssd needs.


KenW



SATA drives are just another drive to W7. NVMe drives need
a driver slip streamed.

On Sun, 06 Aug 2017 19:28:43 -0400, Seymore4Head
wrote:

I have a 128G SSD drive. It was installed before I was aware of the
bios setting AHCI. When I try to enable AHCI I get an error. Now I
have bought another 256G SSD drive.

I guess to enable AHCI I will have to reformat and I am OK with that.
When I run Win7 setup what can I expect to see?

Do I have to reformat the drive? I understand that I wont' keep my
old data, but I want to be sure there are no relic folders and I have
a clean new system.

I changed a 3 to a 0 and set the Bios to AHCI and it works fine.
Thanks everyone