Installing New SSD: Format GTP or MBR?
This is a Windows 7 Pro 64 bit system and all HDs are basic and MBR formatted. My intent is to install the new SSD and then clone my boot drive. When going through the Install New Drive Wizard I get asked about which format to use, GTP or MBR, and unfortunately there isn't anything to guide that decision. I'd rather do this once and get it right the first time so any advice would be great. For reference I have an Intel i7-2600K CPU, Asus P8Z68-VPRO motherboard, 16 GBs RAM, and 3 Western Digital SATA HDs installed. Windows 7 is fully updated. Asus Bios is version 0801.
Thanks,
Steve
I guess I got lucky, the offset is 1,048,576. See the attached image for the full description. I did add the drive using Tools, Add New Drive and used MBR for formatting. I then cloned the drive for the most part without issue. Seems on first attempt the computer needed to be re-started and there was an issue where the computer couldn't restart. The setup was checked and I found that the SSD was set as the first boot drive so I changed it back to 2nd drive, restarted the computer and the clone proceeded without issue.
Thanks for the advice..
Steve
It is better to do recoveries and clones from the recovery CD, not from Windows. This avoids the restart issue you encounter, along with many other potential issues.
Good that you succeeded!
I may well re-do this from scratch but would like some idea of what others do as a means of keeping the drive from getting too full. At this point I have all the standard folders on the C: drive and try not to keep files such as my image files on this drive. I did copy over some current files of the most current object I have been working on and these files are a minimum 20.4 MBs each with many being used at one time. In astronomy imaging you take smaller exposures per frame and then register, stack, and combine the master frames. The raw FITS files are 25 MBs and after calibration, they are saved in IEEE Float format and then become 40.8 MBs each. My thought is having the current images on the SSD I'd have faster access but it doesn't seem so, at least not that much so I may not do this in the future. That current folder containing the images, both raw and processed, has grown to 34 GBs.
So what to install on the SSD, Windows and all program files? Anything else? With only 223 GBs capacity and having consumed all but 65.5 GBs I'm already running out of room. But the again the temporary images are taking 34 GBs of that space so make that 99.4 free space.
I have to admit, Photoshop CS5 and Dreamweaver CS5 open with blazing speed. I did try to test the speed of the drive but honestly had no idea what I was seeing or doing. I saw where excessive testing isn't good for the drive and I guess as long as I see a great improvement putting a number on it is all that important.
Keep your apps, OS, page file on the SSD. If some apps create big temp files (like the Adobe apps), put these scratch disks somewhere if you run out of space.
If your motherboard has it, create a RAID 0 with your other disks to put your content.
THis is my config for do videos with Premiere Pro.