Install Vista 64 bit (SP1) onto Solid State Disk

[Andy CP]

Is it possible to install Vista 64 bit (SP1) onto a SSD and make this bootable?
As in, a PC that only has a SSD in it and no hard disks at all.

Motherboard: Asus P6T Delux
CPU: i7 940
SSD: OCZ Core V2, 120GB, SATA II, 2.5â€

If it is possible, is there anything special that has to be done first or is
the SSD seen as a normal HD?

 

[David B.]

I would think the install would be no different then using a standard hard
disk.

 

[Andy CP]

"I would think" isn't useful. Does anyone actually know please?

 

[Joe Morris]

Is it possible to install Vista 64 bit (SP1) onto a SSD and make this
bootable?
As in, a PC that only has a SSD in it and no hard disks at all.

I've not tried it with the 64-bit version of Vista (but will at some point
in the future) - but I've been running the 32-bit version of Enterprise
(with beta SP2) on a Thinkpad X61T (tablet) machine for a few months with no
obvious problems. (Caveat: this is a box being used to test NAC products
and not to test Vista, so it's not been stress-tested.)

No special drivers, configuration settings, or magic waving of hands was
required, and none was required with the RTM version or with SP1.

You do need to be attentive to the brand (and thus price) of your disk. At
the request of our chief engineer I installed an OCZ SSD (the latest model)
in the X60 Thinkpads (running XP) of two of my two-levels-higher managers;
within a few weeks they demanded that the disks be removed because of
lockups. I replaced the OCZ disks with ones from Samsung (at twice the
price) and have heard no complaints since then. (That lack of problem
reports is comforting, since I also installed a Samsung SSD in the Thinkpad
used by our CIO...)

The non-stress-tested X60T I'm using has an early version of the OCZ SSD.
Whether the problems we've seen are related to the changes made between the
OCZ versions I don't yet know. (The newer version is the one that includes
a USB port to update the firmware.)

All of the SSD's I've been working with are 64 GB units.

Joe Morris

 

[Pistol Pete]

I bought a DELL XPS M1530 laptopwith a 120 GB SSD. I am running the 64 bit
version of Vista Home Ultimate (which sucks by the way
but it is what comes with the laptop).

The system boots and shuts down fast. The reason you want windoze to run on
an SSD, is that Windows writes every single memory access to the hard disk
as well as all sort of other crap. For this reason, windoze will run slowly
on machines equipped with fast processors and ram. I would say that running
windoze on an SSD is about 5x times faster than running it on a conventional
hard disk. If you want a computer that appears to be fast
then this is the way to go, install windoze on some type of fast media. I
think MS said this as well way back before the SSD drives became available
and people were complaining about how slow VISTA is.

Best wishes,

Pete

 

[Dustin Harper]

Does calling it Windoze make you cool? No. Sorry.

As for the original question: yes, you can install Vista on a SSD with no
issues. It shows up just like a standard HDD. It does have a speed increase.
Nothing spectacular, but still a bit faster.

 

[Sinner]

Does calling it Windoze make you cool? No. Sorry.

As for the original question: yes, you can install Vista on a SSD with no
issues. It shows up just like a standard HDD. It does have a speed
increase. Nothing spectacular, but still a bit faster.

--

Dustin Harper
http://www.mstechpages.com
(e-mail address removed)

You should've asked where he got that Vista Home Ultimate edition.

 

[MrJay]

I restored a backup of my hdd onto my new Intel x25-e 32g ssd. the system
stutered every 30-60 seconds (freezed actually).
I went ot OCZ forum and read about drive alignment - ssd vs hdd blocks ...
I tried the alignment "fix" and reinstalled vista. the stuttering stopped.
Not Satisfied with that, I have bought a second ssd, now in stripe and
install windows 7. Speed does not seem any faster?
So now I am wondering if there is some setting or configuration that still
could be done? I read sopmewhere on the ms technet that windows 7 has tweaks
or settings for ssd drives. can find neither info nor setting in win7?
Any one know about this?

 

[Curious]

I would not expect striping to help with two high transfer rate drives since
the processing required to combine the stripes back together again may
exceed the time required to read the striped data from both drives.