SSD for PC Gaming?

[king3pj]

Well after about 3 hours and countless google searches I have still not been able to get my computer to boot on the cloned SSD. I finally threw in the towel. I disconnected my 1TB drive's cables and started a clean install of Windows 8 to the SSD. I was really trying to avoid searching for drivers and getting everything setup the way I like it but it wasn't in the cards.

Luckily I made a full system backup to an external USB drive last night. Hopefully I will be able to recover most of my files and game saves from that backup. This is not how I wanted tonight to go but maybe I will be better off with a clean install in the long run anyways. I definitely won't be installing a lot of the junk I had on there before.

 

[dangue]

Well after about 3 hours and countless google searches I have still not been able to get my computer to boot on the cloned SSD. I finally threw in the towel. I disconnected my 1TB drive's cables and started a clean install of Windows 8 to the SSD. I was really trying to avoid searching for drivers and getting everything setup the way I like it but it wasn't in the cards.

Luckily I made a full system backup to an external USB drive last night. Hopefully I will be able to recover most of my files and game saves from that backup. This is not how I wanted tonight to go but maybe I will be better off with a clean install in the long run anyways. I definitely won't be installing a lot of the junk I had on there before.

Sorry to hear that you had to go through that to no avail. I've got all the parts for my PC in, but don't think I'm going to attempt to build it until Saturday. Having time to do it all at once rather than piecemeal after work over the next few days seems to make the most sense. Definitely looking forward to it.

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[king3pj]

Sorry to hear that you had to go through that to no avail. I've got all the parts for my PC in, but don't think I'm going to attempt to build it until Saturday. Having time to do it all at once rather than piecemeal after work over the next few days seems to make the most sense. Definitely looking forward to it.

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Yeah. It wasn't as terrible as it could have been because I used backup software called EaseUS Todo Backup just last night. The SSD was too small to be able to do a full restore but I still have absolutely everything backed up. I got the 1TB drive hooked back up and formatted. The software is currently restoring all my music to the 1TB drive while steam is downloading a bunch of games to the SSD.

The positive to all of this is that everything seems to be running smoothly and as long as I am able to recover my game saves from the external drive it doesn't look like anything was lost. It now feels like a brand new machine. Not only that, but it's the fastest machine I've ever used. Until tonight, I had never used a computer running on a SSD. It really is as fast as they say. I won't get a chance to check out load times for games tonight. That is the main thing I wanted to improve. As long as it impresses there I'm still happy.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Sorry your process wasn't as smooth as mine. I did a system image through Windows 7 when I did my clone. It probably helped though that my source drive was a 256 GB along with the SSD (the HDD was nearly 10 years old.)

Like I said, you don't realize how much of a bottleneck your HDD is until you go to SSD. One of Us...

 

[king3pj]

The guide I used claimed that software was capable of making a clone to a smaller drive even though that is usually a problem. It did tell me it made a successful clone optimized for SSD twice but windows wouldn't boot to it either time.

I even tried making a partition so my C: drive was smaller for the clone. Windows wouldn't let me shrink it any smaller than 475GB even though I cut it down to 190GB of data on the drive for some reason.


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[StevenD]

You probably could have run the Windows Recovery Disc and it would have repaired your boot issue in just a few minutes. That being said, you are WAY better off with a clean install.

 

[king3pj]

You probably could have run the Windows Recovery Disc and it would have repaired your boot issue in just a few minutes. That being said, you are WAY better off with a clean install.

Yeah, I read a little about that but by that point I was so frustrated that I was ready to just do a clean install and go to bed. This computer is used for gaming about 95% of the time anyways so I didn't lose a bunch of documents or anything. It's just annoying having to find all the drivers again and losing all my Windows settings. I think I have it mostly back to normal though.

One feature I never really appreciated until now is Steam Cloud. Most of my games are part of my Steam library and a good amount of them have that feature. I just booted up Skyrim to check the load times and it defaulted to continue game like nothing ever happened. This was completely seamless with no intervention from me. The games that don't support this are backed up on an external drive. It's just a matter of finding the file and manually moving it to the right place. I wish they all had Steam Cloud though.


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[StevenD]

There are plenty of utilities out there that will backup your drivers. And you could have used Windows Easy Transfer to backup your entire user profile.

 

[king3pj]

It sounds like slowing down and doing a little more research would have paid off. After hours of tinkering I was determined to get it running before I went to bed though. Patience isn't a strong suit for me.

 

[yourbeliefs]

Patience isn't a strong suit for me.

I never would have guessed that from someone who already owns a PS4 and an Xbone...

 

[king3pj]

Oops