Laptop SSD for Boot Drive

I recently installed an SSD into my Alienware 17 R2 (2015), and I've been trying to convert it into a boot drive. Every suggestion I've seen so far to do that includes installing Windows 8.1 onto the SSD, but my computer came with the OS on there already. How do I install Windows onto the SSD without a disc?

Hi KIGAIOKASU,
You can use USB bootable flash drive to install Windows 8.1 without a disc.
Please refer this URL - windows.microsoft.com/.../create-reset-refresh-media
Regards,
Emagine

Similar Messages

SSD for boot drive

I've installed a Seagate SSHD hybrid SSD / HD unit and installed Mavericks on it. Things do run fast. However,
something worries me a bit. Since a block of SSD can be written only so many time before it reaches the end of its
life, will the system drive have problems with this. Unix uses some sort of swap disk to allow more to run than there is sufficient
memory for. This means sections of memory which are dirty (changed from when the program started) get written out to a
swap file so the memory can be used by other programs. Windows XP did this as well. I imagine other modern systems do thet
same.
Will this cause the boot drive to get more writes than it might otherwise have?
Against this, I observe that the Macbook Air uses SSD for its only built-in drive and that the new MacPro uses SSD for its boot drive.
This leads me to think, that OS X does not do enough writing to the boot drive other than user data files to have a significant effect.
Does anyone know more about this?
Thanks,
Bruce

All recent SSDs already incorporate wear leveling in their firmware to extend their longevity as much as possible.
SSDs all have a finite write / erase cycle limit and will eventually fail, but it is reasonable to expect their lifespan should equal or exceed that of conventional hard disks. High capacity consumer grade hard disks should be considered wear items that will require eventual replacement. SSDs are no different, the only question being how much longer they will last in typical, average consumer applications. There is no doubt they are more abuse-proof than HDs and are preferable overall despite having a finite lifespan.
For all practical purposes a HD's capacity eventually becomes too limiting for most users, and require replacement for that reason whether or not they fail. SSDs are no different in that regard.
Unix uses some sort of swap disk to allow more to run than there is sufficient memory for. This means sections of memory which are dirty (changed from when the program started) get written out to a swap file so the memory can be used by other programs.
Macs have been doing that for ages, well before OS X was as much as a sketch on a cocktail napkin. Mavericks uses a new "memory compression" algorithm to minimize use of mass storage swapfiles entirely. It's light years ahead of XP or anything else.
Apple's Fusion Drive intelligently migrates frequently used data to the SSD. Whether Seagate's hybrid drive it is capable of that is unknown.

How to use ssd as boot drive and hdd as storage on a macbook pro 13

Does anyone know how to use SSD as boot drive and have HDD in optical bay as storage on a Macbook pro 13. I mean in that both drives work as one . by formatting using mac software . I would like to run all programs and OS but would love to have my downloads and useless data on run on my 1tb 5400rpm hdd without me have to manual send it there..

Does anyone know how to use SSD as boot drive and have HDD in optical bay as storage on a Macbook pro 13. I mean in that both drives work as one
Each drive mounts as a separate volume. There is no convenient way to make them look like one contiguous volume.*
Franky, with an hdd and a ssd I would recommend you put your home dir on the hdd and leave the ssd for the OS and your key applications. It's relatively easy to do and I think better than moving only portions of your stuff.
How to Move the Home Folder in OS X – and Why
* There are ways to to make musltiple volumes appear as one large drive but I think it is beyond the scope of this discussion and not appropriate to this configuration.

SSD for booting up

I have boughta Envy 700-200Z computer(has nor yet arrived) but I could not buy it with a SSD for boot up purposes as this option was not available.
Is there any special reason for this? May be this arragenment is not advisable?
If in fact booting up with an SSD is an acceptable option, please advise about it.
If possible where could I obtain such a device.
Thanks in advance.
Juan
This question was solved.
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The size limitation is for the boot drive. Unless you purchase a retail copy of windows you'll have to use the recovery media to create the image on the SSD, and when you attempt to recovery to it, it will give you that error. Your best bet is to just get a large enough hard drive 160GB and then there won't be an issue recovering to it.
bill
I'm a HP employee

Best practice for dual SSD RAID0 boot drive configuration

What is optimal stripe size for RAID0 OS/Boot Drives in OSX Software RAID?

You are talking about SSD too.
Usually the default or 16/32k would be fine for all those small frequent I/Os.
RAID though can affect SSD TRIM and it may depend on the SSDs. There are RAID optimized editions.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/internalstorage/Mercury_Extreme_SSDSandforce
http://macperformanceguide.com/SSD-RealWorld-SevereDuty.html

Xpower Sata III Setup for Boot drive

Hi again, I need help setting up my sata drive now...So far I have set sata 6gbs controller mode to AHCI.
Verfied the Marvell bios recognized my drive correctly and installed windows. Was I supposed to change anything
in the marvell bios(Virtual Disk? Assuming that is for 2 drives for raid)? Now I need to install the drivers for them. Should I install any other drivers first (Chipset, Lan, etc)? Also should I download them from msi or marvell? One thing in the manaual threw me off "Important: Only when you set the "AHCI" mode in the integrated Perpheral menu of mainboard bios setup, you have to install the raid drivers for the sata devices"? What exactly do they mean? Then it goes on to show how to install the drivers for bootable raid array. I kinda get the impression I was supposed to install the drivers via a disk as I was installing windows? Do I need to start over?

well my Marvell controller recognizes my drives, it will let me install windows on them. but i have no option at in the msi bios that would allow me to select on of these disks for a boot drive. my only bootable options are on the sata ii ports. i have tried my ocz sold 3 ssd, my 10k velociraptor, and a 2tb seagte data drive. no option to boot from them. and when i boot from my dvd drive to install windows, when i come to the prompt to customize my install, windows tells me that i can not install windows on this drive because the controller is disabled please go into your bios to enable the controller to properly boot and install windows.
this is obviously and issue with the motherboard itself. at no point and time have i ever had the option to boot from the sata iii controller. ive owned this mobo for just under a year.

How to upgrade to m.2 ssd as boot drive in Ideapad U430 touch?

I would like to install a 128 gb m.2 SSD (NGFF) as the boot drive for this system while leaving the 500 gb hybrid drive for file storage and applications. Can you recommend a step-by-step process to accomplish this? I haven't seen other forum posts where the m.2 drive would be the boot drive. The O/S is Win 8.1 and the only system backup I have made to this point is on the main drive. (Specific model number is 20270; part number 59399722 if that helps!) Any help or guidance you can provide would be greatly appreciated!

bumping this post.
Is this a good idea?
I assume moving the os to the m.2 ssd drive?
How to do this step-by-step?

Thunderbolt SSD as booting drive

I recently bought an external Thunderbolt SSD from LaCie* for my Mid-2011 iMac to use it as my boot drive (Mountain Lion).
Now my problem is that after the Apple starting sound it often takes a lot of time (sometimes up to one minute) until the apple and the spinning wheel appear. After that booting time is just fine.
Does anybody know how to get the iMac recognize the SSD with the start volume faster (in the system preferences the SSD is set as the start volume)?
Many thanks!
* http://www.amazon.com/LaCie-Rugged-Thunderbolt-Series-9000291/dp/B00A3G461K/ref= sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377610105&sr=8-1&keywords=lacie+ssd

Try resetting the PRAM on the system by rebooting and holding the Option-Command-P-R keys immediately when you hear the boot chimes. Hold them until the system resets and sounds the boot chimes again, and then release them and allow it to boot normally. Then use the system preferences to again set the external drive as the boot drive.

How to make an SSD a boot drive

I have a 2010 27" iMac (Model 11,3) I plan to upgrade my internal HDD to a 2TB model, and I would like to add a 120GB SSD. Currently I have ML on my internal drive. I have a CCC clone which I could use to colone the new HDD. If I install the SSD how would I make it the boot drive? I would not need ML on the 2TB drive, just on the SSD. I am under the impression that ML can not be installed on a bare drive, it needs either Lion or SL as a base.
Does anyone have a suggestion how I could set up the SSD?

Some users remove the optical drive and replace it with an SSD drive. Search "replace optical drive with ssd imac" for more links.
http://guides.crucial.com/Guide/iMac+Intel+27-Inch+EMC+2390+SSD+Dual+Drive+Insta llation/632

Problems stting up RAID (Mirror) for boot drive.

I have a Mac that I want to setup mirroring on the boot drive (it's running Mac OS X Server and once I get everything going I need to minimize downtime).
Since you can't move a drive with data into a raid set I first cloned the boot drive to a 3rd drive, booted off that drive, then set the two 80gb drives up as a mirror. after cloning the data from drive #3 back to the now mirrored pair I can't boot off the mirror.
I've tried using both the Startup Disk preferences and also the bless command to mark the raid as the device I want to boot from but it doesn't recognize it as a bootable device.
What do I need to do to make the raid bootable?
thanks,
Bill

The drive I want to boot off (the mirror) is "Macintosh HD"
The temporary drive it's running on now is "Macintosh HD 0"
Both drives show up in the startup items preference panel, I have "Macintosh HD" selected. When I hit restart it fails to recognize it as bootable and fails back to the other one.
I'm not sure which folder you want the permissions set on. Here's what it looks like right now.
<pre>
viking:~ user1$ ls -l /Volumes/
total 8
drwxrwxr-t 32 root admin 1190 May 19 01:16 Macintosh HD
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 1 May 19 01:19 Macintosh HD 0 -> /
viking:~ user1$ ls -la /
total 18275
drwxrwxr-t 32 root admin 1190 May 19 01:19 .
drwxrwxr-t 32 root admin 1190 May 19 01:19 ..
-rw-rw-r-- 1 administ admin 12292 May 18 09:15 .DS_Store
d-wx-wx-wt 2 root admin 68 May 18 01:50 .Trashes
-rw------- 1 root wheel 131072 Apr 24 11:38 .hotfiles.btree
-rw------- 1 root admin 1024 Apr 6 22:31 .rnd
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root wheel 128 May 19 01:19 .vol
drwxrwxr-x 38 root admin 1292 May 8 01:33 Applications
-rw-r--r-- 1 root admin 3584 May 19 00:19 Desktop DB
-rw-r--r-- 1 root admin 2 Apr 6 23:15 Desktop DF
drwxrwxr-x 3 administ admin 102 Apr 6 23:08 Groups
drwxrwxr-t 48 root admin 1632 Apr 14 00:59 Library
drwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 512 May 19 01:20 Network
drwxrwxr-x 5 administ admin 170 Apr 7 00:43 Shared Items
drwxr-xr-x 4 root wheel 136 May 8 08:59 System
drwxrwxr-t 11 root admin 374 Apr 7 02:22 Users
drwxrwxrwt 4 root admin 136 May 19 01:19 Volumes
drwxr-xr-x 4 root admin 136 Apr 6 22:32 automount
drwxr-xr-x 40 root wheel 1360 Apr 6 23:26 bin
drwxrwxr-t 2 root admin 68 Jul 1 2006 cores
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root wheel 512 May 19 01:19 dev
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root staff 11 May 18 01:07 etc -> private/etc
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 9 May 19 01:19 mach -> /mach.sym
-r--r--r-- 1 root admin 615584 May 19 01:19 mach.sym
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 8557728 Feb 22 21:58 mach_kernel
drwxrwxrwx 2 administ admin 68 Apr 18 15:04 mnt
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Jul 25 2006 opt
drwxr-xr-x 6 root wheel 204 May 19 01:19 private
drwxr-xr-x 63 root wheel 2142 May 8 01:33 sbin
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root staff 11 May 18 01:26 tmp -> private/tmp
drwxr-xr-x 10 root wheel 340 May 1 23:10 usr
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root staff 11 May 18 01:48 var -> private/var
viking:~ user1$ ls -la /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD
total 18272
drwxrwxr-t 32 root admin 1190 May 19 01:16 .
drwxrwxrwt 4 root admin 136 May 19 01:19 ..
-rw-rw-r-- 1 administ admin 12292 May 19 00:56 .DS_Store
d-wx-wx-wt 3 root admin 102 May 19 01:20 .Trashes
-rw------- 1 root wheel 131072 Apr 24 11:38 .hotfiles.btree
-rw------- 1 root admin 1024 Apr 6 22:31 .rnd
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root wheel 68 May 18 13:19 .vol
drwxr-xr-x 38 root admin 1292 May 19 00:32 Applications
-rw-r--r-- 1 root admin 3584 May 19 00:19 Desktop DB
-rw-r--r-- 1 root admin 2 Apr 6 23:15 Desktop DF
drwxrwxr-x 3 administ admin 102 Apr 6 23:08 Groups
drwxrwxr-t 48 root admin 1632 Apr 14 00:59 Library
drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 68 May 18 13:45 Network
drwxrwxr-x 5 administ admin 170 Apr 7 00:43 Shared Items
drwxr-xr-x 4 root wheel 136 May 8 08:59 System
drwxrwxr-t 11 root admin 374 Apr 7 02:22 Users
drwxrwxrwt 2 root admin 68 May 18 13:19 Volumes
drwxr-xr-x 4 root admin 136 Apr 6 22:32 automount
drwxr-xr-x 40 root wheel 1360 May 19 01:13 bin
drwxrwxr-t 2 root admin 68 Jul 1 2006 cores
drwxr-xr-x 2 root admin 68 May 19 01:16 dev
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 11 May 19 01:16 etc -> private/etc
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root staff 9 May 18 13:45 mach -> /mach.sym
-r--r--r-- 1 root staff 615584 May 18 11:34 mach.sym
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 8557728 Feb 22 21:58 mach_kernel
drwxrwxrwx 2 administ admin 68 Apr 18 15:04 mnt
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Jul 25 2006 opt
drwxr-xr-x 6 root wheel 204 May 18 11:34 private
drwxr-xr-x 63 root wheel 2142 May 19 01:13 sbin
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 11 May 19 01:16 tmp -> private/tmp
drwxr-xr-x 10 administ staff 340 May 1 23:10 usr
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 11 May 19 01:16 var -> private/var
</pre>
MacBook Pro 2.0ghz, 2gb ram / MacMini 1.83, 2gb ram Mac OS X (10.4.9) Compaq DL380 (Gentoo Linux). Tatung U10 (Sparc, Solaris)
MacBook Pro 2.0ghz, 2gb ram / MacMini 1.83, 2gb ram Mac OS X (10.4.9) Compaq DL380 (Gentoo Linux). Tatung U10 (Sparc, Solaris)

External HD - setup for boot drive

How do I create a seperate sector on an external firewire drive and create a boot drive?
I will be sharing this drive with a PC computer....

If it's going to be a bootable drive, the partition will have to be formatted as "Mac OS Extended" (a.k.a. HFS+). Unfortunately, the way the Disk Utility n the Mac works, it won't allow you to reformat only ONE partition on a hard drive in HFS+ if another partition is FAT32. You will be forced to erase the entire hard drive and pick one or the other. If you get some software that allows your Windows PC to read HSF+ formatted disks, you may be able to format each of two partitions to do what you want. But, I've never heard of anyone, directly, who's done this.
-Doug

Converting to SSD Drive for Boot Drive on m7 with Win8

I just bought a new m7-j020dx (product code E4S19UA#ABA) with Windows 8 from Best Buy. Unfortunately, it came with a standard hard disk drive (HDD) and I would like to install a Solid State Drive (SSD). I have an Intel 320 and 530 series drive. But I have not been able to get a bootable drive from this.
The first thing I tried was cloning the factory drive to a new 530 series drive using AOMEI Backupper. I got a write error on the third partition. I thought perhaps the drive was bad so I tried it again with an Intel 320 series SSD drive. Same error.
The next attempt was to clone the drive to another 1 TB drive (connected via USB), shrink the main partition with MiniTool and clone to the 320 series SSD. The cloning went fine. However, with the new SSD installed, the computer will not boot and I get "Error0x0000225", something about a file not found. Turning off "secure boot" in the BIOS setup did not help (I did this after the clone).
So I thought I would make a clean install of Win 8. I generated a recovery disk on a 32GB SanDisk USB drive using Win8's recovery disk generator (as instructed on the HP site). I then ran the recovery program off the USB drive and after a couple of hours of installing driver software and several reboots, I get an HP message stating the installation was not complete. Repeating the install did not help.
I am not sure what the problem is.
Is the USB recovery disk a made from the original HDD bad (one only gets one shot at it)? Do I need to order media from HP on disks? Are there issues with using SSD drives on these computers? Do I not have a BIOS settig correctly (UEFI)? Is there some Intel storage drivers getting in the way?
I think my next step will be to create a disk Image and then put it back to the SSD drive. But I doubt this fixes the issue with booting to it.
Another option might be to do a fresh build using Win8 media and then download and install each driver from the HP website.
Any ideas out there in the land of experts?
This question was solved.
View Solution.

Vachsen
Please install the HDD Back
Update your BIOS
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?softwareitem=ob-128144-1&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en...
Install the new Intel Rapid Start Technology Driver
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=23496&ProdId=2101&lang=eng&OSVersion...
Reboot
Attach the SSD over USB Cable
Update the SSD Firmware
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?DwnldID=18363
Reboot
Use the Intel tool for drive Copy
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=19324
Say thanks by clicking the "Kudos! Star" which is on the left.
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If you format in Guid for Intel Macs, Apple partition for PPC Macs for Boot drives, then why do my PPC Hard drives Boot in my 2007 Mac Pro, what gives?

I recently purchased a 2007 Mac Pro for a song, swapped the CPU's for octo chipsets and proceeded to wait for new Hdd's in the mail. I was told the Hard drives in my old G5 would not be bootable unless they're in Guid format. Disc Utility confirmed to use the specific maps as well and yet all of my 2006 PPC Power Mac G5 Hard drives boot in my MP without a hitch, although a few none universal apps do not work. So what am I missing, does it really matter which Apple partion map to choose from or is this a fluke?...

all of my 2006 PPC Power Mac G5 Hard drives boot in my MP without a hitch
Yes, and what version of Mac OS are they booting?
>> They will boot the OS that is on them, but not a later one.

Something annoying this way comes: using targeted disk mode for boot drive

So, this should be doable, but it's not working. Can anyone explain why, or what I'm doing wrong?
I have an Intel iMac, and an Intel MacBook - both are running Leopard. I temporarily want to use the iMac as the workstation, and the MacBook as the operating system hard disk. So, I put the MacBook in targeted disk mode, and connected it to the iMac via firewire 400. From the iMac, I option-booted to see the available boot disks. I then selected the MacBook's disk and clicked the arrow icon to boot. Once the iMac attempts booting, it displays the spinning cog on gray screen for longer than usual, then goes to a blue screen with an intermittent spinning cog. It seems to hang at this point.
I've done this with PPC machines in the past, so I'm not sure what the deal his here. The only things I can think of that would be a problem, but really shouldn't be are: 1) the MacBook is running 10.5.2 (keeping it at v2 due to the CS3 issue) and the iMac is running 10.5.3. Also, the iMac is the 24" model - so perhaps there's a screen resolution issue...
Any advice out there? THANK YOU!

Hi
Presumably the version of Leopard on both models are hardware specific? I would have thought extensions for device specific hardware such as graphics drivers etc on the Macbook would not include support for the 24" iMac. Bigger screen, more resolution support and a more powerful graphics card.
If you were to go the other way I can imagine the driver included for the iMac 24' would probably support the smaller Macbook screen.
I don't have any link or kbase that I can point at to prove this 'theory' because thats all it is - a theory. But it kind of makes sense to me and does explain the behaviour you see.
Tony

Best Use of one SSD for cache drives

Hello... Months ago I added two Physical Momentus XT drives to be used as Cache only drives: One as a Cache disk, and one as a Cache Database disk. This is the only function these drives do...
Doing this really sped up large session loads...
I'm going to be getting one SSD soon, and was wondering.... Of the Two Caches.... Cache, or Cache Database...
Which would benifit the most from an SSD over a hybrid hard drive??
Seeing that the Controller is a 3Gb/sec controller only.... That's why I used two separate Cache disks..
Now that I'll have the benifit of a SSD speed over a Hybrid Drive (Faster Reads only)... Should I combine both in the SSD or still keep them separate?
Thanks!    Jan

I have replaced 2 Momentus XT drives (One with Media Cache, and other with Cache Database) with 1 Samsung 840 SSD, which has 2 folders: CS6 Cache, and CS6 Cache Database.
Prior to pulling the drives, I tested the time it took to load a 45 min 1080i AVCHD session that had over 400 scenes, 600 2k JPEG's and about 25 pieces of music. From clicking on the session to load, until "All Media Loaded" took about 34 seconds (This is with the Cache's on separate Hard drives). Shut system down, pulled the two drives, added the one SSD drive, power up, formatted the drive and added the above mentioned folders... Then launched PPRO and pointed the Media Cache and Cache Database at these new locations... Then launched the 45 min session, and walked away while it created the data locations, peek files, etc, to the new SSD Cache Drive folders.
When It was finished, I closed, rebooted the system, Launched PPRO, and timed from the Click on the session, till the end of "All Media Loaded"...     19 seconds...
Will be watching this intently......
EDIT:   SO far, I'm happy with the change.... I am interested in anyone else who has done this sort of thing before.... and in paticular, if you found any negatives of putting both cache's on the same physical drive, even if it is a SSD....
I did find my prior notes, and going from Cache's on raid (Different directory than media, though media was on same raid) to separate Momentus XT Drives decreased load time of this same 45 min project by ~ 15 seconds..
$$$ Available was only enough for one SSD, and I'm not certain if multiple SSD's for cache's would be worth the $$.... Which is pretty much why I posted here....
Looking forward to your comments...

Laptop SSD for Boot Drive

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