Clean install vs. cloning

gregrocker said:

UnknownReverent said:

Once installed I download all my drivers.

So you do need to read Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 .

This is no longer XP. Drivers are in the installer, quickly updated by optional Windows Updates. You only need to provide one or two normally.

There are other Best Practices in the tutorial based on helping countless thousands of users here get perfect Clean Reinstalls.

I apologize if I sounded rude or anything, but I've reinstalled 7 countless times. The only drivers I get after installed are for my sound, usb3, graphics card, webcam, and wireless mouse/keyboard. After that, I just reinstall all my programs and what-not. I understand you're trying to help, but I've read through that link a couple times already. I do use CCleaner and limit my startup programs already. I also organize everything that I have installed. I have a spyware and antivirus. My Windows 7 copy already has SP1 as well. I also already planned on only having my SSD plugged in while I was installing as well. Activation is a given or else I wouldn't be able to use my Windows 7. Reading that did give me an idea of writing down what I want to do with my drives and what to install where though. Other than that, I know the other things. I just didn't go into detail in my last post. Thank you though.

No prob. It's nice to hear someone is prepared. Sounds like you're good to go.

gregrocker said:

No prob. It's nice to hear someone is prepared. Sounds like you're good to go.

I just have to figure out how I want to partition my tb drive for everything else.

I did a image migration (not direct sector clone), and in terms of performance I havent noticed any loss, now windows is extremely fast. XP used to decline in speed over time and I used to reinstall that at least every 6 months, but windows 7 doesnt seem to have that issue. However complications can arise from cloning, particurly with how drives are identified and drive lettering.

If you clone you want to ensure the ssd is identified as the first boot device on boot and the only way to ensure that it seems is to disconnect every other hdd when its first booted into windows, after the initial boot they can be plugged back in again, however if the original hdd OS drive wasnt repartitioned then you will get a conflict and it wont mount, disk manager will assign it a new id when you mount manually tho solving that problem.

On my cloned OS, everything is fine except I have resource monitor labeling my boot ssd as D:0, every other app including windows explorer correctly labels it as C:. The ramdisk issue you see in my thread isnt related to cloning, that was there before cloning.

After cloning I noticed windows did auto disable defrag on the ssd, and disabled superfetch but it didnt disable prefetch.

Removing drives after first boot trying to fix letters doesnt work, once they identified they stuck there unless edit the registry which someone posted on my thread.

I personally had to manually install the winloader files to the ssd as well, but I used norton ghost, its possible the other apps mentioned here do all that for you. I used norton ghost only because it came with my ssd, I suspect its not the best app to use.

Personally for me cloning was preferable to a clean reinstall simply because windows takes time to get how like it, some people may install windows, tweak nothing, change no settings, install a few apps and thats it. My install is several months of tuning/tweaking, various apps have had settings changed, customised gui, and probably more. Although I am considering a clean install I think it will be more trouble than its worth for me.