This SSD works great and I was surprised how small it was. I dare say it's smaller than laptop memory!
But man, it was sure a whirlwind to install! After pouring through tutorials and forums post, it took me around a day and a half before Windows 7 finally installed was running at max speeds. I'm using it with the MSI X99S SLI PLUS motherboard, and could not find settings like, "Secure Boot" or "CSM" in my BIOS as online tutorials said to change. So I started playing with things on my own. Here were the steps I took to get it installed:
Opened Disk Management
Deleted the partition on my flash drive
Right clicked on it and choose "Convert to GPT"
Converted the Samsung SSD to GPT as well.
Formatted flash drive with FAT32.
Found Windows 7 iso file online.
Extracted the iso file with Magic ISO onto my flash drive.
Copied the folder efi > microsoft > "boot"
Pasted that folder in the "efi" folder. (Essentially, created a copy of the "boot" folder just 1 level up in the folder hierarchy.)
Opened the file, sources > "boot.wim" with the program, 7 Zip.
Within 7 Zip, selected the file, 1 > Windows > Boot > EFI > "bootmgfw.efi"
Extracted the file to the folder, efi > "boot"
Renamed the file, "bootmgfw.efi" to "bootx64.efi"
This prepared the flash drive with a UEFI installation of Windows 7. For those Windows 8.1 users, it looked like this process was a LOT simpler.
Then I went into the BIOS and set these settings:
Settings > Advanced > PCI Subsystem Settings > M.2 Source Link > [PCH]
Settings > Advanced > PCI Subsystem Settings > M.2 CH Strap > [M.2 PCH PCIE]
Settings > Advanced > Integrated Peripherals > SATA Mode > [RAID Mode]
Settings > Advanced > Integrated Peripherals > sSATA Mode > [ACHI Mode]
Settings > Boot > Boot mode select > [Legacy+UEFI]
Settings > Boot > Boot Option #1 > [Hard Disk:SAMSUNG MZHVP256HDLG-000]
From there, I disconnected all SATA drives, except my old boot SSD (which was left plugged in by accident. Not sure if that mattered).
Then I plugged in my flash drive into my front of my computer I boot it to with the F11 boot menu.
Went through the Windows installation steps, and choose Advanced Setup.
Choose Samsung SSD. (There was also a 100MB MBR partition there, I just ignored it and installed Windows on the spare unallocated space.)
That last step took a LONG time to get to work. I kept getting an error that a driver was missing. After spending several hours trying to above steps all over again, I left the computer off for awhile. When I came back, I tried again, with the only thing changed was my flash drive was in the front of my case and it worked! Not sure if flash drive being thrown off which port it was plugged into, or if the computer power in the SSD needed to be drained for awhile.
After Windows installed, sequential read and write speeds were only 700MBps and 600MBps. Much faster than my old SATA II SDD, but not nearly the speed I was promised. I played around in the BIOS I changed these settings:
Settings > Advanced > PCI Subsystem Settings > M.2 Source Link > [Auto]
Settings > Advanced > PCI Subsystem Settings > M.2 CH Strap > [M.2 PCH PCIE]
Settings > Advanced > Integrated Peripherals > SATA Mode > [RAID Mode]
Settings > Advanced > Integrated Peripherals > sSATA Mode > [ACHI Mode]
Settings > Boot > Boot mode select > [UEFI]
Settings > Boot > Boot Option #1 > [UEFI Hard Disk: Windows Boot Manager]
The first M.2 Source Link was the main setting that fixed the problem. After that I got 1900MBps and 1200MBps sequential read and write speeds. MUCH better!
Hopefully someone with my setup with have a easier time with this guide. Sure wish I had one.
| Hard Drive | 256 GB Solid State Drive |
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