Installing new HD?

I'll be installing a new SSD on my system as soon as it arrives. Just looking for clarification about doing this hassle as hassle free as possible. I will not be cloning my current drive over to the new one, but will just wipe my entire system, reinstall Windows10 to the new SSD, use that drive for apps and such, and use my existing, reformatted, hd for data and files. I'm concerned about losing my DCS controller settings and the activation's on my modules. Do I first just deactivate them all from the library in game for both 2.5 and my openBeta install? Also, is it enough to just copy from within my /user/saved games/... directory the controller profiles folder, back it up, and just recopy it back after i get everything reinstalled, or is there something I'm overlooking? Thanks.

P.S., Since Intel really dissappopinted me with this current 9900k on a smoldering 14nm - was really looking forward to taking the plunge with this chip, but the price/benefit just doesn't seem worth it at this time - , and since I'm sort of excited to see what the new Ryzens have in store in a few months, I've decided to just give my 10 year old x58 platform it's final upgrade by adding an SSD - sure it will only operate at SATA2 speeds, but its still a lot higher throughput than my current 7200 rpm platter drive.

... Do I first just deactivate them all from the library in game for both 2.5 and my openBeta install?

Yes, you have to deactivate all the modules that use StarForce protection (those that have serial numbers on the Module Manager screen), but you need to do that just once, as the activation is per machine, not per DCS version. Just remember to do this not only for the aircrafts, but also for Maps and DLC Campaigns, if you have any.

Also, is it enough to just copy from within my /user/saved games/... directory the controller profiles folder, back it up, and just recopy it back after i get everything reinstalled, or is there something I'm overlooking?

May I suggest that you backup the whole Saved games/dcs/ folder, as there are other items, besides the controller profiles, that you may want to keep, like the Logbook (its at /Mission Editor), the screenshots, any custom mission that you have, StaticTemplates if any, custom Liveries, etc.

Also, the Hotas is identified by DCS by using its USB ID ... if this ID changes on the new Windows, then DCS will not match the backup with the current controllers config.

To prevent this, on Options -> Controls, clic on the column you want to Backup and click the button "Save Profile as" ... this will allow you to restore later the profile with "Load Profile".

Pity, that you may need to save both the Keyboard and the Hotas columns, and if you have many aircrafts it will be a bit of a hassle :)

Best regards

Good call. Forgot about the maps. Thanks. I do have most modules so I'll pretty much save everything that I can save for every aircraft, both keyboard and Hotas columns.

Hi, whats Up Doc !

Sorry I couldn't resist.

I believe deactivation would be the safe way, also don't worry to much about using up reactivation. After almost 10 years of doing regular OS reinstall I have never got myself in trouble.

I always save a copy of my entire C:\user"username" folder so I can pick out all those important files for latter use.

So yes after doing your reinstall of all apps just replace or rename the new unmodded or not yet created profiles, miz, lua, emails etc, with your backups.

Good luck , you will like the new HD, a breath of fresh wind.

Okay, so I installed the new Evo860 in this x58 system. The mobo is a Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R. Reinstalled Windows 10 off a bootable USB i created with the media creation tool. Forgot to pull the usb stick before windows tried to reboot so had to backtrack to ensure windows booting form the SSD instead of the usb stick. I tried to switch to AHCI in my bios after i saw that the drive was being detected by the bios in IDE but after switching, and checking in the bios before continuing with the reinstall, the drives were not getting detected so I set it back to IDE and reinstalled windows. Now the problem is that when I check the drive using the Samsung magician tool, it's just reporting it at 1.5 gb/s instead of 3 gb/s, which is what i expected considering its plugged into a sata2 port. Not sure if using the drive in AHCI vs IDE will make much a difference, but is it possible to just switch to AHCI now that i have the os installed on the ssd drive and boot into windows? Do you think I can just boot in safe mode, enter bios, switch the SATA controller to AHCI, then boot into windows?

The deactivation of all my modules worked without a hitch, which was my initial concern.

Windows 10 should have detected the SSD w/o any issues. But it may *not* be picking up the new hard drive because you have your MB to boot using BIOS (sometimes called Legacy) instead of EUFI.

If you boot using BIOS/Legacy, your HDD will use MBR instead of GPT. And MBR is limited to 2TB of usable disk. So my suspicion is that you chose BIOS (Legacy) instead of UEFI, causing your HD to be booted using MBR, thereby limiting you to a 2TB disk. You're probably seeing 1.5TB because windows recovery partition may have eaten up some space (along with UEFI).

You cannot change from BIOS to EUFI w/o reinstalling everything. But *BEFORE* you boot using media creation tool, you *MUST* set your system to use UEFI instead of BIOS/Legacy mode.

If you post the relevant pics of you UEFI/BIOS setup screen, we can help more.

good luck.

It detected the ssd and my existing HD when set to IDE, but not when I set it to AHCI, so I just went ahead and reinstalled in IDE mode. I can see no way to change my BIOS boot to UEFI. I tried holding shift down while restarting to enter troubleshooting mode, but I get no choice on whether I want to boot using Legacy or UEFI. Here are some screens of my BIOS and of what I'm seeing with the Samsung magician ustiliy - those numbers seem pretty low for an SSD. Could just be my system is ancient. GA-EX58-UD3R rev. 1.6.

I'm seeing both hd's in windows, its just would i be seeing perceptible performance if I switch - if i'm even able to - to AHCI mode?

I don't think this board supports UEFI. I think it may just be too old. There is a Bios from Gigabyte that enables >3TB+ HD support - doesn't really benefit me cause I see my two 1tb drives just fine. They call it EFI and from what I read this isn't really UEFI so it might not be worth the risk flashing my bios.

Whatever you do, go AHCI and forget about IDE.

AHCI has T O N S of improvements over IDE that you really dont wanna miss out on.

Wipe that mistake, do it again and learn ;)

* and always set S.M.A.R.T. to "enabled". It could save your day, some day !

I tried to do that Bit. After installing the new drive, I booted into the Bios - have no way to boot into UEFI on this board -,checked that both drives were recognized, then enabled AHCI in the Bios, rebooted, the post screen showed the new ssd - only the ssd, not the hd -, re-entered the bios to check if the drives were detected under peripherals, they weren't -, so I just didn't continue with the installation. I re-enabled IDE as this was the only thing that allowed the mobo to detect the drives, and did the reinstall. Not sure what else I can do here. I'll restore all defaults in my bios, try flashing the bios to the latest iteration, then reinstall windows again. Maybe it'll allow me to boot into UEFI, or EFI as Gigabyte seems to have called it for these older boards.

P.S. This time around I'll make sure S.M.A.R.T is enabled. :)

I flashed my bios to the most recent. It's changed a litle and now i have an option to boot into EFI - not UEFI, its the old gigabyte version. I then tried switching both controllers to AHCI. Only the Intel ICH10R northbridge controller and not the south bridge Giogabyte sata 2 controller the ssd was plugged into, recognizes it's drive: my 1 tb WD HD. I read that the gigabyte sata controller on thes old boards isnt the best so I decided to pull the plug on my ssd and plug into a sata port next my HD using the ICH10R controller. I booted back into my bios and as expected the drive is detected on that port; additionally, after changing the north bridge ICH10R controller to AHCI instead of IDE, and rebooting back into my bios, the drives still remained visible to the mobo. Yay!

I did boot into windows in IDE mode and checked how it was connected, and samsung magician is showing the drive at 3Gb/s now instead of the previous 1.5Gb/s; running a quick benchmark also showed read/write close to 250 - 300Mb/s - better than when the ssd was connected through the gigabyte controller.

Think its possible to just enable AHCI in bios now and boot into windows in safe mode? I read that this worked for people without having to reinstall windows, since I'm not running storage capacities in excess of 2.2tb's?

Yeah, as I recall, I did this multiple times while troubleshooting my MB long time ago. You should be good to go by booting into safe mode, and go from there.

Wish I had seen your reply a bit earlier. I decided to play it safe and just reinstall windows. Here is what I did. Went into bios, switched the ICH10R Sata controller to AHCI, the Gigabyte onboard SATA controller to AHCI, switched the CD/USB boot to what Gigabyte have called EFI even though I have max 2Tb's between both my drives, and changed the boot order of my HD's to my usb installation stick. Windows installed all the AHCP drivers, reinstalled Windows to my ssd after deleting all partitions, and got up and running again. Just had to create a new simple volume on my WD HD in disk manager since it was an upartitioned disk.

I'm able to boot into windows with all controllers successfully set and installed to AHCI.

I checked with Samsung Magician and both drives have AHCI enabled, and my ssd is recognized at 3Gb/s.

My drives no longer show up in intergrated peripherals within my bios. They do, however, show up on my HD boot order menu. Also, when I boot into windows, the AHCI drivers load successfully and the drives are clearly getting recognized. Is this because the drives are no longer using IDE and will not show up on my IDE peripherals list in my bios?

Also, I notice that my drives are appearing now as if they are USB devices that can be ejected. Is this normal? When IDE was enabled, my drives weren't showing up in windows as if they were electable media. The drives look fine in file explorer. Here are a few pics. Is this normal?

Thanks so much for everybody's input. It's greatly appreciated.

Yes, the BIOS is handing it off to the controller. This is the same thing that happens when you use a hardware RAID controller. BIOS will just punt to the controller since it no longer has control.

I've never seen the USB/EJECT thing, though.

I've been poking around and it appears to be that its a bug with windows x64. Apparently its due to the hot swap nature of AHCI Most current bios's most likely have a way to disable the hot swap feature. My mono and bios is pretty old and dont have this. Apparently, the newest AHCI drivers from intel seem to fix this issue - having a tough time finding the right ones -, or, there is a registry fix that tells windows to recognize all devices on the specific bus the drives are connected to to view it as an internal device. I haven't tried it yet, but will probably take this approach to getting rid of it. I'm not sure if this affects performance in any way by just leaving it and they are clearly marked, so I may just leave well enough alone.

The last three, anything after 16.2, has errors for some machines.

If you encounter a 2-5 sec freeze every other day..and then it just goes on as nothing ever happened...take 16.2 Intel AHCI driver.

My rig freezes with any driver afterwards every few hours as said above.

Google knows this bug pretty well.

Thanks for the heads up. I'll try the intel drivers. However, I am getting roughly 275-280 Mb/s, seq. read/write on this mobo's SATA2 port, which is the best I can expect, so I'm pleased.

What makes it so nice is foremost the reduced access time. That should still be many hundred times better than any HDD, if not by the thousands.

Once you go SSD, there's no going back!

Yeah.. it's virtually instantaneous in comparison to my other platter 7200rpm i now have in there for data and the like. I should have made this upgrade sooner to this machine. It's really given it a bit of extra life - at least until I finally take the plunge on a new system. Shame that the drive is only performing at ~50% of what it's capable of due to the limitations of the SATA2 port.

Really appreciate all the help I got from you guys. A very big thanks.

When I do eventually build a new system, I'll definitely be going nvme/ssd for all drives - maybe a 250gb nvme for system, a 1tb nvme for apps, and both this 2.5 ssd and 7200rpm platter for data.

Yeah.. it's virtually instantaneous in comparison to my other platter 7200rpm i now have in there for data and the like. I should have made this upgrade sooner to this machine. It's really given it a bit of extra life - at least until I finally take the plunge on a new system. Shame that the drive is only performing at ~50% of what it's capable of due to the limitations of the SATA2 port.

 

Really appreciate all the help I got from you guys. A very big thanks.

 

When I do eventually build a new system, I'll definitely be going nvme/ssd for all drives - maybe a 250gb nvme for system, a 1tb nvme for apps, and both this 2.5 ssd and 7200rpm platter for data.

NEVER 250GB. It's just too small these days. 500GB for OS and some programs, it the minimum, IMHO.

NEVER 250GB. It's just too small these days. 500GB for OS and some programs, it the minimum

i don’t think that is true.

it depends how much bloatware you install.

i have 250 sized ssd’s for both my gaming machine and my work machine and both have plenty of free space.

If you manage your drives regularly 250GB is OK, but for those who are not aware of how to clean them out or are just lazy guys, 500GB is a safer pillow ;)

But I agree, I would only buy 500 or bigger now, 1TB seems to be a sweetspot with the Adata drive right now. Cant beat that price.

Fully agree, I have purchased all parts for a new build and just waiting on the motherboard I want to be released.

This build will have no platter drives at all.

i don’t think that is true.

it depends how much bloatware you install.

 

i have 250 sized ssd’s for both my gaming machine and my work machine and both have plenty of free space.

Sure, if you're tidy about it.

Windows 25GB

Roll back for Windows 9GB - 12 GB

Bare bones Windows apps: 1GB

Office365 about 3-4GB

Hibernation/Swap 10GB

$GetCurrent 4GB

So that's what, 23% of your capacity gone?

DCS obviously depends on what modules & terrains you have.

To me, it's imply not worth getting at 250GB.

And of course, the files you need for your work matter a great deal. I often look at trace files that are 100GB or more at a time. But that's why I opted for the 1TB ssd on my work laptop and 1.5TB SSD for the gaming PC. The 8TB HDD is scratch space that I use to store backups. And because I'm HD lazy! :D