Windows 10: Care for an SSD. It's all new to me?

Hello all! I am waiting for a refurb Dell i5 Quad Core from Amazon. I have always been fortunate enough to have good experiences with their refurbs. It is a Dell i5 Quad Core Win 10 Pro. I just noticed, how I missed it I guess buying too fast, that it has a 256GB SSD. Now I'm seeing there are things to help encourage it's longevity. New terms to me like Trimming and Wear Level. So how are these goals best met. Is it a 3rd party program, a Windows default program or what? And I understand defrag is a no-no.Just just how do I go about encouraging it length of life by these processes mentioned ab

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Issues with installation of new MSATA SSD

Hello all, I recently received a new Kingston 240gb MSATA SSD (RMA replacement) for my Alienware 14 laptop. It's an SUV500MS/240G. I seem to be having a bit of a nightmare with getting it set up properly. So my intention was to set it up as the new boot drive and then have the 750GB SATA HDD that's already installed run as the secondary. After installing Windows 10 home edition via a USB drive, when entering the bios I noticed that the new SSD is listed under legacy drive in the boot options and not UEFI. In an attempt to correct this set the BIOS to only boot with UEFI and then rebooted with the installation USB drive and used disk part to clean the SSD and convert it from MBR to GPT and then reinstalled windows 10. The first attempt to reinstall seemed to get hung up and I had to repeat the process, the second attempt successfully installed and was able to boot into windows. If I go into system information, the BIOS mode is now listed as UEFI and not legacy, however the SSD still isn't listed in the BIOS as an option under UEFI boot devices. To make things even more annoying when I boot the laptop it now lists 3 different operating systems - I assume these are the one I installed in legacy, the failed one and the successful UEFI one. I read online that simply changing an SSD from MBR to GPT will not in fact dictate if the drive is seen as UEFI or legacy but instead it is based off of the type of bootloader it has installed. It goes on to say that to be UEFI it needs an EFI system partition and then lists steps to delete and replace the system partition. You may say well there is your answer but that leads me to the next step of the problem. When loading up disk management, what's listed as disk 1 is the new SSD and disk 0 is the old 750GB HDD. The 750GB drive has an associated system partition but the SSD does not even though it is the primary boot drive (C I attempted to use disk part again as the online post had suggested to create an efi partition on the SSD however disk part simply tells me that there is not enough usable space for this operation. Now that I have attempted to explain my problem I was wondering if anyone could offer up any sort of solution, my aims are to A) Add an efi partition to the SSD in the hope it will make the BIOS see it as a UEFI boot drive or if anyone simply has an alternate method to achieve this same goal that would also be appreciated. B) Remove the excess operating systems that are now listed on the laptop when booting If any additional information is required or further explanation is needed please don't hesitate to ask and I shall get back to you ASAP. Thanks Daniel Edit 1: It seems as if I have managed to remove the operating systems that were listing when starting the laptop. I used msconfig to do this, I am hoping this has actually removed it and not just hidden it, if anyone could let me know if this was the correct route to solve this issue that would be great.

 

Issues with installation of new MSATA SSD

Yes it was a clean install on a new SSD. The laptop boots into windows fine. As mentioned in the earlier posts I'm trying to get the BIOS to see the new SSD as UEFI and not Legacy as it originally did when I installed the SSD and installed windows. I changed it from MBR to GPT from the windows installation screen and have since followed the steps above to allocate the drive an EFI partition, the drive itself still isn't seen under UEFI boot options in the BIOS itself though and I'd imagine it may be the final steps listed that may resolve this but for it doesn't want to allow it. I'm happy to post pictures, could you be a bit more specific as to what you'd like me to post. Thanks Daniel

 

New windows 10 installtion on New SSD - wont boot unless old SSD present

It seems you installed Windows while the both SSDs were connected. This would have caused your current problem. Maybe it is sufficient to do this:

1. Launch the Disk Manager.
2. Right-click drive C:, then mark it as "active".
3. Shut down Windows
4. Open the BIOS and tell it that the new SSD is the primary boot device.
5. Disconnect the old SSD.
6. Boot up normally.

If this does not work then you might have to do this:

1. Disconnect the old SSD.
2. Re-install Windows on the new SSD, using the Media Creation Tool.