Best way to reformat a solid state drive?

Hardware Hub Storage
1

Hey guys,

My computer is starting to get a little buggy and I plan on moving over to Windows 8 (the discovery of start8 has also prompted this decsion somewhat) tonight, but I've never reformatted an SSD before. It seems like I read somewhere a while back that the process is somewhat different from a traditional drive, but I'm not too sure. So the question is, can I format an ssd like a triditional drive using the Windows 8 installer without any adverse effects. If the answer is no, then what should I do?

 

Thanks

2

Before installing windows 8 you should secure erase  your drive using Parted Magic to wipe the nand back to a like new state to recover most of the performance. You ONLY need to do this if you have noticed a significant loss in performance on the SSD. Depending on the SSD and whoever made it you might also want to check what your firmware version is as some of the vendors have firmware out that currently breaks TRIM.

I.E. I purchased a 2nd Corsair SSD that had firmware 5.02 which TRIM does not work properly and I had to flash 5.03 to restore it.

3

couldnt have said it better myself

4

Thanks, I probably should have also mentioned that a normal drive format during a new install won't hurt anything. Most of what I said is if you know the SSD is slow or has a problem which hopefully is due to firmware and not the hardware itself (If such a problem does arise).

5

Thank you very much, I just formatted it during the install. Everything is working great.