NP530U3B-A01 new SSD (HDD replacement) clean install W7 experience

I just replaced Hitachi 7mm HDD in my girlfriend's new NP530U3B-A01 ultrabook by the 7mm Crucial M4 128GB. It was my first experience with a Samsung notebook at all so I wasn't very familiar with it and I had to work it out over 2 nights.

After disks swap I tried a fresh install from a USB, but after restart it didn't boot up. More details are in thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/samsung/655643-series-5-ultrabook-wont-boot-after-installing-windows-ssd.html

I saw the thread after my failed attempt and then I found out more information that helped me to go through. I noticed in bios the windows installer changes the bios settings - had to enable FAST BIOS MODE back. Also a new line Windows Boot Manager appeared as the 1st option in the boot list.

I put the Hitachi HDD in and switched off the Express cache, then I swapped disks again and started the installation from my old/semi working/aged USB DVD unit. Unfortunately I was not able to boot from any other DVD than original supplied with the notebook (due to very bad DVD unit, but only one USB attachable I had) - so I did the install from that one. Advantage - this DVD activates the windows with Samsung OEM key.

The installer asked me about the partition where to install and didn't want to let w7 install in any of already available partitions (created by the previous attempt) on the SSD, but let me delete all these partitions and start installation into the unallocated space. The installation went OK except some devices that had no drivers in the original windows installer:

• Intel HM65 chipset
• VGA Intel HD 3000
• WLAN Intel 6230
• LAN Realtek
• USB 3.0
• Elan touchpad
• Realtek audio drivers

The Intel drivers I took from the Intel driver update utility and the others from the Samsung webpage.

I removed the partitions from 16GB ISSD drive and utilized it as a single partitions D: disk. I put there:

• TEMP folder (and changed variables accordingly)
• browser caches (explorer + chrome)
• windows pagefile
• folder for default Downloads

As the last thing I had to play little bit with the hibernation, because the hiberfil.sys was missing even if the hibernation seemed to be activated.

 

Today I installed to the same machine the larger 500GB SSD. I couldn't manage to make the fresh install from the USB DVD drive, because the pc didn't want to boot from it at any costs, just kept restarting when tried to boot. The DVD drive was detected in bios correctly and it was audible the drive is working. I could boot from the DVD into another PC without any problem. In the end I had to clone the drive which is nice one side, but I really needed to reinstall.