Windows 8 boot times - SSD Upgrade

Landoflemon

Hello,

I have a 120GB SSD in my Acer S7 ultrabook and want to upgrade to a 250GB.

The current SSD is very fast at starting up, about 3 seconds to login, is this because of UEFI?

How would I reinstall Windows 8 (USB? no optical drive) to ensure that I maintain the same very fast boot times? I ask because I have experience with another windows 8 machine that is much slower at starting so obviously this one was set up differently.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks.

The Glass Key

UEFI plays a part but in my limited windows 8 experience going from 4GB of RAM to 8GB of RAM made the biggest difference in start up speed I've noticed recently.

Landoflemon

I might have phrased it poorly, but I'm not trying to increase boot up times, just that when I do upgrade SSD that I maintain the super quick 3 second boot.

I don't think that it's a standard windows 8 install, I think there's something else that's making it that fast, as I have another windows 8 machine with 16gigs of ram that's much slower at booting from SSD.

The Glass Key

I didn't phrase that well either, I'm just pointing out that RAM seems to be a factor, on a 4GB machine I didn't notice that it was very fast to boot but once I put 8GB in it Windows 8 very obviously booted much faster.

Lu Tze

The Glass Key wrote: »

I didn't phrase that well either, I'm just pointing out that RAM seems to be a factor, on a 4GB machine I didn't notice that it was very fast to boot but once I put 8GB in it Windows 8 very obviously booted much faster.

I can't imagine the ram made any difference, perhaps slightly if going from 1 stick to 2, or to faster ram.

Landoflemon

It's funny, I'm having the exact opposite experience :P I know that makes no sense, but my 4 gig machine takes about 3 - 4 seconds and my 16 gig takes 15 - 20 seconds!

Just also confirming that RAM isn't a huge factor in boot times.

BloodBath

Windows 8 and modern UEFI's have a feature called ultra fast boot that will completely bypass all bios checks. It goes directly to booting windows.

You can't access your bios normally and have to do it through windows.

CrinkElite

While I appreciate the speed increase, I can't say I'd be too happy not being able to access the bios.

Can it be disabled?

BloodBath

You can still access it. You just have to do it through windows afaik. It will reboot and go into your bios.

That could be a problem if the system isn't stable enough to boot into windows but you could always reset the bios.

CrinkElite

^^Exactly my thinking.

Landoflemon

Ok, thanks for clarifying that, I guess my question is if I have to install windows 8 in a particular manner on a new SSD in order for it to take advantage of the UEFI features, or can that be enabled/disabled at a later stage?

Moon54

Landoflemon wrote: »

I guess my question is if I have to install windows 8 in a particular manner on a new SSD in order for it to take advantage of the UEFI features

Make sure your boot media (Win 7/8 disc) is in the drive when you boot.
Then you should see an extra UEFI option on the DVD drive boot options screen.
I.E. The DVD drive will appear twice, one will be normal and the other will have the UEFI name appended to it.

The system drive needs to be a formatted to GPT so that it can access UEFI boot blocks. Also, I believe no other partitions are allowed when installing.

The above assumes a fresh install.

As regards, converting to UEFI, yes it's possible but it's a very lengthy process - https://gitorious.org/tianocore_uefi_duet_builds/pages/Windows_x64_BIOS_to_UEFI

With Windows 8's quick install time the best option is fresh install on a empty drive.

Landoflemon

Thanks very much for the great reply, I'll work through what you described there and figure it out.

invaderzimirl

look into sysprep then take an image via ghost or what ever you wnt then on reboot windows will go through a reconfig for your new drive.

have a look here for win 8 sysprep from Microsoft site

The Glass Key

Some MS technet info on UEFI http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766450(v=ws.10).aspx, I don't think sysprep is the answer here.