How to change your OS drive? - to Intel SSD G1

[idata]

I have just bought a 1st gen Intel 80GB drive (yes I know, it does not support trim and so on... It was cheap and was what I could afford at the moment )

Searching the intel forums, I can see that this might be a bit more complex than I assumed.Basicly, I have the Gigabyte GA-X58A - UD3R 2.0 and the OS disk is now a 160GB 7200rpm drive.I also have a RAID 0 configuration with 2x Velociraptors, which I'm keeping How should I install the new SSD? 1) connect to what port? 2) start W7 as usual, and flash drive with new FW in W7? 3) how to (best) transfer the OS image from the existing OS drive? a) I have downloaded the Intel program for this (data mighration SW?) b) I also have a WHS server - I know I can use this to restore the computer image completely to the drive.4) how to setup in the BIOS? a) IDE mode? b) AHCI mode? (By the way - what is AHCI? )5) I see there is also some posts about registry changes for the IDE/AHCI part. Is it possible to do this before I install the SSD?

[idata]

I'd say the numbers you are seeing in the benchmarks are right for a G1 80GB SSD. The smaller Intel G1 and G2 SSDs did not have spectacular write speeds, as can be seen in the reviews of those products. In writes, they are out-performed by good HDDs whether in RAID or not. The G2 80GB SSDs are rated at 80MB/s at best. Check the specs and performance of the Intel 40GB SSDs in writing, they are not very good.

SSDs are much more variable in speed depending upon the size of the files compared to HDDs. It's the same for the reads with SSDs, more so with earlier models.