Reinstalling Windows on an OEM laptop

[iceman]

Hi guys

My Toshiba laptop is a bit over 1.5 years old, and it had Windows 7 setup pre-installed. That is, when you start the laptop for the first time, Windows is installed and you choose 32 or 64bit etc.

I chose 32bit at the time.

Now, 1.5 years later, it's starting to run like a dog, especially when using Photoshop, Lightroom etc, and there's an increasing number of Windows updates that fail to install (currently about 25).

I'd like to do a fresh clean install, and probably install 64 bit, but I don't have the Windows 7 CD so I'm wondering if I can re-install? Is the CD KEY on the bottom of the laptop?

What do I need to be careful of?

I really don't want to have to re-install everything, but it's getting so slow I don't have much choice. The larger file sizes of the 5D Mark II images are killing it.

Also, do I even need to bother with 64 bit if my laptop only has 4gig of RAM?
Isn't 64 bit for addressing RAM over 4gig?

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi Mike

Your laptop should have a recovery folder (it may be hidden, there are ways to find it if your instruction book hasn't told you how) to allow you to start all over again but it will not normally save anything you have added. Copy your User folder to another drive or computer and any other important files as well. They can be written back to the "new" installation.

As for the key you should not need it but it probably won't be the the same as on that label. None of mine ever are.

To find your key I have attached the keyfinder program in case you have not got it. It will find your Windows 7 key and MSofice keys as well

Your computer has probably got Norton antivirus on it and a lot of other garbage that are notorious for making a computer go slow. A good clean up of programs you don't use and registry may get your speed back.

I am not sure about your 32/64 bit option. I have a dual core AMD with 4GB of RAM running Win7 64 bit. It dual boots to WinXP as well. I have some 64 bit programs on Win7 with 32 bit versions on XP and there is no obvious difference in performance.

Barry

[supernova1965]

Hi Mike,

With 4gig of memory you are not getting full use with 32bit as it can only use 3.25 gig of ram. If you have a friend with an OEM version of Win 7 and the sticker on the bottom of the laptop has the code you can reinstall if you don't have the sticker you can install and run Belark Advisor a free program that you can download and it will give you all the product keys of the software installed on your computer including Windows.

[Poita]

The CD key should be on the bottom of the laptop, you should also be able to create an install CD from the files on the machine, most OEM laptops have this option buried away somewhere, which brand is it?

32bit means you only see 3.25GB of your 4GB of RAM, so if you don't need that extra half a gig or so, and have no intention of adding more RAM you can stick with 32bit.

As for things to watch out for, if you can't make a CD of the install from your current machine, get the SATA drivers ready ahead of time in case you have to load them during install. Especially if installing using AHCI for the HDD. Much easier to download all the drivers for your machine now and put them on a CD.
Especially the network drivers, as you will need them before you can connect to the internet to download the rest!

I tend to download all the drivers ahead of time, that way if it takes a while to find one, you are not trying to do so on a half-functioning machine.

Other things are the usual, make sure you have you internet and mail logons and passwords, use a disk image program to back up to an external drive so you can do a full restore if it all goes pear shaped, and get together a list of the software and their codes etc. that you need to do your reinstallations.

I usually also download the latest versions and have all my utility software ready to install from a CD so they are all in one place (winrar, foxit PDF reader, browser install etc.)

That is about it really!

-P

[jamiep]

Mike,

Most of the big brands have a recovery partition from which you can recover the original installation ... although painful it can be worth the effort returned in machine speed.

64 bit can be an advantage, but check everything you need to have working has a 64 bit driver first (can be problematic with some older hardware and devices).

Othewise - I can thoroughly recommend 64 bit - it sings - especially in programs written with a 64 bit version such as some photoshop versions.

Jamie

[mplanet62]

Been there, did that. Most of laptops with Windows will have an option of creating recovery disk Start/Programs/Recovery manager/Recovery disk creation. You will need 2-3 empty DVD-Rs for that. When you have the disk, put it in the DVD drive on boot-up and follow prompts. Easy! Hurry while your system still works and you are able to make the disk. If it crashes restoration process depends on some variables and becomes a lottery.

P.S. The laptop end up in 'like new' state - so make sure you backup all your data and have all distributives.

[BlackWidow]

OK Mike here is what to do. If you have trouble with this you can PM and i will phone you or me and I will guide you. At startup keep pressing F8 untill a screen apears giving you boot options. At the top should be an option to repair. Select that and wait a while. It should then ask a few questions like what keybourd etc (us). Then you will get another menu that will give you the option for a toshiba system restore. You will need to select this and choose restore to factory status. Some menus may be a little different but you will see what to do. Then the recovery will start with the same option as when you first set the system up.

Also you should have an icon on your desktop to create recovery disks. If not you may find it in the start menu. In the odd Toshiba you may find a recovery section in the start menu also.

Thier are othe ways of forcing a recovery, and I am happy to talk you through if needed. Oh yes I do this as Job , and no you wont be charged LOL



Mardy

[BlackWidow]

OK Mike here is what to do. If you have trouble with this you can PM and i will phone you or me and I will guide you. At startup keep pressing F8 untill a screen apears giving you boot options. At the top should be an option to repair. Select that and wait a while. It should then ask a few questions like what keybourd etc (us). Then you will get another menu that will give you the option for a toshiba system restore. You will need to select this and choose restore to factory status. Some menus may be a little different but you will see what to do. Then the recovery will start with the same option as when you first set the system up.

Also you should have an icon on your desktop to create recovery disks. If not you may find it in the start menu. In the odd Toshiba you may find a recovery section in the start menu also.

Thier are othe ways of forcing a recovery, and I am happy to talk you through if needed. Oh yes I do this as Job , and no you wont be charged LOL



Mardy

[mithrandir]

Mike, as Warren says 32 bit Windows can only use 4GB, less the memory for video and the BIOS for all your hardware. If you have a 1GB video (like this ThinkPad does) you can't even get 3GB.

Switching to 64 bit takes the video and BIOS out of the equation and you can use all 4GB, but with the 64 bit addresses requiring twice as much memory to hold them you will lose out on a bit.

Does your Toshiba support more than 4GB? Maybe 6 or 8GB? You can never have too much memory.

[acropolite]

Mike, Martin is on the money with the recovery disk set, we have several Toshi's at work and have created disk sets using that option. In addition to an extra 4Gb of ram (if possible), changing the HDD to an SSD would also give it a massive boost.

[Omaroo]

Windows still sounds like such fun! :)

[iceman]

Thanks for all the advice guys, heaps of things to try.

I think I'm maxed out on memory already with 4G but will check if I can put 8 in it.
It's a Satellite L650D.

I need to backup all my data first. I need another external HDD.. at least 100GB to backup.

[troypiggo]

If you're doing a full reinstall, maybe consider partitioning the disk with a separate partition for your data so next time this happens you only have to reinstall windows and your programs, but your data is safely separate.

[Poita]

I think you can go to 8GB
http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=Satellite%20L6 50D%20%28PSK1N1-1234567%29&Cat=RAM

But I'd need the full model number to be sure.

If you are buying RAM, I can't recommend buying Crucial RAM enough, it is a little bit more, but I spend a huge portion of my life troubleshooting laptops, and have lost count of the amount of times replacing the RAM has solved their problems. Many respected brands I have had endless trouble with, I have never, and I do mean never had a single problem with Crucial RAM, in literally thousands of machines over my career.

Oh, and here is how to restore your machine to its original state.
http://aps2.toshiba-tro.de/kb0/HTD1303440001R01.htm

[iceman]

After a very frustrating hour or two with Photoshop and an extremely slow laptop, I've started the process..

Well, starting to start the process :)

Have enough space on the home laptop to use as my backup, and will start copying the 200+ GB overnight.

Have ordered 8GB crucial RAM (http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=Satellite+L650 D%2f046) (2x 4GB DIMMS). It's a shame that international shipping is US$25!

Will then do the recovery option from the BIOS and start re-installing things one by one.. what a pain.

I just can't keep it like it is though. I can't afford a new laptop even though I want one, and I can't stand the frustration of trying to use Photoshop with the larger image files of the 5DMk2. It wasn't nearly as frustrating with the Canon 40D files, but this takes me over the edge :)

8GB RAM plus a fresh install will hopefully keep me going for a while.

[iceman]

btw thanks for all the advice and help.

It's reassuring to know that there's people I can call on for help if things go pear shaped :)

[RobF]

Not sure how you're backing up Mike, but might be an idea to do a full disk image as well, just in case you get stuck anywhere and just "want to go home". Really handy to save a basic re-install image with essential programs on a 2nd partition as Troy suggested too if you have space to make a reinstall quicker in the future.

[andyroo]

Hi,


Look your biggest problem with your PC isn't how much RAM you have, 4GB is more than enough for photo editing, if you look I doubt you would exceed that in the system resources.

That said a 64 bit OS with 8GB ram will run better than your current setup for photo editing, so that is a good move. But you can't do is the way you are trying to, ie you can't use the 'recovery' option. It's funny because I just replied to a similar post, and 99% applies to your situation. So I'm just going to paste it and fix it up a bit for your situation.




I saw you mention you want a new laptop but can't afford it, well thats OK, but seriously a 1.5 yr old laptop isn't old! I think you'd find the actual specs are pretty much the same as current market laptops. The processors would be the same, the ram would be the same (or 8GB which is what you are doing anyway).

So what's the point of buying a new laptop?

You are much better off spending $100-200 and buying a Solid State drive, or SSD.


http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?...ducts_id=19276

The 60GB models are about half as cheap, and for most people 60gb is more than enough for the OS (say about 10gb-20 for win 7)

They are super easy to swap out.

I don't know what model you have, but this should give you an idea, but if you can swap the RAM you can swap a hard disk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPeDhyrqG98&feature=related



Having a 'smaller' C:\ drive is actually a good thing, because it will force you to store your data on an external drive, which you should then backup again depending on how serious you are. I have a 120GB ssd and then a 1TB in my desktop.

I cannot state the huge improvement in everything the laptop does, that you will get by putting an SSD in it. Even most in market laptops dont come with an SSD as a stock option yet, they are starting to come as options though. But it will boot faster, programs will start faster, programs will run better and faster, you can transfer files faster, everything you can imagine will run better with an SSD.

You could remove the DVD drive on the laptop (get a cheap external USB drive) and then you'd have space for a larger normal mechanical drive, if you wanted in the future.


2) Install the OS. Even if you don't have the media you can still install windows 7. There should be a sticker on the laptop which has your product key. Find out which version your license if for (Professional, home premium etc), then download the ISO here, just make sure you get the x64 version:

http://www.mydigitallife.info/window...-home-premium/


Once you've got the ISO downloaded, you need to make a bootable USB disk. Get a USB stick with over 4GB of space on it. Then use this tool to make a bootable disk, its basically the same as having win 7 on a DVD, but on a USB stick instead.

http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/...usbdvd_dwnTool

It's very easy to use. Heres a video of guy using it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up6pjd5wMjA

Just make sure you don't have any other USB devices like external drives etc plugged in because you might accidentally wipe the wrong drive! (I've done this before)

You can do all this before you take out the old hard drive and put the SSD in. So now you should swap the SSD in and the RAM. Make sure you've got the battery out while doing this (also your product key may be under the battery sometimes they put it there).


Now plug the USB into the laptop and turn it on. Watch the post screen because it will show you which key to enter boot menu. It's easier than changing the bios, because it just lets you change which device the laptop boots first from, for one time only. It might be F2, F10, F12 or even ESC. Just look up the manual for your PC. You will see a list of boot options like, Hard drive, DVD drive, but the one you want will be "USB HDD" Or something like that, just keep trying until you see "Windows is loading Files" start.

Now follow the prompts and install windows 7. Windows will scan your hardware and install 90% of the drivers you need. You may need to download and install some others after windows has started, like WIFI for example, it just depends on the model. Check in device manager to see which devices have not had their drivers installed, but generally the only drivers I would bother with getting from the manufactures site would be:

Video and
Network (IE Wifi etc)

Activate windows using your product key under the laptop!



All that might sound complicated but it really isn't. It would take you maybe 2 hours to do it, if that. I work at a large company in IT, and I reguarly do this to old laptops, for example one model I've been upgrading is a Dell D520, which is probably 3-4 years old. It's only got a dual core processor, and usually only have 1-2GB of ram. But once I stick an SSD in it and put windows 7 on it they are faster than most new laptops.

To give you a number typically mechanical drives can transfer data around 100 megabyte per second.

An SSD is capable of up to 500.

If you have any questions just PM me etc I don't mind helping!


But getting an SSD and reinstalling from scratch, added to the 64bit OS and 8GB ram your laptop will be literally faster than most new laptops all but for the very expensive ones.

[iceman]

I'm interesting in finding out more about this.

There's a load of SSD's here: http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=210_902

How do I know which ones are compatible with my Toshiba L650D?

[acropolite]

Mike as far as I know SSD's are compatible with pretty well anything that has SATA, Win 7 has some settings for SSD use, not sure whether they have to be manually set or automatically detect and set up for the SSD when installed. Perhaps someone could fill in the gaps.

[andyroo]

Yeah there are loads, sorry that link was meant to go here:

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=210_902_1221&products_id=19276

If you look here:

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=210_902_1221

You will see of the intel brand there are two main series, the 520 and 320 series.

Basically the 320 are the first generation of SSD's and are capable of around 300mb speed.

The 520 are capable of more like 500mb per second. The 320's are being phased out, so go with a 520.

60GB is enough for most people, but I'd strongly suggest the 120GB which I linked above. For $200 you will have a beast of a laptop!

I prefer Intel, they are slightly more expensive, but the difference is very minimal (say about 10-15%+ in price), but it's worth it for the better quality and warranty.

As above any SSD will work with your laptop. These days the main connector type is Serial ATA, or SATA. Your laptop will be SATA. The old connector types PATA, haven't been used in laptops for years, like 5+ years old.

Windows will detect it as a normal Hard drive and install normally. It doesn't care what technology the hard drive is made of, as long as it stores 1's and 0's.

If you want something slightly cheaper then this is the one I have in my desktop PC:

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=210_902_1006&products_id=17369

And as above it too would work fine in your laptop. Let us know how you go!

[iceman]

I can see this will be true in a desktop, but I can imagine it being quite frustrating on a laptop. 120GB used to be more than enough in the 'old days', but it's amazing how quickly it gets used up these days.
It's really frustrating having to plugin in an external HDD to move stuff in and out every day.
I'd have to store my 200+ GB of photos on an external drive and then copy across the 'set' I'm working on onto the SSD so I can process it faster, then when I'm all done, copy it back onto the external drive.

If it just ran off USB power it'd be ok, but most of the big ones need external power which is a pain crawling under the desk etc :)



I'm not sure what you mean here??

[iceman]

Thanks I'll get the 520 120GB.

[iceman]

I had a look on pccasegear while I was there, and USB powered external HDD's have come a long way since I last bought one that was only 80GB capacity.

I just got a WD 1TB USB powered, so I don't need to plug it in to power.

[andyroo]

Sorry what I meant was, if you want, a good solution to make up for the smaller C drive space, is to replace your DVD drive with a normal mechanical drive, like the one you currently use for your C drive. (If there's nothing wrong with it you may as well just use it).

So you get one of these:

http://www.newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=462

Then just remove the DVD drive, and put this in its place, it's basically a caddy to hold the mechanical hard drive. So you will have your SSD as your main OS disk, then have the old C drive as your data disk, for storage.

Say you could get this:

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=210_267&products_id=18060

That way, you would have 120GB for your OS and programs which will be super fast, but also the 1TB internal disk will be very quick because it will be connected via SATA, as opposed to having a USB2 connected external drive.


But see because you have a 1TB internal, then you could use the 1TB external as a perfect device to backup your 1TB internal.

I hope this makes sense, and yeah maybe you are spending a little money but it's worth it to have a good backup, because your time is worth more than a few hundred dollars!!

The only thing you lose in this situation is your DVD drive, but seriously how often do you use it? They are becoming obsolete so rapidly. Any software you want/buy etc is downloadable these days and Like I said if you really need you could just get an external USB DVD drive which are like $20 on ebay.

Here's a picture I drew:

http://imgur.com/TFoo8

[iceman]

This is great!

I can use the current 250GB drive initially, and get a 1TB one a bit later (when funds recover).

So i'll have 120GB SSD, 250GB internal, and 1TB external via USB for now.

That'll keep me out of trouble for a little while.

Though it's taken about 30 hours so far to copy about 240GB to my other laptop across the wireless network. So damn slow!
I've got to copy it back too, once I've rebuilt everything. Another 30 hours!

[Poita]

Cable the two laptops directly together and it will take less than 1/10th of that time!
Plus you probably aren't going to copy all 30GB back, or is that 30GB of actual documents and pictures etc?

I now no longer have any laptops with internal DVD Drives, I have an SSD boot drive and a 750GB internal drive as my standard setup, and use an external DVD drive for the very few times I need one.

You won't know that machine, with 8GB of RAM and a SSD boot drive, it will absolutely scream along.

[iceman]

How will the SSD affect battery life? Better or worse than a mechanical drive?

[OzRob]

They use less power so battery life will be longer.

[iceman]

Just what I wanted to hear :)

[andyroo]

As the other user said you should just wired network for this occasion, you can connect them via Cat 5 cable, either PC to PC or, use your wifi router as a switch.

But anyway no SSD don't use more battery life. Also mechanical drives only use power if they are spun up, which if you set it in power settings, means that even though your going to now have two hard drives, the secondary data drive will only be used when required, like a dvd drive that it replaced.

So no you shouldn't see any worse battery life, except maybe because you will use it more. It's a myth about old SSD drives, also because they generate heat, but if you do bench tests they dont use any more than traditional drives.

[iceman]

Well the SSD has arrived.

I've downloaded Win7 64bit ISO and created the boot disk on a new 4gb USB. I had an issue creating the bootsect from a 32 bit machine but found a 32bit bootsect and was able to get it working the second time around.

I've backed up everything, I think :)

So tonight/tomorrow I'll replace my HDD with the SSD, put in the USB and boot off it to re-install Win7 as 64 bit.

My new RAM hasn't arrived yet, and neither has the case for the SATA drive which will allow me to put it in the DVD slot, but I can still re-install Win7 as 64bit on the SSD for now and put in the new RAM when it arrives.

Wish me luck!

[iceman]

Well I'm up and running again.

The SSD installed easily, haven't got the new RAM yet.

Installing Win7 x64 off the USB worked flawlessly, until I rebooted it and found I couldn't connect to the router and no display drivers either.. I guess that's the benefit of using the Toshiba BIOS re-install - it has all the drivers with it.

So I had to use the other laptop to get on the Toshiba website and download the drivers I needed, copy them to USB and then install them on my laptop.

Then it's been installing all my programs again and starting to copy the data I need back off the other laptop.

Almost back to normal, still a few programs to install but the SSD is definitely faster.

All on a morning when IceInSpace was down and I had to go out.. busy morning :)

[iceman]

Next update.

I've spent the last few days installing old programs again and getting my local web development environment up and running for IIS and other websites I've done.

First problem I found, was the 30GB on the main C drive was not nearly enough. Windows itself chewed up about 18-20GB, then by the time I added Lightroom, Photoshop and other programs (not their data, just the programs!) I ran out of space trying to install Microsoft Office.

And this was after I'd already allocated the 80GB of the 120GB SSD to the D drive. So I had to re-copy the D drive contents to external HDD, format the D partition and unallocate it so I could re-allocate an extra 20GB to the C drive.

Now I have about 53GB on the C drive with about 7GB to spare, and everything is now installed. Although I'd be in trouble if I tried to re-install the CoD franchises :)

My data drive (D) only has 58GB and it's already full. The iTunes library is 30GB on its own, so I haven't been able to copy on any photos yet. I barely fit the Lightroom library (~6GB).

So now I'm waiting for the casing to be able to mount my old mechanical drive in my DVD drive bay to allow me to free up a bit of space on D and put my pics and music on the other drive.

One consequence of re-installing is that the DVD driver seems to be busted, even though Windows recognises it, and *some* CD's can be read - it won't recognise Office or some other CD's or DVD's. I've got around it by sharing the DVD drive on the other laptop.

I'll have to get a USB DVD drive soon though.

And good news, got my 8GB RAM today and of course it went in easily.

So I can't wait to try out PS and LR. I've definitely noticed the increase in speed in general running of Windows with the SSD hard drive. It's so quiet too! The laptop does feel fresh again. I love it. It needed a good cleanout too.

120GB SSD is really too small for most purposes though. They'll have to increase capacity soon :)

Oh and I did spend hours trying to get MySQL, PHP and Apache working properly. Permissions problems, Windows UAC and other annoying things.
Then I finally installed WAMP and wow what a breath of fresh air. I wish I installed it years ago :) The Wordpress and modern sites worked fine immediately, but the IIS platform is old and requires an older version of PHP and changes in the php.ini which screwed me around for a while. All good now though.

There's my update.

Thanks to Andy and others for their help and advice in this thread. It's been much cheaper than a new laptop and I actually look forward to image editing, not like a week ago when it was a very painful experience.

[supernova1965]

Hi Mike,

I often install programs to the second partition or a second HDD if they are large you get a chance to change the install location during setup.

Glad to see you are back up and running.

[Barrykgerdes]

Changing partition size on the fly is no problem with programs that do this. The free (trial version) of Easeus will do this without bother. I use Partition Magic but it does not work on win7. Acronis makes a good image for later making images and restoring. I use drive image but it also does not work on Win7

I regularly need to increase and shrink partitions. Windows XP now needs 60 GB to handle my home video assembling.

On My win7 platforms I always make an image of the installation on a backup disk. Delete it. Install windows XP (FAT32) on the primary partition in 40GB (with the image recovery program). Then using any Win 7 disk start the install of win 7 on the second partition (60 GB NTFS) as a new installation (not upgrade). This will install the BCD startup screen. When the install stops for the want of a key you can then restart Windows XP and and copy the Win7 image back to your new partition. Works every time for me.

I then have what is left of the hard drive to store any programs that are common to both systems, drive images, tools etc.

Barry

PS windows can always install new copies of later systems but you can't install an earlier system if there is an existing later system.

[andyroo]

Glad it's running better. And once you have the DVD HDD caddy then you won't have to worry about space. If it were me I would leave the entire C:\ use 120gb, you will need more room for programs/files you are working on. Stick everything else on the mechanical- itunes etc, which I think you said you were going to. Music doesn't need SSD speed! Technically you could install itunes to C:\ then direct the library to the other drive- that way the program will run much better on the SSD but the music will be on the mech drive. 120gb is plenty for OS+programs etc. Everything else can go on cheap attached storage. But in a few years 512GB ssd will come down to say $200.

But the good thing about a small C:\ drive is that you can easily clone the disk and stick it on an external, which means say if the SSD dies or something else happens, you can just reimage the new SSD! It might take a few hours to learn how to do it, but think of the time you save rather than having to do it all from scratch.

If you have windows 7 professional then you can disable UAC and other annoying things in secpol.msc, but I'm guessing you've already figured that out too.

The SSD will help somewhat with image editing- if the images are on either the SSD or the internal SATA mechanical hard drive.

Let us know how your photoshopping goes!

[iceman]

My HDD DVD caddy turned up yesterday, and that was installed without drama.

Just a question about page file - it's currently on my C drive and Windows has allocated 8GB. With 8GB of RAM, do I really need a page file size that big?

[supernova1965]

Generally the page file is equal to or double the physical memory so yes this is correct.

[mithrandir]

A page file on SSD is not a good idea. The continual rewriting will reduce the drive's lifetime. Either turn off swap completely or tell Windows allocate it on your disk in the caddy. 1.5 to 2.5 times actual memory is usual for swap, and allocating at a fixed size stops disk fragmentation.

With a fixed swap and memory hungry programs (64 bit ones in particular) Windows may start complaining you have run out of memory. Then you need more RAM, but the 8GB you have maxes this one out. When you have large slabs of memory being paged to and from spinning disk it will slow response dramatically, at which point putting swap on SSD and reducing its lifetime might be an acceptable tradeoff.

If you want to be able to hibernate the lappy you also need enough disk space for a bit more than the amount of physical RAM, over and above any swap space.

[supernova1965]

This is right I forgot about that definately not a good idea for a SSD good advise

[andyroo]

Moving the page file is a bad idea. Leave it on C. You can decrease the size if you want, but I would leave it at what windows set it at. Especially if you are doing photoshopping, leave it alone!

You are not going to wear your SSD.. they have a mean failure life that will long out live your laptop hardware. I don't know where this myth about pagefile came from. Windows uses pagefile even if you aren't using all of your RAM, and it does small and random reads so having it on an SSD makes way more sense.

Like I said if you really want it probably wouldn't hurt to reduce it, say to 4GB.