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installijng ssd hard drive as boot drive for windows 7
I am interested in purchasing a 64 gb Kingston Solid State hard drive
and installing it on my Windows 7 PC as the C drive which I believe would allow the system to boot up considerably faster. Has anyone done this? If so, what steps were used to make the installation? best, Aaron |
#2
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installijng ssd hard drive as boot drive for windows 7
On 4/11/2011 9:33 AM, wrote:
I am interested in purchasing a 64 gb Kingston Solid State hard drive and installing it on my Windows 7 PC as the C drive which I believe would allow the system to boot up considerably faster. Has anyone done this? If so, what steps were used to make the installation? best, Aaron I have not. I found that RAID 0 is very fast and a lot less expensive -- Rick Remember the USS Liberty http://www.ussliberty.org/ |
#3
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installijng ssd hard drive as boot drive for windows 7
Yes, I've done that. Not much improvement on my system, but if you have
a slow hard drive to begin with, you'll see better improvement. As another poster said, RAID0 is really the way to go (for permanent storage speediness). You have two basic choices to make the switch: 1. Put in the new drive and reinstall Windows and everything else. 2. Make an image of your C: drive, save to another disk, put in the new drive, restore the image back to the new drive. 1 is more trouble, but you're assured that Win 7 installs properly on the SSD (Win 7 changes its settings a bit on SSDs, as compared to HDDs). 2 is less trouble but you have to take extra steps to make sure Win 7 has the right settings. There's a utility which name escapes me that does this checking and setting for you. " writes: I am interested in purchasing a 64 gb Kingston Solid State hard drive and installing it on my Windows 7 PC as the C drive which I believe would allow the system to boot up considerably faster. Has anyone done this? If so, what steps were used to make the installation? best, Aaron -- I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. ~ Stephen Roberts |
#4
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installijng ssd hard drive as boot drive for windows 7
On Mon, 11 Apr 2011 07:33:10 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote: I am interested in purchasing a 64 gb Kingston Solid State hard drive and installing it on my Windows 7 PC as the C drive which I believe would allow the system to boot up considerably faster. Has anyone done this? If so, what steps were used to make the installation? best, Aaron It's more efficient to just take a $100 bill and burn it. I installed a very highly rated SSD (OCZ VERTEX) thinking I'd see a dramatic speed increase in booting Windows (I have Vista 64, but results should be similar for Win 7). I was able to boot into Windows from a cold start in 90 seconds with my 500 GB SATA drive, after switching to the SSD my boot time dropped from 90 seconds to 60. I was foolishly expecting something like 15 seconds! So I paid $200 for a 120 GB drive that saves me 30 seconds once or so a week.... duh! BTW, the way SSDs work, you'd better make sure that the drive you are thinking of getting supports the "trim" function, otherwise you'll find with a drive that small that your performance will actually drop to SLOWER than a typical hard drive once all the memory cells are used once (the SSDs are very fast reading data, and also writing data to "erased" cells, but very very slow in "erasing" used cells. So what this means is that any time any data is changed, that cell takes a rather long time to be erased, so in order to "save" that time and give fast performance, the drive writes the "new" data to an unused cell. So eventually. all cells get used, then you begin to pay the performance penalty. Win 7 "trim" function "erases" those unused cells whan you're not using the drive, so you can maintain the original fast performance. But not all SSDs suppport the "trim" function.) As others have mentioned, the way to go for faster performance (until SSDs are actually cheaper than rotating disks) is to go with a RAID 0 configuration. It's not as fast as a new SSD, but is very fast and you have decent capacity. I've posted my speed tests for my SSD, a single 7200 RPM SATA drive, and a RAID 0 config. Copies of the test results are he http://www.photoshop.com/users/crhof...82d205a0081057 I'd also consider switching to something like a 10,000 RPM drive like the WD Raptor series.... or if you're really into performance, a RAID 0 configuration of two or more of those little beasts. |
#5
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installijng ssd hard drive as boot drive for windows 7
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#6
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installijng ssd hard drive as boot drive for windows 7
On Mon, 11 Apr 2011 07:33:10 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote: I am interested in purchasing a 64 gb Kingston Solid State hard drive and installing it on my Windows 7 PC as the C drive which I believe would allow the system to boot up considerably faster. Has anyone done this? If so, what steps were used to make the installation? best, Aaron That sounds like a bad idea. Flash drives don't have wear-leveling. Get a real SSD. |
#8
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installijng ssd hard drive as boot drive for windows 7
Ian D wrote:
"Paul" wrote in message ... wrote: I am interested in purchasing a 64 gb Kingston Solid State hard drive and installing it on my Windows 7 PC as the C drive which I believe would allow the system to boot up considerably faster. Has anyone done this? If so, what steps were used to make the installation? best, Aaron Windows 7 is "SSD aware". If the SSD is detected, the partitioning should be set up to align with sector 2048, rather than the traditional 63. If you used WinXP, it would choose sector 63 for alignment of the first sector (presumably based on CHS alignment and the fake values used for such). Windows 7 should also refuse to defragment the SSD, because defragmenting them is not required. And that is because the seek time for an SSD is 0.1 milliseconds on the SATA bus (the flash chips may need around 0.025 milliseconds, to set up the operation and handle first data). Such a small time means there is virtually no penalty for head movement. Another optimization, is not updating the "last accessed" time stamp on files. I don't know whether Windows 7 disables that by default or not. I would expect Windows 7 could be installed and used, without special treatment. If you could install the OS on a regular rotating hard drive, there shouldn't be much difference with the SSD. If you set the BIOS to AHCI, Windows 7 has the "msahci" driver which supports TRIM to a single drive. Getting TRIM to work with RAID arrays, is a separate issue. Paul Paul, Do you really need to enable AHCI to get TRIM support? I got an Intel X25-M 120 GB SSD at a really good price. I installed 64 bit Win 7 Pro, along with various apps on it with my other drives disconnected, but haven't yet put it into normal service. My BIOS SATA setting is now at IDE. Right now I'm dual booting XP Pro and 64 bit Vista Ultimate. The SSD would be introduced in a tri boot setup using VistaBootPro. If I change the BIOS to AHCI, will there be any loss of data integrity on the other two drives? I can't find a good reference, but along the way, I've seen "msahci" and "TRIM" mentioned together a lot. I don't think the regular IDE style driver supports it. There are options besides TRIM. Some SSDs have built-in garbage collection. And things like the Intel Toolkit, support manual TRIM. So in some cases, you can get an equivalent to TRIM, using a standalone application (left running overnight). The procedure for flipping your system to AHCI, is here. You have to "rearm" Windows 7 for the driver change, and that takes a registry change. Once Windows 7 has identified the right driver, it prevents the other ones from automatically detecting a hardware change later. So the "rearm" step is necessary, before shutting down and entering the BIOS to make the change. I notice in here as well, that some people are having trouble with the "msahci" driver. The Intel driver package, generally has AHCI and RAID in the same package, and you could get AHCI that way. But I don't know whether the Intel AHCI also supports TRIM - the reason for wanting "msahci" to pick up all the drives, is it is built in. If you use a separate Intel driver, I don't know whether you can later "go backwards" or not. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...s-7-vista.html OK, the bottom of this table, says the Intel RST driver supports trim, for drives not in a RAID array. If you own two SSDs and they're running RAID 0, then there is no TRIM used there. http://www.intel.com/support/chipset.../CS-022304.htm "What features are supported on each I/O controller hub (ICH)? ... TRIM support in Windows 7* (in AHCI mode and in RAID mode for drives that are not part of a RAID volume" I presume any AHCI driver is smart enough to query all hard drives, and see whether they indicate they support AHCI. The same would apply to using any command queuing protocol (NCQ or TCQ). There is no point in tagging commands, if the disk isn't paying attention. The driver needs a fallback, in case a user mixes ancient and modern drivers on the same computer. If a person wanted, they could use an IDE to SATA adapter dongle, and then that means the driver would be exposed to some crufty old drives. Any driver, has to be tolerant of all the various revisions of ATA/ATAPI specs. Paul |
#9
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installijng ssd hard drive as boot drive for windows 7
"Paul" wrote in message ... Ian D wrote: "Paul" wrote in message ... wrote: I am interested in purchasing a 64 gb Kingston Solid State hard drive and installing it on my Windows 7 PC as the C drive which I believe would allow the system to boot up considerably faster. Has anyone done this? If so, what steps were used to make the installation? best, Aaron Windows 7 is "SSD aware". If the SSD is detected, the partitioning should be set up to align with sector 2048, rather than the traditional 63. If you used WinXP, it would choose sector 63 for alignment of the first sector (presumably based on CHS alignment and the fake values used for such). Windows 7 should also refuse to defragment the SSD, because defragmenting them is not required. And that is because the seek time for an SSD is 0.1 milliseconds on the SATA bus (the flash chips may need around 0.025 milliseconds, to set up the operation and handle first data). Such a small time means there is virtually no penalty for head movement. Another optimization, is not updating the "last accessed" time stamp on files. I don't know whether Windows 7 disables that by default or not. I would expect Windows 7 could be installed and used, without special treatment. If you could install the OS on a regular rotating hard drive, there shouldn't be much difference with the SSD. If you set the BIOS to AHCI, Windows 7 has the "msahci" driver which supports TRIM to a single drive. Getting TRIM to work with RAID arrays, is a separate issue. Paul Paul, Do you really need to enable AHCI to get TRIM support? I got an Intel X25-M 120 GB SSD at a really good price. I installed 64 bit Win 7 Pro, along with various apps on it with my other drives disconnected, but haven't yet put it into normal service. My BIOS SATA setting is now at IDE. Right now I'm dual booting XP Pro and 64 bit Vista Ultimate. The SSD would be introduced in a tri boot setup using VistaBootPro. If I change the BIOS to AHCI, will there be any loss of data integrity on the other two drives? I can't find a good reference, but along the way, I've seen "msahci" and "TRIM" mentioned together a lot. I don't think the regular IDE style driver supports it. There are options besides TRIM. Some SSDs have built-in garbage collection. And things like the Intel Toolkit, support manual TRIM. So in some cases, you can get an equivalent to TRIM, using a standalone application (left running overnight). The procedure for flipping your system to AHCI, is here. You have to "rearm" Windows 7 for the driver change, and that takes a registry change. Once Windows 7 has identified the right driver, it prevents the other ones from automatically detecting a hardware change later. So the "rearm" step is necessary, before shutting down and entering the BIOS to make the change. I notice in here as well, that some people are having trouble with the "msahci" driver. The Intel driver package, generally has AHCI and RAID in the same package, and you could get AHCI that way. But I don't know whether the Intel AHCI also supports TRIM - the reason for wanting "msahci" to pick up all the drives, is it is built in. If you use a separate Intel driver, I don't know whether you can later "go backwards" or not. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...s-7-vista.html OK, the bottom of this table, says the Intel RST driver supports trim, for drives not in a RAID array. If you own two SSDs and they're running RAID 0, then there is no TRIM used there. http://www.intel.com/support/chipset.../CS-022304.htm "What features are supported on each I/O controller hub (ICH)? ... TRIM support in Windows 7* (in AHCI mode and in RAID mode for drives that are not part of a RAID volume" I presume any AHCI driver is smart enough to query all hard drives, and see whether they indicate they support AHCI. The same would apply to using any command queuing protocol (NCQ or TCQ). There is no point in tagging commands, if the disk isn't paying attention. The driver needs a fallback, in case a user mixes ancient and modern drivers on the same computer. If a person wanted, they could use an IDE to SATA adapter dongle, and then that means the driver would be exposed to some crufty old drives. Any driver, has to be tolerant of all the various revisions of ATA/ATAPI specs. Paul Thanks, Paul, Win 7 isn't really my problem. It would only take an hour, or so, to reinstall Win 7 and apps to the SSD for use in an AHCI environment. My problem is the multiboot XP Pro, 64 bit Vista Ultimate environment. I'm beginning to think that TRIM isn't worth the trouble. My Intel SSD is 120GB, and I can't see my total install being greater than 60GB. Also, the SSD will be for the OS and apps only, no data storage. Under this scenario the SSD would probably be obsolete before garbage starts to slow it down. I have 6GB of RAM, so the pagefile would see minimal usage, and I could shrink it to 100MB without any performance hits. Then TRIM would be a non- issue. I do have the option of using the Intel utility for TRIM if the drive slows down. |
#10
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installijng ssd hard drive as boot drive for windows 7
Ian D wrote:
Thanks, Paul, Win 7 isn't really my problem. It would only take an hour, or so, to reinstall Win 7 and apps to the SSD for use in an AHCI environment. My problem is the multiboot XP Pro, 64 bit Vista Ultimate environment. I'm beginning to think that TRIM isn't worth the trouble. My Intel SSD is 120GB, and I can't see my total install being greater than 60GB. Also, the SSD will be for the OS and apps only, no data storage. Under this scenario the SSD would probably be obsolete before garbage starts to slow it down. I have 6GB of RAM, so the pagefile would see minimal usage, and I could shrink it to 100MB without any performance hits. Then TRIM would be a non- issue. I do have the option of using the Intel utility for TRIM if the drive slows down. So it sounds like what is holding you back, is WinXP. Maybe you could take a backup of WinXP, then work on changing it. If it doesn't work out, do a restore and carry on with your other plan. Changing WinXP from IDE to AHCI, has a bit of a Catch-22 associated with it. If you try to install the AHCI driver, while the board is still set to IDE, the installer won't allow it because of the enumeration mismatch. If you go into the BIOS, and flip the BIOS to AHCI, then the computer won't boot (because the active driver is still the IDE one). You'd get the "Inaccessible Boot Volume" in that case. There is a recipe somewhere, that allows changing from IDE to AHCI. But I was thinking of an alternative. That would be, to install a driver for a second controller chip on the motherboard. Then, move the hard drive to that controller. Now, since you're no longer dependent on the Intel Southbridge interface, you could flip the setting in the BIOS, and the computer would still be able to boot, because it is connected to the second controller. For example, if your board had a JMB363, you could use the SATA port from that, while you work on installing the Intel driver. Once the Intel driver is installed, you can move the drive back to a Southbridge port. All you need, is a second chip (something other than the Southbridge). When I need to do that here, I plug a PCI storage card into the computer, and install its driver, and when the hard drive boots from that card, then I have more room to make changes to the rest of the system. Paul |
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