installijng ssd hard drive as boot drive for windows 7

"Paul" wrote in message
...
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

My motherboard is an Asus P6T Dlx, and has 3 on-board
disk controllers, the Intel ICH10R, a Marvell SAS controller,
and a Marvell eSATA controller. Unfortunately, this board
doesn't have an internal connector for the Marvell eSATA
controller. My previous Asus P5B Dlx did have an internal
connector for the JMicron controller.

The SAS looks interesting. It's my understanding that, if
the SAS driver is not installed, the SAS controller will
function as a normal SATA (IDE) controller. Is this correct?
It would make things easier. I could move the XP and Vista
disks to the SAS, change the ICH10R to AHCI, then connect
and reinstall Win 7 Pro on the SSD. I have an older clone of
my Vista disk, so I can use that for risk free experimenting.

Ian D wrote:

"Paul" wrote in message
...
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

My motherboard is an Asus P6T Dlx, and has 3 on-board
disk controllers, the Intel ICH10R, a Marvell SAS controller,
and a Marvell eSATA controller. Unfortunately, this board
doesn't have an internal connector for the Marvell eSATA
controller. My previous Asus P5B Dlx did have an internal
connector for the JMicron controller.

The SAS looks interesting. It's my understanding that, if
the SAS driver is not installed, the SAS controller will
function as a normal SATA (IDE) controller. Is this correct?
It would make things easier. I could move the XP and Vista
disks to the SAS, change the ICH10R to AHCI, then connect
and reinstall Win 7 Pro on the SSD. I have an older clone of
my Vista disk, so I can use that for risk free experimenting.



I wasn't proposing using the alternate controllers permanently.
I was proposing using them, until the most difficult OS (WinXP)
had been changed to use AHCI on the main controller (Southbridge).
So you're only using your alternate, to solve the problem of
being unable to boot the computer if you change the BIOS setting
to AHCI for the Intel controller. If the WinXP disk can be made
to boot from some other controller, then you can work on the
WinXP Intel driver change.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_attached_SCSI

"SAS controllers may support connecting to SATA devices,
either directly connected using native SATA protocol or ..."

so that suggests you could use the SAS temporarily.

ICH10R 6 SATA
Marvell 88SE6320 2 SAS
Marvell 88SE6111 1 ESATA abd 1 IDE ribbon

With your current config, you'd work on adding whatever driver
is needed for 88SE6320, move the WinXP disk over so you can
boot WinXP while on the 88SE6320. Once 88SE6320 is used to boot
WinXP, then change the BIOS to Intel AHCI, boot WinXP again and
install the Intel AHCI. Then, move the disk back to the Intel
controller. I would then expect that your "re-armed" other two
OSes would be ready to go. You could "re-arm" the other two,
work on WinXP, after WinXP is tidied up, the next boot of
Windows 7 or Vista should work OK.

Someone ran a SATA optical drive from the SAS here.

http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=33142

The Asus support site, lists a

"Marvell 6121 SATA Driver V1.2.0.68 for Windows XP & 64bit XP & 32/64bit Vista.
Marvell 6121 SATA Driver V1.2.0.69 for 32/64bit Windows7."

driver package, so you could boot WinXP now, with current cabling,
and install that. Re-arm your other OSes, shut down, then move the
WinXP drive to the SAS controller, and see whether WinXP boots using
that new SATA driver or not.

Also, the Asus VIP forums may contain threads with experiences with
using that controller. More than one Asus motherboard has used it,
so you may be able to dig up further feedback on the controller that way.
Eacn motherboard model is supposed to have its own forum.

http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx...nguag e=en-us

Paul