I just received my G. Skill Falcon 128 GB SSD...now what?

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EarthBrain

Limp Gawd
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I don't know much about SSD so I have a few questions:

1. Do I need to format it?
2. Can I partition it like the regular HD? I want to install Window 7 on a partition of 50 GB. Is this a good idea or should I not do any partitioning?
 
I don't think you wanna bother partitioning it (in fact you probably shouldn't as it might interfere w/the write leveling routines no?), as for whether you need to format it or not, Windows Vista/7's installer will probably handle that fine for you from what I've read... But if you wanna get into details I've heard OCZ's forum has some pretty good FAQs and guides on SSDs. (it's the same drive after all isn't it?) Even tips/tweaks for Windows once it's installed, like disabling System Restore, moving the page file to another drive or disabling it, disabling Hibernate, indexing, etc. You're keeping your data on another drive no?
 
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Yeah, I plan to use the SSD for the OS and some commonly used programs. I would probably install some commonly used games on it also. The rest of the data will go to my larger drive.
 
Should I install Window 7 32-bit version or 64-bit version?

The only advantage of 64-bit version is the increase in RAM right?

I like to be able to get that "SSD tweaker" program to work with the 64-bit version also.
 
I think some of the tweaks in that util are excessive, and probably aimed at some of the SSDs in OCZ's line with inferior controllers (compared to the Vertex w/the Indilix controller), but I'm no expert. 'Course you can control most of it independently so it's up to you. I don't see why you'd disable Superfetch for one thing. Anyway, why wouldn't you go w/Windows 7 64-bit at this point? The only reason not to would be if you depend on a certain program X that just won't run under 64-bit nor under a 32-bit VM within the 64-bit OS. Win7 64-bit is more stable and will make full use of your RAM if you've got 4GB or more.
 
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Just go ahead and install win7, during the install delete the factory partition and create a new one the full size of the drive. I've heard running the windows experience test will auto-configure the operating system with the important ssd fixes, like disabling defragmentation. If it doesn't then just disable auto-defrag on the ssd, you can disable drive indexing as well. As for other tweaks, there are some that may be beneficial, but those are the essential ones.
 
I wouldn't partition it, or you will just end up running out of space on C: before long.
 
extide said:
I wouldn't partition it, or you will just end up running out of space on C: before long.
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uhm, rephrase please?:confused:

Also, from what I remember about SSDs, the initial partitions are not full size in order to allow for this:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=9

However, it's not a hard reason to not redo a partition that is the full size of the drive, guess it depends on what you're looking for.
 
What I meant is if you partition it down (and install windows on 50GB) then that will fill up really fast. Might as well just make it one big drive. Windows 7 supports trim (if you DONT use RAID and you DO use AHCI) so you wont ever have to do the read-modify-write as described in that article.
 
Oh, I guess that makes more sense. I read it as being "don't partition it or you will fill up the drive faster" (Me: what's the correlation between partitions and the rate a user fills up their drives? o_0), as opposed to being "fill up the OS partition faster".

Anyway...

good to know on the Win7 thing, I don't keep up with software nearly as much (if at all).
 
You can use the same partition size that was already on the drive, it's just important to delete the original and create a new one with the windows installer. I have no reason to believe the falcons are different from the vertex in regards to the factory partition alignment. They're the same drive and unless G-skill has taken the time to do it themselves the partition on the drive isn't aligned properly, this can result in a rather large performance penalty as well as making the drive performance degrade faster.
 
Gee, I thought that newer technolog is suppose to make things more user friendly as well as improve on functionality.

Now I have a feeling that I will have to do a lot of reading just to install this SSD drive. It is an expensive drive (more than $300) and I don't want to mess things up. Using the regular hard drive is much simplier and all I have to do is just format it (or make a small partition) and just go....


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O.K. so to summarize...I should just hook up the SSD drive, put in the WINDOWS 7 BUILD 7201 64-bit version, and just format it and it will create a full partition instead of choosing 50 gig partition...right?
I have never install Window 7 OS yet so I am not sure what it looks like yet. I will try to install it tonight or tomorrow when I have more time. It is hard to not open the SSD package yet because of the lack of free time.
 
Yeah, Just pop in the windows 7 installer, delete the partition, and create a new one that's the same size. It's a gui interface so it's just a couple clicks and bam it's done. Then just install windows 7 as normal. Repartitioning an SSD to multiple smaller drives doesn't help anything but your personal organization. Do it if you want but on drives of that size it makes more sense to just leave the partition full sized. Once you're in windows, disable disk defragmenting on the ssd, disable indexing on the ssd. Windows 7 may or may not do it automatically, I've heard different stories. And that's all you need to do.
 
Yoda4561 said:
Once you're in windows, disable disk defragmenting on the ssd, disable indexing on the ssd. Windows 7 may or may not do it automatically, I've heard different stories. And that's all you need to do.
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Thanks for the input.

One question though. Once Window 7 is installed, how do I diskable disk defrag, disable indexing? Or how do I know if Windows has done that for me...? How do I check?

I know this is a little premature to ask this question since I have not install the OS yet and have not play around with it yet. But I am asking this question just in case I run into this problem.
 
In vista, just go to "My Computer" and right click on the C: drive (or whatever the ssd's drive letter is) and click on properties. At the bottom will be a checkbox for "index this drive for faster searching" Uncheck it. In that same properties panel, go to tools, and click on defragment now. If there is a schedule setup (it is by default) then click on "select volumes" and uncheck the SSD drive letter. I would imagine windows 7 isn't that much different, I haven't installed it yet myself so I can't be more specific. There's no rush to get it done, even if you wait a week or two before disabling those things you won't have any issues.
 
Yoda4561 said:
In vista, just go to "My Computer" and right click on the C: drive (or whatever the ssd's drive letter is) and click on properties. At the bottom will be a checkbox for "index this drive for faster searching" Uncheck it. In that same properties panel, go to tools, and click on defragment now. If there is a schedule setup (it is by default) then click on "select volumes" and uncheck the SSD drive letter. I would imagine windows 7 isn't that much different, I haven't installed it yet myself so I can't be more specific. There's no rush to get it done, even if you wait a week or two before disabling those things you won't have any issues.
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Once again, thanks
 
EarthBrain said:
Gee, I thought that newer technolog is suppose to make things more user friendly as well as improve on functionality.
Click to expand...

Whatever gave you that impression?! :p Being on the cutting edge or being an early adopter (such as buying an SSD right now) is never synonymous with user friendly, heh... Improved performance/functionality yes, but building and configuring computers is still very much the realm of enthusiasts. They are (slowly) getting easier to use though, for the user that's buying an OEM system and will never tinker with it.

Anyway, as stated above, the Windows 7 installer is probably the smoothest one yet out of 'em all... I've heard that if you run the performance index app it'll realize you're running an SSD and disable defragging & indexing along w/other tweaks, maybe it does that during the install process, I dunno... I'd just do it after finnishing the install and then check it, if it stil isn't disabled you'll wanna do it yourself.

Regardless, you can't mess the install up by not performing these tweaks... They're just tasks that are unnecessary with an SSD, fragmentation (as it were) doesn't occur on an SSD since all parts of the drive are accessed equally fast (unlike HDDs), so re-organizing bits and bytes is irrelevant, it matters very little how much or how little a file is scattered (physically) over the drive. All defragging is gonna do is shorten the life of the drive w/useless writes/rewrites.

Ditto for a few of the other tweaks. I'm not sure I'd even disable System Restore, I think that one was mostly disabled with the earlier/smaller SSDs because it can eat a huge chunk of your HD space over time (30GB+), if you've got a reliable full-system backup solution in place you might as well though.

The page file is usually only necessary once you run out of RAM, but Windows still uses it for some maintenance tasks and to off-load some stuff out of memory that's always present but not necessarily in use... Since it involves lots of small writes that's why people suggest disabling it, you can always move it to a secondary drive too as a lot of regular HD users have done for years (since it usually speeds it up, when used, if it's on a non-OS drive).

So on and so forth...
 
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