I need a good SSD for Windows XP

D

DonDon

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Sep 17, 2000
Messages
1,584
Hi all.

I have been using various SSD's in my computers for several years now. But for a while now, work and family issues have kept me from spending as much time here in the forums as I would like, so I am getting a bit out of touch with the current state of the art.

1 particular system is giving me some trouble, and I would like to get some opinions on what would be my best course of action.

It is an old Fujitsu laptop that I use for work. It has a work installed copy of Win XP which I have to use because of some old test equipment I have to run that is incompatible with Win7.

I have upgraded the drive on board several times, from a 40 gig mechanical drive originally(What a joke), to a 60 gig ssd (too small), to a 300 gig hybrid drive (too slow), and currently a 240 gig Vertex 2. The current drive is starting to get a little slow, and I was wondering what I can do to make it faster.

First, of course XP does not support Trim. Is there some kind of utility I can run to manually clear the crap off the drive from time to time.

Second, does the Vertex 2 do any kind of internal garbage clearing on its own?

Third, if it does not, is there another brand or model of drive that I can get that will do some kind of internal garbage clearing to keep things a bit more quicker in XP.

I have a system at home that needs a bigger drive that is running win 7 right now, so I can move the current drive that is in my laptop there no problem.

Thanks

Don
 
The vertex 2 does indeed handle gc, but I'd pick up a Samsung 830 or Intel 320 for their toolbox programs. You're going to have to wait for more replies on this, but I'm almost positive the Samsung and Intel toolboxes can be run in XP, which would allow you to run a manual like trim.
 
i'm guessing you're on SATA2? there isn't any point in getting a SATA3 drive unless you want to upgrade soonish. for that matter, buying a different SSD isn't going to help your situation much if you are not looking to upgrade later.

my advice is save the money until you're ready to upgrade, go with win7 (or 8 by then) and get what you're after done properly.
 
You might want to make sure the partition is aligned properly, Windows XP doesn't do this by default and you'll end up with a 50% reduction in performance (write speeds in particular).

My easiest way of installing XP properly on an SSD would be:

1. Use a utility to do a 'secure erase' on the SSD. This sends a special command ('SECURE_ERASE') in the ATA command set to the SSD - in effect it writes zeroes to the entire drive. This will ensure no matter what you will have a 'brand new' SSD experience. OCZ has a decent tutorial using Parted Magic here.
1. Use a Windows 7 install DVD (or USB) and boot from it on the laptop.
2. When you get to the part of installation where it presents a list of drives and partitions to install to, click Advanced Options and then click 'New' to create a new partition on the empty SSD.
3. Once the partition is created DO NOT continue to install Windows 7 - remove the DVD (or USB) and power off the machine.
4. Power back on the machine with the XP install CD/DVD in the drive, and boot from that media to begin XP's install routine.
5. When you get to the part of XP setup where it asks you where to install, pick the partition you created in step 2 above and continue installation as normal.

Instead of doing steps 1 through 3 you can connect the SSD to a Windows 7 machine (making sure to secure erase it beforehand) and use DiskPart from the command line to create a new aligned partition. Then put the SSD back in the laptop and install XP on that partition as mentioned above.
 
You don't need diskpart on 7, that's of use for XP.

OCZ was the first to offer an util to trim when there was no trim. The vertex2 has a toolbox, I don't remember if the option is there however.

You could plug the drive on a 7 box, fill it with data (could be big files full of 0s) and delete that data, that will trim your drive.

Did you actually make any benchmark to determine it's "getting slow" ?
 
Ha! The network adapter in my laptop died last week. The IT guy has had enough and is getting me a new laptop. Hope it's not another recycled one like the last one.

Thanks for all the suggestions though.

Don

Oh yea, the OCZ toolbox does not run in XP. I suppose I could periodically remove it from my laptop, boot up my home system with 7, trim it, put it back on the laptop....... Not!

I had not bothered to benchmark this system. The SSD originally make a huge difference over a spinning drive, even the Hybrid drive I had in there before. I was mainly annoyed by startup and shutdown times gradually getting longer.
 
Last edited:
I like Crucial's M4/C300 or Intel's G2 or G1s for XP. If you can get a cheap G1 X25-M somewhere, that's a good pair with XP.
 
For XP, I'd lean toward an Intel as the Intel SSD Toolbox as it has an "SSD Optimizer" which you can schedule to run trim and thereby compensate for XP not having trim itself.
 
Hey DonDon!

ALL SSDs have GC and it does 90% of what TRIM does.

There's a program I used to use on XP and it's called Tony-Trim.

Unlike a Secure Erase command this does not remove your data.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top