installation steps for new SSD

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rontruong

Limp Gawd
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Jan 23, 2006
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Alright, so I'm getting my new g2 on wednesday and I'm just wondering if I'm forgetting any crucial steps when I setup win7... if anyone has a nice link to show me, i'd greatly appreciate it :)

so far, i know... IDE mode, win7 drivers, turn off windows defrag, put system restore/page file on different drive...

i dont know if win7 has superfetch or not, but I've read a few articles and there are a lot of different opinions

I think those are the big ones... if i missed any, feel free to post! :)
 
There aren't just differing opinions regarding Superfetch...I've seen conflicting info regarding IDE/AHCI and the page file, too. Turning off defrag is really the only consistent piece of advice that I've been able to find. It would be nice to have a definitive guide to all of this stuff for each OS. I guess when the technology becomes more mainstream we'll have a better understanding of what the best general practices are. Right now so much of the advice you read for SSDs seems based off of opinion rather than fact.

Most say to disable indexing as well, but I've seen some leave it on claiming that they like the lightning quick searches and aren't concerned about reducing writes. I always disable indexing though, as I prefer other programs for search related tasks and SSDs seek so fast that indexing probably isn't needed anyway.

Don't forget you can also turn off hibernation and implement independent program tweaks such as moving your browser's cache to another drive.
 
TRIM isn't going to be supported for a while, isn't it? I thought Intel was going to provide a firmware update for the G2 in the future to support TRIM.
 
yes its not supported for a while, but from the vertex and Indilinx controllers, trim on anything but ide is horrible... so i'm assuming the same
 
rontruong said:
so far, i know... IDE mode, win7 drivers, turn off windows defrag, put system restore/page file on different drive...
Click to expand...

Win 7 is supposed to take care of some settings automatically, but it never hurts to check them. My install didn't turn off defrag for example.

I didn't change anything in my BIOS for that controller when I swapped out the old Raptor for the SSD, and it simply screams.

MS themselves say to leave the pagefile on the SSD.

See here..... http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx

Should the pagefile be placed on SSDs?

Yes. Most pagefile operations are small random reads or larger sequential writes, both of which are types of operations that SSDs handle well.

In looking at telemetry data from thousands of traces and focusing on pagefile reads and writes, we find that

Pagefile.sys reads outnumber pagefile.sys writes by about 40 to 1,
Pagefile.sys read sizes are typically quite small, with 67% less than or equal to 4 KB, and 88% less than 16 KB.
Pagefile.sys writes are relatively large, with 62% greater than or equal to 128 KB and 45% being exactly 1 MB in size.
In fact, given typical pagefile reference patterns and the favorable performance characteristics SSDs have on those patterns, there are few files better than the pagefile to place on an SSD.
Click to expand...


I've had mine up and running since last Friday, and I'm very happy with it. The only thing slowing my system up at all now is the older HD's on it that I use for storage.

I'm not even worried about TRIM at this point, based on the AnandTech articles that show how well the G2 holds up as it is. Intel has done some impressive engineering here.
 
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I used to setup tweaks and adjust my Vista settings to stop it churning when my OS was on a HDD, disabling superfetch, indexing, setting my page file to a constant size etc.

But since moving to SSD on Win7, it didn't make a difference. The SSD is faster so I left my restore/page file on it rather than move it to a slow drive (not sure why you're considering doing this - the SSD is faster right?). As for superfetch, well the SSD is fast enough that I don't care. Indexing work is so fast you might as well leave it on. I figured I might as well enjoy the benefits that these previously annoying non-features give me.

Windows7 seems to have adjusted settings automatically (i.e. disabling defrag) so I ended up doing very little except plug the drive in. Maybe there was something I should have done, but that was my "installation step".
 
rontruong said:
i thought the ide thing was just because trim works a lot better in IDE
Click to expand...

Read this thread if you haven't already. It discusses several things of interest.

It also led me to believe that AHCI mode was required for TRIM to work, although maybe things have changed since then.
 
nice to know that read:writes for pagefile is 40:1...

from the articles I read, people were just afraid of using up the lifetime of writes for ssds... but I don't see that as being an issue.

thanks everyone for your input :) cant wait til I get my G2!!
 
rontruong said:
nice to know that read:writes for pagefile is 40:1...

from the articles I read, people were just afraid of using up the lifetime of writes for ssds... but I don't see that as being an issue.

thanks everyone for your input :) cant wait til I get my G2!!
Click to expand...

Thats the nice thing about it, once you have it installed and running, you won't have to wait for much anymore. ;)
 
It also led me to believe that AHCI mode was required for TRIM to work,
Click to expand...

It is.

AFAIK, the only thing that required IDE was flashing the Intel drives to the new firmware.

AHCI mode is required for best performance and makes a significant improvement on SSD drives.

Defrag should also be disabled, alignment should be done, but the other tweaks are YMMV the same as mechanical drives.
 
The only thing to remember is to format your new SSD yourself before the windows7 install. If you let windows7 format it during initial install it will create a 100mb partition for recovery files. If you format it yourself, you will not have this partition.
 
anonuser said:
The only thing to remember is to format your new SSD yourself before the windows7 install. If you let windows7 format it during initial install it will create a 100mb partition for recovery files. If you format it yourself, you will not have this partition.
Click to expand...

What program did you use to format the drive?
 
Indexing is useless on SSDs since the seek time is already so low, that's why people say turn it off =)
 
Old Hippie said:
It is.

AFAIK, the only thing that required IDE was flashing the Intel drives to the new firmware.

AHCI mode is required for best performance and makes a significant improvement on SSD drives....
Click to expand...

But, you can't set it to AHCI, and then set it back to IDE for a firmware update, can you?
If not, then how is that going to work?
 
I've changed G1 x25's from raid-0 arrays to IDE, flashed them, and put them back in the array without losing any data. I can't imagine that going from AHCI to IDE, flashing and going back to AHCI would be an issue.
 
The issue is that many if not most of us plan to use the SSD as a boot drive and windows tends to bluescreen on boot if you change back and forth from AHCI to IDE. It's possible to avoid that, of course, just a pain in the butt.
 
schizo said:
The issue is that many if not most of us plan to use the SSD as a boot drive and windows tends to bluescreen on boot if you change back and forth from AHCI to IDE. It's possible to avoid that, of course, just a pain in the butt.
Click to expand...

Ah, so a bootable raid0 array is far more stable than ahci, unexpected and good to know.
 
schizo said:
The issue is that many if not most of us plan to use the SSD as a boot drive and windows tends to bluescreen on boot if you change back and forth from AHCI to IDE. It's possible to avoid that, of course, just a pain in the butt.
Click to expand...

How do you avoid it?
 
i wouldnt see any reason to change from AHCI to IDE and then enter windows... aren't firmware updates done before the OS is booted?

http://downloadmirror.intel.com/17485/eng/README_REV22.txt

Also, I'm reading their readme and they said AHCI and IDE mode can be used for updating... however some motherboards will not notice the AHCI mode, so IDE mode is the next choice.
 
Good point, I didn't realize that intel's flash updates were bootable images. Still don't have mine, it should arrive on thursday. In that case, I guess intel SSD owners should just use AHCI.

If you're interested in switching between ahci and IDE without having to reinstall windows, just google it, instructions are easily findable.
 
But, you can't set it to AHCI, and then set it back to IDE for a firmware update, can you?
Click to expand...

Of course you can.

The problem lies if you don't install the OS in AHCI mode.

You can easily change to IDE and back if you have the AHCI drivers installed in the first place.
 
all i did was turn off the page file, and turn off drive indexing
 
All I did was install mine (SuperTalent 64GB UltraDrive GX) and load Windows 7 64bit RTM. I have read don't store media like HD video, MP3s, pics, etc. on your SSD. You mainly load your OS and programs on the SSD and park non-program files on a separate drive. But how do I configure Windows 7 to automatically download setup files and videos onto my D drive? Libraries is on my C drive and it defaults to that location.
 
so... my ssd is coming today and I'm just wondering if the g2 drive come factory formatted.. or do I have to use HDDerase on it first... if so.. then I will need to know how hot swap works

I have ahci on and I installed my vista w/ it... I cannot restart my computer because my vista ran out of its trial period :D (dont ask why haha)

do I just plug in the sata power and sata data cable? Sata cable first, then power? :) thanks
 
rontruong said:
so... my ssd is coming today and I'm just wondering if the g2 drive come factory formatted.. or do I have to use HDDerase on it first... if so.. then I will need to know how hot swap works

I have ahci on and I installed my vista w/ it... I cannot restart my computer because my vista ran out of its trial period :D (dont ask why haha)

do I just plug in the sata power and sata data cable? Sata cable first, then power? :) thanks
Click to expand...

It does not come formatted -- you'll have to format it yourself or let Windows7 install format it (and add its 100mb recovery partition).
 
I know that this is slightly off-topic but it sort of fits with installation steps of a new SSD. I'm new to to [H] so kindly forgive me if this question should be placed somewhere else, but can anyone explain how to set up Windows 7 to automatically place non-program files onto my D drive? Libraries is on my C drive and thus all pictures, documents, music and videos default to that location. Like-wise, any downloads default to C:\Users\Name\Downloads. I'd like to keep my SSD from filling up with non-program files. Any help or links to tutorials that explain how to do this would be greatly appreciated.
 
You dont need to let it install the 100mb partition during the install process. The work arounds have been posted here several times and it takes a few seconds to do. Just google it
 
rontruong said:
do I just plug in the sata power and sata data cable? Sata cable first, then power? :) thanks
Click to expand...

I would do this with the computer power off. ;)

Doesn't matter about SATA or power... which comes first. Just do it with the power off.
 
Pocatello said:
I would do this with the computer power off. ;)

Doesn't matter about SATA or power... which comes first. Just do it with the power off.
Click to expand...

haha...but i cannot restart windows or else vista wont work due to activation... unless I just do everything on safemode...

Isn't that purpose of hot swap to turn on power to storage devices without turning off the computer? =)
 
VulcaN said:
You dont need to let it install the 100mb partition during the install process. The work arounds have been posted here several times and it takes a few seconds to do. Just google it
Click to expand...

thanks, didn't know it was that easy :), dumb me.
 
Are you guys ignoring my questions because I posted in the wrong thread or because I'm new here?
 
DiscreteMeat said:
I know that this is slightly off-topic but it sort of fits with installation steps of a new SSD. I'm new to to [H] so kindly forgive me if this question should be placed somewhere else, but can anyone explain how to set up Windows 7 to automatically place non-program files onto my D drive? Libraries is on my C drive and thus all pictures, documents, music and videos default to that location. Like-wise, any downloads default to C:\Users\Name\Downloads. I'd like to keep my SSD from filling up with non-program files. Any help or links to tutorials that explain how to do this would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...


if this was me, what i'd do would forget about the pre assigned windows folders, which is what i do right now. I mean its just there for convenience... I put all my stuff on my D: drive and organize it myself. For downloads and such, it can be changed in the programs options where they go... for example, in IE, mozilla, whatever download program you are using.

On my current computer, i do not use my users folder or documents folder for anything else but word docs... i dont like how they organize it.
 
For Windows 7 you can also just go into properties on your documents/music/pictures from the start menu and include other locations in the library. You can also remove the original directories from the C: drive from being included.
 
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