My First SSD

R

Rossi~

2[H]4U
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Dec 8, 2008
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Getting a 60Gb OCZ Vertex2 E tomorrow and i just want to run it by you guys by asking if there is anything i should do differently with it. I heard that some people leave a certain amount unpartitioned for whetever reason.
Otherwise i'm just going to format and install W7 on it and apps as i would do a HDD.

Cheers

Rossi
 
Sandforce is great. The 60GB model has less reserved space. There are also 50GB models which have 10GB more spare space; both have 64GiB (not GB) of physical NAND capacity. Same with the 128GiB models; those are sold as 100GB or 120GB.

The more spare space the lower the performance degradation over time, but Sandforce has another neat trick: compression. Any space saved due to compression becomes available as spare space. So even if you written your SSD full it may only have written half of the NAND full and still have 50% spare capacity. This depends on the level of compression that applies to your data. If none is compressible, then this advantage would be very low. But on NTFS/Windows this should prove an excellent SSD.

Be sure to align it properly; else you would have 10 times lower IOps performance.
 
Ah cheers guys :) much appreciated.
Yeah i picked the OCZ Vertex 2E because apaprently it's one of the best for people new to SSD and the price/performance is good.

Will check that link out in a bit.
 
Quick question.
Will a fresh partition created on a W7 install be aligned correctly? Or will i have to create the partition before using a seperate piece of software?
 
Win7 fresh is the best, and gives you aligned partition. If you create a partition using a third party application, then chances are it won't be aligned properly. These include 'cloning' or 'imaging' programs, used to make backups of entire system disks.
 
Good-o :) that's what i thought, just had a quick read of this from OCZ -- http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...-RAID-Partition-Alignment-for-max-performance

If you're running Vista or W7, the alignment is done automatically by the OS as long as you use the installation DVD to create the partition. WinXP is another story because it will not align a partition correctly by default. Extra steps are involved. The easiest way to align a WinXP OS volume is to get the downloadable Vista Recovery DVD and create the OS partition before the installation of WinXP. The partition created by the Vista Recovery DVD will be the same as the Vista Installation DVD and will be aligned at 1024kb by default which is a valid alignment for todays hardware.
Click to expand...

I am going to be doing a completely fresh install so that's all good and probably only going to take up 30-40Gb of the drive as it's only W7 and applications :) .

Thanks all.
 
If you can afford to leave some space unpartitioned, do it (up to 25%). Turn off defrag if Win7 somehow enabled it for the SSD. Other than that enjoy your new SSD and improved performance!
 
Hey guys. Loving the new SSD, very snappy, it's insane.
Just want to run these to crystal disk mark results by you, is this what i should expect from my setup?

OCZ Vertex2
OCZVertex2.jpg


2x Caviar Black 1Tb RAID-0
CaviarBlackRAID-0.jpg
 
That is a 60GB Vertex 2, right?

If so, that benchmark looks reasonable. The Sandforce-based SSD manufacturers like to put 260+ MB/s write speeds on the box, but you only get that for easily compressible data, like a stream of zeros.

For incompressible data like CDM uses, the write speeds are lower. Also, being only 60GB, the SSD will not be able to write to as many flash chips in parallel, so the write speeds are lower than 120GB or 240GB SSDs.

Basically, do not worry that the 100MB/s or lower write speeds indicate a problem with your setup or your SSD. They are about where they should be for that SSD.
 
john4200 said:
That is a 60GB Vertex 2, right?

If so, that benchmark looks reasonable. The Sandforce-based SSD manufacturers like to put 260+ MB/s write speeds on the box, but you only get that for easily compressible data, like a stream of zeros.

For incompressible data like CDM uses, the write speeds are lower. Also, being only 60GB, the SSD will not be able to write to as many flash chips in parallel, so the write speeds are lower than 120GB or 240GB SSDs.

Basically, do not worry that the 100MB/s or lower write speeds indicate a problem with your setup or your SSD. They are about where they should be for that SSD.
Click to expand...

:) cheers
Like i said, i feel the MASSIVE improvement in speed, so the benchmark was only to see the speed in numbers to make sure it's all good :)
cool beans
 
Hey Rossi, was it hard to set up the SSD? I'm thinking of getting an Agility 2 for when I get my Asus G53Jw, but I was reading this and it seems really complicated.
 
ShadowStriker said:
Hey Rossi, was it hard to set up the SSD? I'm thinking of getting an Agility 2 for when I get my Asus G53Jw, but I was reading this and it seems really complicated.
Click to expand...

If you are using Win 7, a fresh install is as easy as installing the OS on any other drive - Win 7 is SSD aware and will automatically make all the recommended settings for you.
 
ShadowStriker said:
Hey Rossi, was it hard to set up the SSD? I'm thinking of getting an Agility 2 for when I get my Asus G53Jw, but I was reading this and it seems really complicated.
Click to expand...

As said, just a fresh install of Windows 7 is all needed :) . When it creates the partition it will be aligned and defrag is turned off, all is good.
 
Not to be horning in on this thread .. but I just ordered a Vertex 2 and a new Motherboard - Asus M4A88TD-V-EVO. I'm doing a fresh install as well - W7 - 64 .
There is nothing in the manual as far as how to set up SSD - Is it recommended to put in SATA 1 - AHCI enabled?
I was watching a GURU3D video and for some reason they had their SSD on SATA 3 which seemed odd to me.
Also recommendations of turning hibernate off and putting the page file on another HDD. I did read the above link - thank you.
 
Wookie2010 said:
Not to be horning in on this thread .. but I just ordered a Vertex 2 and a new Motherboard - Asus M4A88TD-V-EVO. I'm doing a fresh install as well - W7 - 64 .
There is nothing in the manual as far as how to set up SSD - Is it recommended to put in SATA 1 - AHCI enabled?
I was watching a GURU3D video and for some reason they had their SSD on SATA 3 which seemed odd to me.
Also recommendations of turning hibernate off and putting the page file on another HDD. I did read the above link - thank you.
Click to expand...

AHCI on, yes. Turn off hibernate (and hybrid sleep) to save space, yes. Move page file to another drive, no - the page file is good on the SSD. If you want to conserve space you can make a smaller manually sized page file, but you get the most performance benefit from leaving the page file on the SSD.
 
When I installed my SSD everything went great. Win7 set up everything for me, but when I check the Prefetch and Superfetch in the Registry the values were set to 3. I had to manually change the values to 0 and now I am getting better performance. Don't forget to download the RST drivers from Intel for the OCZ drives.
 
Boyo said:
When I installed my SSD everything went great. Win7 set up everything for me, but when I check the Prefetch and Superfetch in the Registry the values were set to 3. I had to manually change the values to 0 and now I am getting better performance. Don't forget to download the RST drivers from Intel for the OCZ drives.
Click to expand...

Better performance in what way(s)? Mine were left at 3 also; I changed them to 0 and didn't notice much if any difference so I just changed them back. Maybe I didn't leave them disabled long enough to notice a difference, but it certainly wasn't striking by any means.
 
Boyo said:
When I installed my SSD everything went great. Win7 set up everything for me, but when I check the Prefetch and Superfetch in the Registry the values were set to 3. I had to manually change the values to 0 and now I am getting better performance. Don't forget to download the RST drivers from Intel for the OCZ drives.
Click to expand...

These drivers here??? http://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=eng&ProductFamily=Chipsets&ProductLine=Chipset+Software&ProductProduct=Intel%C2%AE+Rapid+Storage+Technology+%28Intel%C2%AE+RST%29

What if I'm not using RAID ... are these only for RAID support or does it help speed up the AHCi as well for SSD?

Oh yeah .. if I do use them, can I load them after W7 loads or does it have to be at the beginning of setup?
 
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