Two SSD's with TRIM

[B!nd.]

This thought popped into my head this morning.

If I were to have two identical SSD drives (lets say 128GB each one I use for OS, apps, and some games, the other I set up as a slave for games and any other programs I wish to install on it) will TRIM perform on both drives simultameously?

I understand the best solution would be to just get a larger drive, but I was just curious.

EDIT: OH AND...I never looked into this but could I potentially have Win7 installed on one drive and XP installed on another whilst remianing stable? I would like to just change boot order whenever I would want to use XP.

 

[chinesepiratefood]

It should work fine, it is only when you RAID them that you run into troubles, AFAIK.

 

[HardBytes]

As I think I understand it as long as your drives are NOT RAID, trim will work. Don't know if it happens simultaneously though.

 

[Golbez]

XP does not support TRIM, only Win7 or above support it.

 

[B!nd.]

As I think I understand it as long as your drives are NOT RAID, trim will work. Don't know if it happens simultaneously though.

Right without RAID it works. But actually lets say I set up another drive for XP it would be an HDD anyway because like stated by Golbez, XP wont support trim.

So if I have my SDD for Win/7 and an HDD for XP I should have no stability issues switching back and forth from OS correct?

Thanks for the input guys!

 

[JRS]

About XP and trim... the Intel toolkit will run trim, and you can set it to run on a schedule but it only works with Intel drives. The Samsung Magician has a similiar feature (again works with Samsung drives only) but I am not sure you can schedule it.

Another approach, if you are dual booting and spend most of your time within Win7, you could put both on the SSD as Win7 will trim the SSD when you are booted into that partition. You would have to tackle making sure the xp partition was aligned correctly, but that might be possible just by hooking the ssd up to another system and creating the both partitions on it prior to installing windows on it.

 

[ben805]

If you have SSD 1 loaded with Win7 and SSD 2 with XP, Win7 will trim both drives as long as SSD 2 is connected when you boot into Win7.

 

[B!nd.]

About XP and trim... the Intel toolkit will run trim, and you can set it to run on a schedule but it only works with Intel drives. The Samsung Magician has a similiar feature (again works with Samsung drives only) but I am not sure you can schedule it.

Another approach, if you are dual booting and spend most of your time within Win7, you could put both on the SSD as Win7 will trim the SSD when you are booted into that partition. You would have to tackle making sure the xp partition was aligned correctly, but that might be possible just by hooking the ssd up to another system and creating the both partitions on it prior to installing windows on it.

Hmm...that intel option sounds interesting but intel SSD's are pricey and I heard they aren't the best option.

I like that second option although it does raise more questions.

Are there any consequences in booting from a partition? What will the XP partition look like while I'm in Win7? And vice versa.

Would there be any conflict updated the firmware on my SSD before starting the partions on a separate machine?

How would I know XP is aligned correctly on it's partition?

If you have SSD 1 loaded with Win7 and SSD 2 with XP, Win7 will trim both drives as long as SSD 2 is connected when you boot into Win7.

This might be ideal. What steps would I need to take for Win7 to recognize the SSD with XP so that it is included in the trim.

And to note, the XP drive would be used for older software and games that currently do not work on Win7. Will my extended use in XP make the trim less effective (on the XP SSD) once I go back into Win7?

 

[JRS]

Hmm...that intel option sounds interesting but intel SSD's are pricey and I heard they aren't the best option.

If you shop, the smaller Intel SSDs (240gb and smaller) are fairly price competitive plus you get the Intel track record of one of the lowest SSD return rates, and I think both the 320 and 520 series have 5 yr warranties. The only other maker I know that does that is Plextor.

Are there any consequences in booting from a partition? What will the XP partition look like while I'm in Win7? And vice versa.

All booting is done from a partition. The XP partition will look like another partition when you boot from Win7. Most dual booting is done with two partitions on the same drive and is not unusual, folks have been doing this since the first stone tablet was used to boot from on a pc centuries ago. If you haven't ever done a dual boot, and have the hardware to try it out, you should try it out at least once just to get more knowledgeable on it.

Would there be any conflict updated the firmware on my SSD before starting the partions on a separate machine?

Shouldn't be, unless you came up with a fairly twisted process to do it.

How would I know XP is aligned correctly on it's partition?

Found this with a quick search - have not done it myself on xp: diskpar -i (number of your ssd)

It should show HiddenSectors divisible by 64 and StartingOffest divisible by 32768

And there is this: http://www.paragon-software.com/home/partition-alignment/index.html

This might be ideal. What steps would I need to take for Win7 to recognize the SSD with XP so that it is included in the trim.

Nothing. If you boot into Win7, it won't care how/what/where... it will trim any/all SSDs that support trim that are connected to the PC.

And to note, the XP drive would be used for older software and games that currently do not work on Win7. Will my extended use in XP make the trim less effective (on the XP SSD) once I go back into Win7?

Yes, but not a huge deal. Lots of folks are running only xp on an SSD w/o any trim just fine. If you find you are spending 90% of your time within xp, then maybe boot into Win7 at the end of the day and let your pc run overnight.

Another approach (I should have mentioned this before) would be to virtualize xp assuming your games run within it. You can try Microsoft Virtual PC, Win7 XP mode (ultimate & enterprise only I think), VMWare Player and Virtual Box for free. For gaming I think Virtual Box and VMWare have the best support for video. I mostly use VMWare these days as I bought VMWare workstation for my work. If your XP games will run in a virtualized xp, this is your best option as it removes the alignment and trim issues. I've been doing this since Win7 came out using WMWare Workstation.

 

[B!nd.]

Thanks a bunch for clearing that up for me JRS.

VMWare Player sounds very enticing. Is it buggy? Does it hog resources? And should I install it on my SSD or will an HDD be fine?

 

[JRS]

I do not find VMWare to be bugging, although it has some issues trying to use the multiple monitor feature. Running games within a virtual machine is a case-by-case basis. Some run fine, some get a little weird.

Install VMWare wherever you install your apps. Where it is installed is not near as important as where your virtual machine(s) are located. Virtual machines are resource hogs in that you are now running an OS within an OS, which means your cpu cores, RAM, and hard drive space are now supporting two computers, your real one, and the virtual one.

As long as you have a somewhat modern dual/quad core cpu you are fine for cpu resources.

RAM is usually the big hurdle for running virtual machines. If you are running Win7 32bit with just 2GB of RAM, things are going to be tight. You'll want to allocate at least 1GB RAM for a virtual XP machine, and 2GB is better. If you are running 4+ GB RAM on your PC then you can allocate 2GB to the virtual XP and still have 2GB for your host Win7, which is enough to get by. If you are running 8GB on your Win7, then you have all kinds of room to spare and can run a couple of virtual machines without a problem.

On hard drives - it used to be the big thing with virtual machines was to not share the same physical drive as your host OS as that would cause the drive to thrash a bunch and the responsiveness of both the host and the virtual machine would be crummy. It was even worse if running two virtual machines off the same drive as the host (back in '07 for a client I had to run 2 VMs on an XP laptop on one 80gb drive and each OS got about 700MB of RAM as the laptop only had 2GB RAM for all of them). SSDs are great for VMs as their near zero access times means an SSD can serve the host OS and a number of VMs without a problem.

Ideally, put your virtual machine(s) on an SSD. A decent 2nd choice is a 10k drive or a pair of stripped/short stroked drives. If you have to put it on a single traditional mechanical hard drive, then short stroke that partition as much as possible to improve its responsiveness and do not run anything else from that hard drive while running the virtual machine.

 

[B!nd.]

I do not find VMWare to be bugging, although it has some issues trying to use the multiple monitor feature. Running games within a virtual machine is a case-by-case basis. Some run fine, some get a little weird.

Install VMWare wherever you install your apps. Where it is installed is not near as important as where your virtual machine(s) are located. Virtual machines are resource hogs in that you are now running an OS within an OS, which means your cpu cores, RAM, and hard drive space are now supporting two computers, your real one, and the virtual one.

As long as you have a somewhat modern dual/quad core cpu you are fine for cpu resources.

RAM is usually the big hurdle for running virtual machines. If you are running Win7 32bit with just 2GB of RAM, things are going to be tight. You'll want to allocate at least 1GB RAM for a virtual XP machine, and 2GB is better. If you are running 4+ GB RAM on your PC then you can allocate 2GB to the virtual XP and still have 2GB for your host Win7, which is enough to get by. If you are running 8GB on your Win7, then you have all kinds of room to spare and can run a couple of virtual machines without a problem.

On hard drives - it used to be the big thing with virtual machines was to not share the same physical drive as your host OS as that would cause the drive to thrash a bunch and the responsiveness of both the host and the virtual machine would be crummy. It was even worse if running two virtual machines off the same drive as the host (back in '07 for a client I had to run 2 VMs on an XP laptop on one 80gb drive and each OS got about 700MB of RAM as the laptop only had 2GB RAM for all of them). SSDs are great for VMs as their near zero access times means an SSD can serve the host OS and a number of VMs without a problem.

Ideally, put your virtual machine(s) on an SSD. A decent 2nd choice is a 10k drive or a pair of stripped/short stroked drives. If you have to put it on a single traditional mechanical hard drive, then short stroke that partition as much as possible to improve its responsiveness and do not run anything else from that hard drive while running the virtual machine.

Wow great so in-depth thanks!

I will have i2500K 8GB of RAM so now I need to decide if I should pony up some extra bills for an addtional SSD or test the VM. I guess I need to weigh the pros and cons and see what exactly I will be running on XP.

Thanks again.

 

[JRS]

Try to get an xp VM running first. That will be the only way to know if a virtual xp will run everything you want it too. If it works out, then you'll better be able to decide how big of an SSD to get.