Newbie... Installing Win 7 - Setup Issues


  1. Posts : 8
    WIN 7
       #1

    Newbie... Installing Win 7 - Setup Issues


    I'm setting up a brand new system to do video editing and trying to do a fresh clean install of WIn 7 on a new machine and having an issue I'm sure has been talked about before - but can't seem to get resolution. I'm trying to setup a Crucial SATA III 128GB SSD as my primary OS and program drive and have 3 WD RE 1TB's that are going be setup as raid 0 - Striped. No Need for redundency as I have all my video files saved on TAPE/SDHC/or DVD. Going for speed. When installing Win 7 it created a 100 MB system reserve partition on one of the RE 1TB drives (Obviously it identifies the SSD and does not try to put the System Reserve on that drive) However, it will not let me stripe the drive that it does put the SR on. I don't need the SR as I'm only running professional and do not care about bit locking. I looked at some of the posting about how to remove the SR and tried pre-allocating the partitions thru diskpart utility prior to the install , however after installing win 7 I have 1 of the RE 1TB's flagged as a system drive and active. The Entire drive as 1 partition - no longer a 100MB SR. Won't let me delete, format or stripe. At my wits end. can somone please tell me step by step how to get win 7 installed on my SSD with no SR and have all 3 RE 1TB's striped.

    PS - how do I know the SSD is being identified as an SSD? Also, I have been reading alot of about the SSD setup and still trying to understand "TRIM" adn the rest. Do I neeed to do anything to help the OS work with the SSD efficiently and not to overuse the write functionality (i.e. pagefile setup, prefetch, superfetch etc...) not truly familiar with all these terms and how to insure SSD is setup and being used correctly - but see many folks talking about it.

    Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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  2. whs
    Posts : 26,210
    Vista, Windows7, Mint Mate, Zorin, Windows 8
       #2

    When installing Win 7 it created a 100 MB system reserve partition on one of the RE 1TB drives
    I bet this is Drive 0, put your SSD on the 0 (zero) port and you will not have that problem (requires a reinstall). The 100MB partition contains the MBR (amongst other things).

    If you let the Win7 installer do everything, you (theoretically) need not do anything. It does the alignment, shuts off Defrag, etc. However, the experts still do a lot of tweaking for the additional 2% of performance. I never did that and am quite happy with the result. I even turned Superfetch back on because I found it to be better. And DO NOT move the pagefile to an HDD. That would be a big mistake.

    As far as Trim is concerned, you need not do anything. You can test whether your SSD has Trim support with: fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify in elevated Command Prompt.

    If Command Prompt returns a 0 (zero), your drive supports TRIM and it is enabled.
    If it returns 1 (one), the file system has disabled TRIM for your drive. This means your drive's controller does not support TRIM.
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  3. Posts : 8
    WIN 7
    Thread Starter
       #3

    So a couple of questions - are u saying I need the SR for the MBR and if so, do I want it on the SSD ? Also, are u saying all of this goes away if the SSD is on port 0 as the system will install the SR on the device which is on port 0 and that will be the SSD ? How do I insure the SSD SATA III connection is setup to port 0 ? (mobo is Asus P6X58D - SSD is Crucial 128GB)

    1 more question. The ultimate machine will have the following config. 1 SSD for OS and programs. 3 1 TB's striped for the video and music files - and 2 1TB's mirrored for my project files. I will be using the Adobe CS4 suite and mostly premier pro. should I put the scratch files on the raid 0 setup or the mirrored setup - for most efficiency ?

    Thnx for the quick response.



    Thanks for the quick response
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  4. whs
    Posts : 26,210
    Vista, Windows7, Mint Mate, Zorin, Windows 8
       #4

    1. Answer is yes. The BIOS looks for loading port by port and zero happens to be the first one. That's one reason why you often have the Optical reader on port0. But it then goes to the next port if nobody is home.
    2. mirrored is for safety. I would put the files I don't want to loose on the mirrored. Nevertheless, 3 Raid0 are a little faster than 2 Raid0 - but in practice that may not make a big difference.

    PS: I suggest you detach all the HDDs when you install win7 on the SSD. That is the safest. And delete this 100MB partition on the HDD.
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  5. Posts : 8
    WIN 7
    Thread Starter
       #5

    So I detached the HDD's and now I have win 7 with SR on the SSD. Reattached the HDD's and set them up as a stripped volume. So far so good. 2 questions.

    1 - Is there any visual indication that win 7 recognizes my C: drive as an SSD ? (I executed the FSutil and it came back with a '0' return code - so I know the controler supports it - but does that mean it is treating it appropriately? Also everywhere I read to insure not to put the pagefile on the SSD - u said to put it there - any concerns on putting it on the SSD (u haven't steered me wrong yet :) )

    2 - I'm now ready to try and overclock my CPU/RAM - any good advice, tips, reading material to make this easier than it sounds in all the forums that I have been trying to read up about it. Running i7 930 with corsair 1600 memory 12 GB and a Quaddro FX 4800 1.5 GB video card.

    thnx
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  6. whs
    Posts : 26,210
    Vista, Windows7, Mint Mate, Zorin, Windows 8
       #6

    1. The usually argument about the page file on the SSD is that too many writes may make the SSD age prematurely. That is nonsense in may respectss:
    a) the pagefile will most likely hardly ever be used if you have 3 or 4GB or even more GBs of RAM. You can easily check that in Resource Monitor > Memory tab. Look at the "Hard Faults" on top of the page and you will see that they are quasi always zero.
    b) if stuff is written out to the pagefile, it is written in large chunks (like in MBs at a time) whilst it is read in little pieces. So there are not a lot of independent write operations initiated
    c) should your system, however, do a lot of paging, then you want that to happen on the fastest device in the box - and that is the SSD
    d) the SSDs are not as fragile as people think. They say the same about USB sticks (that have a somewhat similar technology) - even for read operations. I have one running since 3 years 10 hours per day providing the pictures for my sidebar slideshow - and that stick shows no sign of wear.

    2. On the OC question I cannot help you. All my systems are stock and I have no experience with OC. I was considering that myself for my Q6600 but did not get to it yet. But there are several threads on the forum that deal with that and if you have a specific question, you can always start a new thread. There are experts around.

    PS: forgot about the "visual indication" - there is nothing like the flickering light for the HDD. But if your C is on the SSD, then it will run off the SSD. And you should notice the performance difference anyhow.
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