Show us your SSD performance

[whs]

That is a good point. But I really don't know how many threads the Atto benchmark tool is running.

 

[mickey megabyte]

Hmm, interesting. That makes sense. How much does the program you guys are using cost?

They have a free trial:-

Defrag Solution | Faster Computer Boot Times | Improve Computer Performance - PerfectDisk

Thanks.

did you try this whs?

any thoughts?

 

[whs]

Yes, I tried it on my gen1 Intel which is the oldest and longest serving SSD I have. But I did not really notice any difference afterwards. But that is just my "feeling". I did not measure it before and after.

 

[sygnus21]

Finally bought an SSD drive

Ok, after months of thinking about it and talking about it I finally pulled the plug and ordered an SSD drive - Amazon.com: OCZ Technology 120 GB Vertex 2 Series SATA II 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive (SSD) OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G: Electronics. It'll be here tomorrow.

Can I just image my 120GB OS partition to it? Thoughts/suggestions?

Thanks

 

[whs]

Ok, after months of thinking about it and talking about it I finally pulled the plug and ordered an SSD drive - Amazon.com: OCZ Technology 120 GB Vertex 2 Series SATA II 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive (SSD) OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G: Electronics. It'll be here tomorrow.

Can I just image my 120GB OS partition to it? Thoughts/suggestions?

Thanks

1. shrink your OS partition to a bit less than 120GB (in decimal)
2. Image the partition - if you have the 100GB active partition, you have to image that too
3. Install the SSD (or connect it via USB for a laptop)
4. Align and format the SSD with diskpart, see here: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/113967-ssd-alignment.html?ltr=S
If you have the 100MB active partition, that goes for that. Then you have to shrink it to 100MB and create a partition in the freespace for the OS.
5. Move the images to the SSD.
6. Make the active boot partition on the HDD inactive
7. Change your BIOS to boot from the SSD
8. Reboot
9. Hopefully I did not forget anything - LOL

For the disk operations you best use the bootable CD of this program: BEST FREE Partition Manager Software for Windows supports all 32-bit & 64 bit Windows No-server OS.

Now if you want to make your life easy, spend $19.95 for this program: Paragon Migrate OS to SSD - Overview It does everything for you and you are done in 20 minutes. It is very easy to use - I tested it, worked perfectly.

 

[essenbe]

If you are cloning from IDE mode and you want to switch to AHCI (which OCZ recommends) take a look at this tutorial.
If you want to go to the OCZ forums to see what they advise start here. Just a warning, info there is scattered all over the place and it is difficult to determine when they are talking about Gen 1 SSDs and GEN2.

 

[whs]

If you are cloning from IDE mode and you want to switch to AHCI (which OCZ recommends) take a look at this tutorial.
If you want to go to the OCZ forums to see what they advise start here. Just a warning, info there is scattered all over the place and it is difficult to determine when they are talking about Gen 1 SSDs and GEN2.

The people on the OCZ forum are mostly real experts. They will tweak for the last 0.1% of additional performance. For laymen like us that may not be the best approach. I have also seen them propose strange tweaks - e.g. turning Superfetch off which is completely counterproductive.

A lot of their approaches date from the early days of SSDs but are no more applicable today. Bottom line: use the OCZ forum with care.

 

[sygnus21]

1. shrink your OS partition to a bit less than 120GB (in decimal)
2. Image the partition - if you have the 100GB active partition, you have to image that too
3. Install the SSD (or connect it via USB for a laptop)
4. Align and format the SSD with diskpart, see here: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/113967-ssd-alignment.html?ltr=S
If you have the 100MB active partition, that goes for that. Then you have to shrink it to 100MB and create a partition in the freespace for the OS.
5. Move the images to the SSD.
6. Make the active boot partition on the HDD inactive
7. Change your BIOS to boot from the SSD
8. Reboot
9. Hopefully I did not forget anything - LOL

For the disk operations you best use the bootable CD of this program: BEST FREE Partition Manager Software for Windows supports all 32-bit & 64 bit Windows No-server OS.

Now if you want to make your life easy, spend $19.95 for this program: Paragon Migrate OS to SSD - Overview It does everything for you and you are done in 20 minutes. It is very easy to use - I tested it, worked perfectly.

Sorry, but I'm a bit confused as to why I need to take all those steps just to image my old HD onto a new SSD drive. Sorry.

I'm also a little confused by this statement from your tutorial....

If you install Windows7 on a brand new SSD, you need not make any special arrangements because the Windows7 installer will do the alignment for you. For Vista you are lucky because the start sector happens to match a SSD page. For XP the start sector is 126 which would be in the middle of a SSD page, thus a prior alignment is required.
A similar situation is present when you clone an existing OS (including Windows7) on a new SSD.

I guess you're saying I need to do this because I'm cloning/imaging my existing OS onto the SSD drive?

For the record, this is a desktop and I am using AHCI and it is enabled in the BIOS.

Appreciate the help and advice, just wondering if all this is neccessary. I guess I'm just used to cloning/imaging standard hard drives

Thanks

 

[smarteyeball]

Can I just image my 120GB OS partition to it? Thoughts/suggestions?

Thanks

As already covered - yes.

But for best performance, fresh is best.

Also, for quicker Garbage Collection etc - it's also recommended to format the 120GB versions into a 100GB partition and to leave the rest unallocated.

(I stumbled across this on the OCZ forum talking about the difference between the 100 and 120E versions, but I'm damned if I can find a link for it )

 

[whs]

1. the second quote is for a new installation from an installation disk - quite different to installing from an image. What you did highlight in red refers to the alignment.
2. I am not sure which of the steps in the first quote you do not understand. Essentially the cover the following.

- make sure the image is smaller than the SSD. Most free imaging programs cannot shrink the size.
- the 100MB active boot partition (if present) has to be dealt with
- the SSD needs to be aligned - else you can be up to 300% slower
- partitons have to be preallocated because thats what the recovery program will be looking for
- you need an active boot partition on the SSD for the Bios to know from where to boot - at the same time you need to deactivate the one on the HDD
- the BIOS has to be switched to the SSD, else it will not be looking for it as first disk boot device (usually one leaves the optical drive as #1 but that is ok as long as there is nothing to boot from in the optical drive)

Maybe this clears it up a bit. If you have further specific questions, don't hesitate to ask.

 

[sygnus21]

OK, let me clearify....

First off, I do understand that if I image/clone a new disk the old one needs to be removed as the primary boot drive so the new one can take over. I have 3 hard drives in my system, each with it's own OS

Now, once I align and format? the SSD drive, can I use Acronis True Image 2010's clone feature to clone the SSD drive?

Also, will the SSD drive be optimized doing it this way?

And I believe, though I'll have to double check, that I can shrink the partition with ATI 2010's clone feature.

Thanks

 

[whs]

OK, let me clearify....

First off, I do understand that if I image/clone a new disk the old one needs to be removed as the primary boot drive so the new one can take over. I have 3 hard drives in my system, each with it's own OS Correct - boot sequence is according to the BIOS setting.

Now, once I align and format? the SSD drive, can I use Acronis True Image 2010's clone feature to clone the SSD drive? Yes

Also, will the SSD drive be optimized doing it this way? You still have to do the alignment yourself and create a primary active partition. However, Acronis may be able to shink your current partition automatically but you better check that.

And I believe, though I'll have to double check, that I can shrink the partition with ATI 2010's clone feature. You can also use Disk Management or Partition Wizard. The ATI program I have never used.

Thanks

See in red above. But if you want to make your life easy, use this program which works perfectly: http://www.paragon-software.com/technologies/components/migrate-OS-to-SSD/

 

[sygnus21]

Thanks whs

I'll also look int that program.

 

[whs]

You are welcome. Any time.

 

[Dave76]

Can I just image my 120GB OS partition to it? Thoughts/suggestions?

Thanks

As already covered - yes.

But for best performance, fresh is best.

Also, for quicker Garbage Collection etc - it's also recommended to format the 120GB versions into a 100GB partition and to leave the rest unallocated.

(I stumbled across this on the OCZ forum talking about the difference between the 100 and 120E versions, but I'm damned if I can find a link for it )

sygnus21 I have to agree with smarteyeball on the fresh install.

As an option you might want to consider a fresh install, then use Windows Easy Transfer to get all your settings moved.

Have a look at this MS article, leave your SSD blank, just out of the box.

MS Engineering for Windows 7 Support and Q&A for Solid-State Drives​

Win7 will do pretty much everything when it's installed to a unformatted SSD.
Just an option, you can get the basic setting changes needed from the above site if you want to clone it.​

First, check for the SSD FW version, if a new one is available update it.

 

[sygnus21]

Yeah Dave I've been doing some more reading and a fresh install seems like the best option. But having to reinstall all the other programs and stuff is a PITA so I'm seriously looling at this Paragon program whs linked me to - Paragon Migrate OS to SSD - Overview. Do you have a thought on it?

As far is firmware updates, that's automatic.... and OCZ finally has the toolbox for this drive - OCZ Toolbox for Sandforce based SSD drives. (Agility2, Vertex2, Vertex2 Pro, Vertex-LE) although this note has me a little confused -

EDIT: The OCZ Toolbox does not work with the Intel RST 10 series drivers

Is that saying it won't work with my X58 motherboard with its Intel ICH10R chipset?

Thanks

 

[Dave76]

I haven't looked at the Paragon tool so can't say anything about it, if whs recommends it, it must be good.

That note is talking about the Intel RST RAID driver, it's the one that enables Trim and is used by most SSD users, at least the ones that can.
It gets very good performance. You don't have to have any RAID arrays to use it.
I'm using the 10.0 beta with no problems.

It will work with your Intel ICH10R chipset, just use the RST driver 9.6.0.1014 version for your OCZ SSD.

Have you found this guide on the OCZ site:

THE BASIC GUIDE & FAQ - ABC for OCZ SSD​

 

[whs]

I haven't looked at the Paragon tool so can't say anything about it, if whs recommends it it must be good.

Dave, that is nice of you to say. The Paragon tool is really good. It is very easy to use, efficient and the result is perfect. What more can you ask for.

I had done a couple of SSD migrations manually before. But each time I made some mistake and had to redo it. So I thought that this time I try the tool that SIW2 had pointed out. And that was so much easier. 2 minutes for the setup and then just the time to copy the system (about 20 minutes). My SSD was in an external enclosure because I was dealing with a laptop.

 

[sygnus21]

Other then the work involved in reinstalling everything should I do a fresh install or use the Paragon software. If I could get away with using the software and having the drive optimized I would rather do that. I just don't want to run into performance issues down the road.

And I appreciate the advice and help from you guys.

Thanks

 

[whs]

If you are not afraid of spending the 20 bucks, the tool is the way to go. Then you are certain that everything is perfect.