Solved SSD Upgrade questions

[Victek]

I installed a Crucial MX100 256 GB SSD along side my 1TB mechanical HD, moved the OS to the SSD and kept data on the hard drive, etc. It's all working quite well, but I have a couple of questions:

1. When I did the shrink on the hard drive partition I set it to 240 GB (240x1024 = 245,760,000). I intentionally made it a little smaller than the SSD's 256 GB (256 GB/1024 = 250,000,000) to make sure it would fit. I thought I'd be able to extend the size afterward on the SSD, but neither the Windows 7 Disk Manager nor EaseUS Partition Master see any extra room at the end of the partition. I did include the 100MB system partition at the front end but there should have been a few GB leftover - just curious

2. My motherboard only supports SATA 2. I've read that the benefit of an SSD is mostly the very fast access time, but I'm wondering if there would be some small additional benefit from installing a PCIe SATA 3 card? My mobo supports PCIe 2.0 and the BIOS has a boot from add-in card option.

 

[Britton30]

Please post a screenshot of your Disk Management window.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorial...nt-post-screen-capture-image.html#post2261610
Yeah there should be ~4GB of unallocated space. Post a snip of the disk management.

 

[Victek]

Please post a screenshot of your Disk Management window.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorial...nt-post-screen-capture-image.html#post2261610
Yeah there should be ~4GB of unallocated space. Post a snip of the disk management.

Here's the Disk Management window, and also the AS SSD test score.

 

[Britton30]

Not quite the proper way to post a snip as outlined in the tut.
From what little I can see all the available space on the SSD is used.

 

[pbcopter]

A 256GB drive as specified by the manufacturer (in decimal) will be only 238.47 GB in binary which is the measurement used by the operation system.

Approximately GB (decimal) x .93 = GB (Binary)

So in your case, the full drive size is showing in disk management.

http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/172191en

 

[Britton30]

Yup, exactly what mine shows, although a have an unallocated partition.

 

[Victek]

Not quite the proper way to post a snip as outlined in the tut.
From what little I can see all the available space on the SSD is used.

Was the original screenshot missing information? Anyway I redid it and I agree it looks better Thanks for the confirmation that the SSD space is being fully utilized.

 

[Britton30]

Yeah it was a bit truncated and you used a 3rd party image host, we like them uploaded here at SF.
Yup, I think your SSD is fine. Thanks for updating the image.

 

[Victek]

Yeah it was a bit truncated and you used a 3rd party image host, we like them uploaded here at SF.
Yup, I think your SSD is fine. Thanks for updating the image.

Ah, thanks for the explanation. I'll remember to upload here next time. By the way, do the AS SSD numbers look OK?

 

[Britton30]

Yeah it was a bit truncated and you used a 3rd party image host, we like them uploaded here at SF.
Yup, I think your SSD is fine. Thanks for updating the image.

Ah, thanks for the explanation. I'll remember to upload here next time. By the way, do the AS SSD numbers look OK?

The 4K and access times are real good. It would do better I think if you have the Intel iastor SATA driver for that board. IT should be on the SATA_0 or SATA_1 header, I think.

 

[essenbe]

Is that an Nvidia chipset on that board?

 

[Victek]

Is that an Nvidia chipset on that board?

Yes, it's described as "NVIDIA nForce 790i Ultra SLI". The motherboard is the EVGA 132-ck-nf79. Would an alternate driver, such as the Intel iastor SATA driver work?

 

[essenbe]

I don't believe it will work on an Nvidia chipset. If it will, EVGA would have IRST as one of the drivers for that board on their driver list, but I have never known an Nvidia chipset to have one. I seriously suspect you can't use it. If you installed Windows with the other windows hard drive connected, I suspect you can't boot without the other drive connected. I would try it just to see. It is fixable, so I would try it and see. We can work you through fixing it, if that is necessary.

 

[Britton30]

Good point Steve, the EVGA site is horrible, I find the board but nothing about drivers, etc.

 

[essenbe]

EVGA Download Center -7901 Ultra SLI > Only 1 option >All >windows 7 X64

But, IRST is for Intel chipsets. I don't believe Nvidia chipsets have AHCI mode.

 

[Victek]

EVGA Download Center -7901 Ultra SLI > Only 1 option >All >windows 7 X64

But, IRST is for Intel chipsets. I don't believe Nvidia chipsets have AHCI mode.

Although there's no AHCI option in the BIOS I do have an AHCI entry in the Device Manager:

 

[essenbe]

How many sata controllers do you have in BIOS?. Sometimes you have the chipset controller and a Marvel or ASMedia controller.

 

[Victek]

How many sata controllers do you have in BIOS?. Sometimes you have the chipset controller and a Marvel or ASMedia controller.

I just looked through the BIOS settings and found one for a JMicron AHCI controller [enabled] The board has a single red SATA data port apart from the others so I guess that's it, but there's nothing in the manual about it. Tomorrow I can try connecting the SSD to it. Will I need to boot the Windows 7 DVD and run a repair?

 

[Britton30]

If you swap SATA headers you may need to tell BIOS it is the boot device.

 

[Victek]

If you swap SATA headers you may need to tell BIOS it is the boot device.

Thanks for that. Here are a couple of screenshots of what's going on now. I don't know if it's better/worse/the same I hunted around for a JMicron specific SATA driver and found a few possibilities, but haven't been able to ID the embedded controller precisely yet. Any additional suggestions will be appreciated.