How to CORRECTLY optimize your SSD for windows 7

[taltamir]

also enable AHCI, and set system restore and indexing to your own personal preference (can be on or off)

 

[Elganja]

man it's hard to sift through all the bullshit in this thread... but I suppose I will follow Golgatha's post on page 1 (which is basically taltamir's w/ a couple added things)... mainly because my laziness says do what takes the least time... lol

 

[taltamir]

Golgatha's step by step is excellent and I recommend it as well. the few added things he suggests are good ideas, just not specific to SSD (I do them on a spindle drive as well)

 

[MerrickAggie97]

Right now I have my two Crucial M225 256 GBs running in RAID 0. I left 105 Gb of that RAID unallocated since that was the advice I was given.

My question is:

What are some programs I can run to help maintain the performance of the drives since I can't use TRIM while in RAID mode?

What is the defrag equivalent of SSD to prevent performance degradation?

What can I do to maintain top performance of my RAID 0 SSD configuration?

 

[taltamir]

What is the defrag equivalent of SSD to prevent performance degradation?

TRIM is the defrag equivalence.

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

What can I do to maintain top performance of my RAID 0 SSD configuration?

every few months (weeks? depends on use) back the array up, break it, secure erase the drives, copy the image back.

leave a decent amount unallocated. it will use that as reserve as well as any built in reserve.

 

[Synomenon]

TRIM is the defrag equivalence.

Do Intel's SSD tool and OCZs Performance tool both allow the user to manually run TRIM?

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

Do Intel's SSD tool and OCZs Performance tool both allow the user to manually run TRIM?

cant say about OCZ, but the intel SSD toolbox will allow manual TRIMs under XP/Vista/Win7 (non RAID setups). of course Win 7 doesnt neeed it but it cant hurt it.

 

[Synomenon]

I know Windows 7 does TRIM automagically, but can you still manually run TRIM with the Intel utility in Windows 7?

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

I know Windows 7 does TRIM automagically, but can you still manually run TRIM with the Intel utility in Windows 7?

yup. you run it on each partition (if you have more than one). running an X25M G2 80, win7 64 bit, intel 9.6.0 drivers (ICH8), SSD toolbox 1.3.0

non RAID though. toolbox and TRIM will not work on RAID at this time.

 

[wpcoe]

I know this sounds dumb (and if it is, I'm used to abuse), is the Intel utility referred to above only valid for Intel SSDs?

 

[taltamir]

I know this sounds dumb (and if it is, I'm used to abuse), is the Intel utility referred to above only valid for Intel SSDs?

it is actually a good question. there is no technical reason against its functions working for other SSDs, but IIRC intel made it so it checks what kind of SSD you have and only lets you do it on approved ones (intel G2 controller SSD by intel and kingston).
Key phrase is IIRC, I am not positive about it... so if someone else can confirm or refute this...

 

[gorr30]

I have read this thread thoroughly and I can say that it has answered, in a complete way, a lot of questions I had. I will be building an X-58 based system using an intel X25-M G2 postville (34nm) SSD as the OS drive and I have some questions which I suspect that are pretty noobish, but if you could help me with them, then I will be a lot more confident about what I am doing while setting my new system up.

Relevant info:
I will be doing a clean installation of Win7 x64 Ultimate
My motherboard is EVGA X58 Classified3
I'll be using my SSD as boot/OS drive and 2x WD Sata2 HDDs for Storage, etc.

I have decided to use the newest intel AHCI driver prior to installing Windows. I have downloaded the necessary files, I'll put them in my USB flash drive's root directory, I have read the instructions and I think that I have a pretty clear view of how to do it.

A. Motherboard Drivers installation (will they interfere with the latest intel's AHCI drivers?)
I have downloaded drivers for my new mobo from EVGA's site. Among all these, there are some that confuse me about if I should install them or not after my windows 7 installation.
a. chipset (INF_allOS_9.1.2.1008_PV)
b. Intel Raid Manager (IRM)
c. Sata6 drivers (1.0.0.1042-WHQL)
d. Sata6 firmware (Marvell firmware Update.iso)
e. Intel Raid drivers (intel_RAID.zip)

a. I suspect that these are X58 related drivers, have nothing to do with intel's AHCI latest drivers and will not interfere in any way with the latest intel's AHCI drivers that I am going to be installing prior to Win7 installation. Am I correct on this?
b. I have no idea what this is, do I even need to install it since I am not going to be including any raid setup in my system? If I install it, will it interfere with the latest AHCI drivers I will have installed prior to installing windows? What should I do about this? (overwriting the AHCI updated drivers is what I want to prevent, although I am not sure if this is a valid concern/fear and if it can actually happen under some circumstances or not)
c. I guess these are the drivers for the Marvell controller that my mobo has, controlling the 2x sataIII ports and it does no harm installing them even when I am not going to use any sataIII devices atm. Am I right on this?
d. I guess that this will update the firmware for the Marvell controller (I never knew that on board controllers use firmware), it will not interfere with anything else in any way and does no harm to burn it on a bootable CD and use it, right? If yes, shall I use it after the BIOS FLASH and prior to anything else? (note that I will probably be leaving the 2x sataIII ports of the marvell controller empty)
e. The zip contains the exact same files, that intel's iata96 contains. So I am pretty use that it's an older version of the AHCI drivers I will be installing and thus I should skip this zip entirely, right? EVGA's .inf reads "Version 8.9.0.1023" while the latest intel's "Version 9.6.0.1014".

B. Backing up my system
I lack specialized knowledge about enough specific areas, but in general I am knowledgeable enough to never have been in a situation involving serious system damage or corruption caused from malware, virus, misuse, etc. I have never used (the last 16years or so) backup or any other such tool. Still, reading this thread raised a question "why not?" and I mean why not making a backup of my system (located in SSD) after it's fully setup and store it in one of my HDDs (provided that I can do that with the inbuild windows backup). Can please someone provide (or direct me towards the right direction) some brief steps about how I can do that using windows backup tool and without risking losing the correct alignment of my SSD's partition? Should I choose system backup or what? I tried experimenting a bit with its options, but I am not getting an option to use my 2nd HDD as the storage path of the system backup image, so I am kind of at a loss. I remember reading somewhere that it's safer to not clone the partition, but rather if you need to restore, create an aligned partition in the SSD and then restore the backed up data in that partition. But I have no idea if that is accurate, needed or how to do it.

I am sorry for the noobish questions, but after spending a lot of hours trying to get informed by reading random things from random sources on the net (using mostly google as a search engine), I feel that I am not succeeding in finding clear enough answers to what I am asking above (still probably this is also related to my inadequate knowledge on certain issues) and thus I thought to seek answers here. I will make another post in a more appropriate section, asking questions I have skipped asking here in order to try and stay as much in topic as I can. I understand that certain questions I have asked above are not directly related to the original topic of this thread, still my questions are mostly driven by my fear of doing something stupid and overwriting/messing with the updated intel AHCI driver's that I will be installing prior to installing win7 and right after I flash my mobo's BIOS and SSD's firmware. So I took the liberty to express my concerns here. Thanks in advance.

P.S. I am not a frequent reader of forums containing specialized technical information about computers, but +1 for Taltamir, Golgatha and some others that have posted in this thread. It's obvious when someone is speaking about subjects he/she has complete knowledge of and experience with and thus can put his own judgment to good use while providing tips and help with such subjects. And when someone is speaking mostly by reproducing bits of info he/she has read all over the net, while not having a complete understanding of the subject, thus failing to capture the exact mechanics involved and provide well suited or accurate tips and help. There's a big difference, even if I can't point it out well enough due to my insufficient command over the English language, which is not my mother language.

 

[taltamir]

a. correct.
b. this is a program that lets you manipulate the motherboard raid capabilities (say, rebuild an array, create an array, etc) from inside windows. I don't think it will interfere with anything, but I wouldn't preinstall it (as it might make upgrading to a newer version difficult)
c. correct.
d. ideally you should upgrade the firmware before installing anything else, but since you aren't going to use those 2 ports to boot windows, you can install it whenever you want.
e. RAID drivers are actually "AHCI + RAID" drivers.
As you noticed, the drivers evga is giving you are outdated, use the ones from intel.

@backup:
best tool i know of is secondcopy. set it to ignore errors, then to make exact copies of your users folder (thats all you really need to backup)
there is no reason to copy your windows folder or program files folders, they don't contain any relevant user data. That stuff is in your appdata subdirectories (under users) and in your various media folders (under users), such as "my documents", "my music", "my downloads", etc.

 

[Makaveli]

I didn't read this whole thread.

But the new intel toolbox 2.0 contradicts some of the setting choices in the first post.

It will disable superfetch,prefetching,readyboost.



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[Shmee]

I dont know if this had been corrected already, but just to point out, I believe there IS a way to check if trim is working.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=29731860&postcount=4

 

[gorr30]

I didn't read this whole thread.

But the new intel toolbox 2.0 contradicts some of the settings choices in the first post.

It will disable superfetch,prefetching,readyboost.

I'd recommend to read the whole thread, get a complete view about where the OP's choices are based and form your own opinion. I regard this issue "cloudy" but I also regard the OP's choices as sensible.

My best guess is that superfetch/prefetch/readyboost provide a performance boost, one that is probably minor and one that cannot be observed without sophisticated testing (and I don't think that any company is going to be spending money any time soon in order to researching something that doesn't provide a significant performance boost). On the other hand it may also have an equally minor performance hit under extreme usage or circumstances on the drive or a hit to the drive's lifespan, once again under extreme or unpredictable circumstances. If I were intel and had to choose, I would choose not to risk a potential bad side effect even if the chance for that to happen was a marginal one. Why risk an unpredicted or unknown (at the moment) bad side effect that could potentially harm the marketing of one of my newer products that is gradually gaining more and more popularity? Especially when we are talking about a new technology that had suffered from reliability issues during its first steps in the market, issues that kept enough potential buyers away of it for a long time. Of course this is just speculating on my part, still it's all good since I am not trying to say why intel really made this choice, of course I can't know. I am merely trying to point out that intel's choice to have the toolbox switch off prefetch might have been made on different grounds and thus contradict the choise of the OP. Until facts/data is provided, I personally consider this issue as "cloudy" at best.

P.S. In a few words, Intel turns prefetch off for its drives, but Microsoft doesn't turn prefetch off for its OS (when a SSD is present). Maybe intel doesn't want to risk, not a bit, its drives reliability (even if there is no solid data suggesting that prefetch has a negative impact on SSDs) and Microsoft doesn't want to say that these features of its OS are worthless or a threat to SSDs or simply Microsoft doesn't want to give people with mixed setups (SSDs and spindle drives present in the same system, which is very a common occurrence) an overall reduced system performance for no good reason. Until we see some facts on this issue, all we can do in my opinion is speculate and while doing so, make our own choice on this. This thread does an excellent job with providing all the data one needs to make up his own mind.

 

[taltamir]

I didn't read this whole thread.

But the new intel toolbox 2.0 contradicts some of the setting choices in the first post.

It will disable superfetch,prefetching,readyboost.



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yes, I have that too, I don't let it change my setting from the windows 7 defaults
not only does it want to disable superfetch when you ONLY have an SSD and no HDD, it wants to disable superfetch even in systems that have SSD + HDD; TELLING you to "keep frequently used programs on the SSD" rather then letting superfetch cache those for you into ram from your spindle disk. I think it is simply wrong. I have no link to formal testing that either proves or disproves that though, that being said, its not that big of a deal either way.

mmm, could it be on purpose?
to make the intel drive look faster by comparison to your spindle drive. By disabling the superfetch it hurts performance on your HDD and makes the intel drive look better, and they flat out tell you to put your programs on the intel SSD to make them faster.

 

[Voo]

Maybe intel doesn't want to risk, not a bit, its drives reliability (even if there is no solid data suggesting that prefetch has a negative impact on SSDs)

I think we're all sure that READING from a SSD can't have any kind of negative effect, so that can't be the reason. Intel always says to disable superfetch but has never stated any particular technical reason for that - after all DRAM is still an order of magnitude faster than flash and why let it go to waste instead of using it for something useful?

And considering that they now even "recommend" disabling it even for stuff on the HDD, that sounds fishy to me.

 

[Makaveli]

I'd recommend to read the whole thread, get a complete view about where the OP's choices are based and form your own opinion. I regard this issue "cloudy" but I also regard the OP's choices as sensible.

My best guess is that superfetch/prefetch/readyboost provide a performance boost, one that is probably minor and one that cannot be observed without sophisticated testing (and I don't think that any company is going to be spending money any time soon in order to researching something that doesn't provide a significant performance boost). On the other hand it may also have an equally minor performance hit under extreme usage or circumstances on the drive or a hit to the drive's lifespan, once again under extreme or unpredictable circumstances. If I were intel and had to choose, I would choose not to risk a potential bad side effect even if the chance for that to happen was a marginal one. Why risk an unpredicted or unknown (at the moment) bad side effect that could potentially harm the marketing of one of my newer products that is gradually gaining more and more popularity? Especially when we are talking about a new technology that had suffered from reliability issues during its first steps in the market, issues that kept enough potential buyers away of it for a long time. Of course this is just speculating on my part, still it's all good since I am not trying to say why intel really made this choice, of course I can't know. I am merely trying to point out that intel's choice to have the toolbox switch off prefetch might have been made on different grounds and thus contradict the choise of the OP. Until facts/data is provided, I personally consider this issue as "cloudy" at best.

P.S. In a few words, Intel turns prefetch off for its drives, but Microsoft doesn't turn prefetch off for its OS (when a SSD is present). Maybe intel doesn't want to risk, not a bit, its drives reliability (even if there is no solid data suggesting that prefetch has a negative impact on SSDs) and Microsoft doesn't want to say that these features of its OS are worthless or a threat to SSDs or simply Microsoft doesn't want to give people with mixed setups (SSDs and spindle drives present in the same system, which is very a common occurrence) an overall reduced system performance for no good reason. Until we see some facts on this issue, all we can do in my opinion is speculate and while doing so, make our own choice on this. This thread does an excellent job with providing all the data one needs to make up his own mind.

I have read the whole thread now and after some testing on my own rig I don't see a difference at all with those services shut off so I left them off.

 

[tweakboy]

Id run a defrag on it to align the data to the outer regions...


Stop this misinformation now. It's clear you don't know which is which as you told someone that defragging an SSD can kill it.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=30461000&postcount=18


esquared
Anandtech Forum Director

 

[FishAk]

Id run a defrag on it to align the data to the outer regions...

The outer reagons of what?

Perhaps you haven't read this thread? Perhaps not even the title?

 

[hclarkjr]

Id run a defrag on it to align the data to the outer regions...

surely you are not recommending to defrag a SSD??? :\

 

[Makaveli]

lol I sometimes wonder if you post drunk tweakboy. You often put up responses that are the total opposite of whats going on in the thread.

Or maybe you do it on purpose don't know.

 

[Voo]

Or maybe you do it on purpose don't know.

Maybe? If he's not one of the biggest trolls here around I don't know what :/