Intel X25-M 80GB Alignment Necessary?

[Radeon962]

I know you should have your SSD aligned to a 1024 divisble sector, but I have tried everything short of reinstalling Win 7 to get it aligned.

I use Windows Image to copy my system from a WD Black 640GB to an Intel X25-M 80GB and it is aligned at 31k which I know is not correct.

I tried using diskpart to create a primary partition starting at 1024, which it did by verifying with diskpart. After I restored my Windows image though it goes back to 31k.

I did try using the Intel Data Migration software (which is made by Acronis) to clone the system first, which is very easy to use, but this also aligns the partition to 31k.

I ran AS SSD and it does show "31k - BAD", but the overall scores for Read are "199" and Write are "102" with an overall score of "402".

To put it into perspective, my other machine has an OCZ Agility 2 60GB SSD, which is correctly aligned, and scores a Read of "142", Write of "146" and overall score of "362".

So the Intel benchmarks better unaligned than the OCZ aligned and the Intel does feel overall snappier and more responsive.

Is running an SSD unaligned harmful to the disk at all? Or is it just that there is a slight loss of performance by running it unaligned?

I don't feel like reinstalling Windows at this time, but I don't want to risk damage to the Intel if not having it aligned would do that.

From what I have read here and other sites, the alignment would just provide for potentially a 5% or so increase in performance, but even with it unaligned it is still way faster than the WD Black 640GB and also faster than the OCZ Agility 2 60GB.

Thanks, Bill

 

[taltamir]

if you are misaligned, you use extra writes, at worst double the amount per every single write. Cutting your speed and drive lifespan in half.

Do not attribute all difference in scores to the alignment. misalignment hurts all your speeds, but speed varies based on the mobo as well, different mobo's have different SATA controllers which perform differently. your new machine probably has a beter SATA controller.

Whether it has to be aligned is totally up to you.. do you care enough for the difference in speed?
Personally, I'd just do a clean format install with windows 7. But that is me, and isn't necessarily what you want to do.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I did try using the Intel Data Migration software (which is made by Acronis) to clone the system first, which is very easy to use, but this also aligns the partition to 31k.

This I find curious. Why wouldn't Intel's "Data Migration" software, which is designed for SSDs, align the partitions correctly?

 

[flamenko]

The downfalls of cloning and imaging seem to be repeated over and over again. I recently had a conversation with SandForce where a very valid point was brought to surface which we all know but its not clearly explained. That is the end result of ghosting/cloning/imaging where the end user realizes that TRIM is not working and ends up doing a fresh install anyway. We never seem to consider that, when moving from a hard drive, we are actually cloning an environment where TRIM is not activated and, as well, several other key SSD optimizations are also potentially not activated as they naturally would be in the fresh install process.

Food for thought.

 

[Radeon962]

Trim works fine & I also enabled AHCI after the fact. Both have easy workarounds.

Did these on both the Intel & OCZ Agility 2.

Bill

 

[Radeon962]

This I find curious. Why wouldn't Intel's "Data Migration" software, which is designed for SSDs, align the partitions correctly?

I would guess that Intel or Acronis does not think that the average user would care about alignment. They would rather have a quick & easy way to transfer from a HDD to a SSD.

The majority of users do not frequent computer sites or ever open up their computer for that matter. Think of your family. How many care about the computer until it does not work and then all they care about is getting it fixed quickly. They just turn it on and use it until it stops working or gets too slow for what they do with it. Dell and the other OEM's know what they are doing by prepackaging systems for the majority rather than for the minority of hardcore users.

SSD's are not mainstream items yet, so the companies that figure out how to get them into the hands of all users the easiest way possible will flourish. The Intel Data Migration software may not align the SSD, but the transfer process from HDD to SSD is simple and I think that is really the name of the game for the majority of users.

Easy transfer and significant increase in overall system performance makes it an easier sell to the masses.

Bill

 

[taltamir]

I would guess that Intel or Acronis does not think that the average user would care about alignment. They would rather have a quick & easy way to transfer from a HDD to a SSD.

no, its just a lot more difficult then you think to provide a migration tool that adjusts alignment on the fly. its less "don't care" and more "can't do it without significant investment, which they have yet to make"

 

[tweakboy]

I say use Defraggler free app 64 bit too. And defrag your SSD after you put the image on it. You should then be ok and get full speed out of your rig. gl

Please don't pass out bad information like it's candy. Defragging SSDs is bad, m'kay? -Admin DrPizza

 

[taltamir]

I say use Defraggler free app 64 bit too. And defrag your SSD after you put the image on it. You should then be ok and get full speed out of your rig. gl

defragging damages SSDs and does not provide any speed improvements, this is due to the abstraction layer necessary for wear leveling.
TRIM provides the controller with the information it needs to keep the drive at optimum shape (which has similarity to defragging but is different in some measures)

Never ever run a defrag utility on your SSD. Win7 will automatically exclude SSDs from its automatic defragging.
As mentioned, a problem with cloning is that it uses the wrong settings. For example, if you clone a windows install from a spindle drive to an SSD, it will have cloned a defrag schedule that WILL include defragging the SSD, very bad. An actual installation of win7 would exclude the SSD though, (earlier versions of windows will not). There are a bunch of other settings, power management, etc that are best configured via a proper install rather then using a cloning.
You should only ever clone when using identical hardware... aka, use clone as an alternative for system restore... install everything, make a clone, revert to clone in case of SOFTWARE issues. Do not use cloning to migrate hardware.

 

[Radeon962]

There are workarounds for disk degrag, power, etc. Some require registry changes, while others just require you to stop the service. Pretty simple fixes and in line with what Intel and OCZ state as "SSD tweaks".

So far so good. I figure I'll run with it and then reinstall later when necessary. Easy enough to do, but with 6 kids and the wife fighting for 2 computers, time is of the essence whenever I take one down and reinstalling requires that I reset everything to how it was before as they too are not interested in learning about the computer, they just want to use it.

Bill

 

[taltamir]

yea, but you made the first post about this yesturday. if you had just done a clean install you would be done by now.
its also a good idea to do a clean install every now and then, gets rid of any virus you might have picked up, solves corrupted OS files (typically from botched windows updates) etc.

 

[Radeon962]

I had been done. Just trying to verify what I had done and whether it made sense to try and align it.

Again, if all I did was use the Intel software and had no idea about alignment, AS SSD benchmark, etc. I would be up and running on the SSD in less than 1/2 hour and would not have questioned anything as it was pretty much hook up the drive, install the software and start it. It automatically finds the SSD and and as long as the data on the source disk is smaller than the target SSD then off you go. You don't have to change partition size, it just looks to verify that the amount of data will fit on the SSD and its off to the races.

I am just wondering if the software that Intel provides using Acronis does not care about alignment, then why should I?

I really find the issue about cutting the life in 1/2 hard to believe on a non-aligned drive and really should not be an issue. From Anand's own article: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2614/4 ... "OEMs wanted assurances that a user could write 20GB of data per day to these drives and still have them last, guaranteed, for five years. Intel had no problems with that....Thus Intel will guarantee that you can write 100GB of data to one of its MLC SSDs every day, for the next five years, and your data will remain intact. The drives only ship with a 3 year warranty but I suspect that there'd be some recourse if you could prove that Intel's 100GB/day promise was false".

I would expect that I would upgrade the drive to something newer before 3 years, let alone 5 years as I just upgraded to the SSD's from WD Black 640's that I bought last winter. I would imagine that most users here would upgrade their systems within 3 years at the most as there is always something newer, better, faster to try out.

It's a lot like golf. There is always a new driver that will produce longer drives and is more forgiving. Is it considerably better than what you have right now, in most cases no it may only be marginally better. An SSD vs. a HDD is considerably better. Is another SSD going to be that much better than another? Probably not until you are a 2nd generation removed from the current one you have.

Bill

 

[Makaveli]

i say use defraggler free app 64 bit too. And defrag your ssd after you put the image on it. You should then be ok and get full speed out of your rig. Gl

omg what?

 

[flamenko]

yea, but you made the first post about this yesturday. if you had just done a clean install you would be done by now.
its also a good idea to do a clean install every now and then, gets rid of any virus you might have picked up, solves corrupted OS files (typically from botched windows updates) etc.

Dead on.... Cant say we never recommended such and....

DO NOT EVER TURN ON OR USE THE DEFRAGMENTER OR ANY SIMILAR PROGRAM ON A SSD.

 

[taltamir]

DO NOT EVER TURN ON OR USE THE DEFRAGMENTER OR ANY SIMILAR PROGRAM ON A SSD.

Flamenko is absolute right about this!
Defragmenting reduces your SSD lifespan and provides no benefit at all.

 

[Echo147]

If the cloning software can choose an existing partition rather than create one, then boot your WD with the SSD as a data drive and lay out its partition(s) from disk management which will align them correctly.

Although note that Windows will not be a happy bunny if it finds two identical disk signatures, worth wiping all SSD contents via a boot CD tool before the above.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I would guess that Intel or Acronis does not think that the average user would care about alignment. They would rather have a quick & easy way to transfer from a HDD to a SSD.

but I would think that Intel would care about warranty returns increasing, because of the increased NAND wear due to being unaligned.

 

[Radeon962]

Well, curiousity got the best of me.

So I moved the C: partion with Gparted and it is now aligned at 2048 and the AS SSD benchmark is slightly improved, but nothing that would be noticeable that I can tell other than most of the marks improved.

Here are screenshots from before and after:

NOT ALIGNED



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

ALIGNED



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

 

[Old Hippie]

Not much different in the specs but I have no doubt your drive is thanking you for not making it work so hard.

I'm sure it will reward you by extending it's life.

BTW....Why is your ASSSD in German? If you want it in English just keep the included en-US folder in the same folder as the program and run it from there....Least it works for me.

 

[Radeon962]

When I downloaded AS SSD I did not run it from the prompt, I saved it and must have not included or checked the English version. I did not think it was worth reinstalling just for the English as it is the same format, except German.

I have been impressed with the X25-M and actually swapped out the Agility 2 in my other machine and replaced that with an X25-M as well.

Both computer's have Gigabyte mobo's (GA-P55M-UD2 in this one and GA-P35-DS3L in the other) so they get the SMART error on boot due to the SandForce driver in conflict with how Gigabyte mobo's recognize them. Adds 5 seconds or so to the boot, but nothing other than that. For the UD2 you could flash with a Beta BIOS and get rid of the error, but the DS3L is EOL so it sounds like there will not be a Beta BIOS to address the error.

X25-M's may not look the fastest on the benchmarks compared to the newer drives, but they excel in the random writes and read speeds and that to me makes the most difference in "feel" of the system. I can say that my older system "feels" faster with the X25-M vs. the Agility 2.

In either case though, it was much improved performance over the WD Black 640GB that was replaced and led me to keep the system as-is rather than going forward with a mITX build with a Core i3 to replace it. Figure I'll wait for SandyBridge and Intel G3's for my mITX build.

 

[Old Hippie]

When I downloaded AS SSD I did not run it from the prompt, I saved it and must have not included or checked the English version. I did not think it was worth reinstalling just for the English as it is the same format, except German.

It doesn't install and if it doesn't bother you that's all that matters.

X25-M's may not look the fastest on the benchmarks compared to the newer drives, but they excel in the random writes and read speeds and that to me makes the most difference in "feel" of the system. I can say that my older system "feels" faster with the X25-M vs. the Agility 2.

:biggrin:
It's difficult to explain the differences in SSDs to those that only "Spec Test" drives and have no personal experience. Many rely on those tests as the only criteria for drive selection and don't realize that performance in the real world doesn't easily correlate to sequential read/write speed.

The Intel drives are a perfect example of 'not the best specs' but 'performance where it counts' to make a desktop computer perform at it's best.

 

[Radeon962]

The Intel drives are a perfect example of 'not the best specs' but 'performance where it counts' to make a desktop computer perform at it's best.

I totally agree with that statement.

 

[tweakboy]

They say defragging a SSD is not smart. I say different. Defrag the drive and align it. IT will run the defrag soo fast youll be done in minutes and youll be all aligned.. gl

 

[Old Hippie]

They say defragging a SSD is not smart. I say different. Defrag the drive and align it. IT will run the defrag soo fast youll be done in minutes and youll be all aligned.. gl

More words of wisdom from the resident guru. :biggrin:

 

[skid00skid00]

They say defragging a SSD is not smart. I say different. Defrag the drive and align it. IT will run the defrag soo fast youll be done in minutes and youll be all aligned.. gl

For those of you who are newbies to SSD's, you do NOT defrag them, ever. It just wastes a limited number of write cycles, and it does not speed up file access at all.

Tweakboy and oldhippie, you should be banned from posting for a month for posting this well-known nonsense!