Not so sure Windows 7 recognizes my SSD ??

thatsright

Diamond Member
May 1, 2001
3,004
3
81
I have the 'newest' Intel X25-M Intel 80GB Gen 2 SSD. I updated to the latest Intel SSD firmware and running the drive in AHCI mode. I did NOT install the Intel chipset drivers for my mobo and using the default Win 7 storage drivers. I installed Windows 7 64-Bit yesterday, and I don't have that warm fuzzy feeling about it. I'm not 100% sure the drive is being picked up because:

-Win 7 install time took longer than others I've heard (but maybe I'm just being impatient on this.) It took about 8 minutes once you exclude BIOS boot screens, etc.
-Windows Defragmenter can be run on the drive as it let me start the process for the C drive. I thought this was disabled by default (I don't see it in Task scheduler though) and I would not even be able to manually run this?

FYI, these are the BIOS settings I have on my Gigabyte -EX58-UD3R:

-SATA RAID/AHCI MODE (set to disabled as I will not be doing any RAID)
-ONBOARD SATA/IDE DEVICE (set to Enabled)
-ONBOARD SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode (set to AHCI)

1. Can you guys think of anything I can/should check? Are there default options in Win 7 that are enable/disable when it detects an SSD as the primary drive?
2. I believe that while checking defrag, it started on the drive (I stopped it before it hit 1%). Will this harm TRIM functionality, or anything else?

Thanks guys!!
 

Majic 7

Senior member
Mar 27, 2008
668
0
0
This is a Windows 7 problem. There are a lot off posts around about 7 not disabling the stuff it is supposed to. Mine didn't disable defrag so I just make sure it is not on a schedule. All of the other stuff like superfetch and indexing wasn't disabled either, but I just left them alone. Still get a 427 when I test it with AS SSD. Which is what I got when it was first installed. As long as everything boots ok and seems to run right don't worry about it.
 

thatsright

Diamond Member
May 1, 2001
3,004
3
81
This is a Windows 7 problem. There are a lot off posts around about 7 not disabling the stuff it is supposed to. Mine didn't disable defrag so I just make sure it is not on a schedule. All of the other stuff like superfetch and indexing wasn't disabled either, but I just left them alone. Still get a 427 when I test it with AS SSD. Which is what I got when it was first installed. As long as everything boots ok and seems to run right don't worry about it.

Your right.

But when you spend a few hundred dollars and its your first computer in 7 years, you want everything to be 'perfect.' But there's a lot to be said about spending 90% of your time trying to get that last 5% of your system perfect.

BTW, should I disable 'Windows Search' application? I really like this feature for my work Outlook, but would it unacceptably increase read/write operations on a SSD drive?
 

Cattykit

Senior member
Nov 3, 2009
521
0
0
I don't know whether you should disable Windows Search or not. However, I think Google Desktop is a far better searching solution than Windows' one.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,570
10,200
126
FYI, these are the BIOS settings I have on my Gigabyte -EX58-UD3R:

-SATA RAID/AHCI MODE (set to disabled as I will not be doing any RAID)
-ONBOARD SATA/IDE DEVICE (set to Enabled)
-ONBOARD SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode (set to AHCI)
I don't think that these have much to do with Win7 properly detecting an SSD, but I think that those settings are wrong.

"Onboard SATA" is an additional chipset, usually the Jmicron. So you set your Jmicron ports to AHCI, but have disabled AHCI and RAID on the main Intel ports.

I think that you want to set SATA to AHCI mode, at least, and re-install Windows.
 

Engineer

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
39,230
701
126
I know that this is from the OCZ forum, but I think that much of the tweaking applies to the Intel drive as well.

Click me...

I especially like the ram drive (with auto save and load at shutdown and startup) for temporary files.
 

Scarpozzi

Lifer
Jun 13, 2000
26,391
1,780
126
Just give Windows 7 some more time. In all honesty, I've been running Vista 64 Ultimate for 2 years and am reluctant to switch because it's been running so well.

When I first got Vista (about a year or so after its release), there were still a few arbitrary drivers not available for the 64 bit platform. Linux distros running 64-bit have the same problem. I'd look to your drive vendor instead of Microsoft. If they don't submit the drivers to Microsoft, they can't get picked up and thrown into the windows patches.

1. I don't know of anything that would discriminate a low-level disk to keep it from working. Not only are primary disks running IDE, SATA, SCSI, SAS, SSD, and Virtual, the OS is typically running on the File System which is at a much higher level than the actual drive type. A lot of netbooks are using SSD with Windows 7.
2. I would refer to the hard drive manufacturer about the specifics on what defrag functions will do to the drive. Typically, all disk technologies have defrag at some level and you know they're going to build-in support for NTFS. Too many systems are Microsoft-based for them to neglect it. They may have some 'best practices' or configuration tips if you call them up and tell them what problems you're having. Just don't expect them to be in the office until Monday.