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Question regarding an SSD.

N

nakabaka

Junior Member
Hi, my other half has recently recieved a very old (32bit athlon 3200+ processor) compaq computer, and the mobo/ram/processor still work. I have spare parts laying around, except for a hard drive. This thing has SATA1 ports, and it's been ages since I handled SATA1; I remember when SATA2 drives had jumpers to be able to toggle for SATA1 compatibility. I have a pair of Vertex 4s in my gaming rig, and though it'd be overkill, I'd like to get this other machine up and running with an XP Home install or something. Problem is, I know they really worked on backwards compatibility since SATA1, but do they now have it built into these SATA3 ssd's to get around that whole limitation crap? I'd hate to have to shell out for a new drive for this otherwise perfectly working computer that would be a great internet/school machine, if I already have something that will at least work.
 
That was all based on early SATA chips having compatibility issues. You should be fine, with new drives. If you do have any problems, though, a cheap Silicon Image SATA PCI card will handle it fine (currently $15 shipped at Newegg for a 2-port card).
 
Ok. Just out of sheer curiosity, how much would that kill the speed, being on the PCI bus? I never used anything like that to know; always just straight into the old ATA/PATA or SATA once SATA hit. I notice that the SATA1 cards seem to run on PCI while the SATA2 cards seem to be on PCIe, and the only PCIe's I've used were video cards for the x16. I'm finding a couple of low-capacity SATA1 disk-on-modules for relatively cheap (though more than $15), depending on the speed I might go and buy one of those 2GB modules. (I may sound like I know a little but I actually know even less, as a monkey can figure out what shape fits in what hole.)
 
nakabaka said:
Ok. Just out of sheer curiosity, how much would that kill the speed, being on the PCI bus? I never used anything like that to know; always just straight into the old ATA/PATA or SATA once SATA hit. I notice that the SATA1 cards seem to run on PCI while the SATA2 cards seem to be on PCIe, and the only PCIe's I've used were video cards for the x16. I'm finding a couple of low-capacity SATA1 disk-on-modules for relatively cheap (though more than $15), depending on the speed I might go and buy one of those 2GB modules. (I may sound like I know a little but I actually know even less, as a monkey can figure out what shape fits in what hole.)
Click to expand...
Probably around 90-110MBps. With that old of a PC, it really doesn't matter, honestly. PCI, AGP, the CPU, etc., will create enough bottlenecks that a faster SATA implementation would only barely do anything practical faster. The low seek times from the SSD is really what'll help out, and a Vertex 4 is good to run w/o TRIM.
 
Awesome, so how would I disable TRIM? And is there anything that I need to do prior to trying to load XP onto an SSD?
 
nakabaka said:
Awesome, so how would I disable TRIM?
Click to expand...
XP doesn't support TRIM. Some drives get really slow over time because of that. The Vertex 4 should do OK w/o it, though.
And is there anything that I need to do prior to trying to load XP onto an SSD?
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Format the drive with Windows 7 or 8, then install XP to that partition, so that the partition is aligned.
 
If it helps any, my current computer (hopefully to be my "main" if I can get this old one a fresh disk up and going) is running on 7 home premium 64bit. I have an old XP Home sp3 disk that I haven't used yet. Since both 7 and XP use that NTFS stuff, could I just wipe and format this drive before unplugging it and it work for the XP install? If my understanding is correct, then it's called "AHCI" that is better, but I'd rather just keep it as NTFS as it's what I'm familiar with, if at all possible.
 
and nevermind that first question, i was typing it before I saw you posted that, cerb. I still need to know what allignment is though.
 
nakabaka said:
and nevermind that first question, i was typing it before I saw you posted that, cerb. I still need to know what allignment is though.
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Old HDDs had 512B sectors, and the 1st partition would start at sector 63, typically. SSDs typically use actual writing blocks of 4K or 8K each, have 4K sector sizes (new HDDs do, too), and the file system defaults to 4K blocks for itself. But, the disk supports being used as a 512B/sector disk, for compatibility.

So, you want the partition to be aligned, so that each 4K NTFS block exactly matches a 4K logical disk address, instead of each 4K NTFS block overlapping 2 4K disk sectors. Windows 7 and newer will automatically do that, when partitioning. So, if you partitioned and formatted it as a regular disk in Windows 7, you'll be good to go.
 
Once again I am typing as you answer, lol, sorry for the hassle. So I won't even need to hassle with alignment as long as I click "format" for ntfs as it's plugged into my 7 system, without all that other crap to weed through? and does the fact my 7 system is 64 bit and my XP disk is 32 bit make any difference?
 
nakabaka said:
Once again I am typing as you answer, lol, sorry for the hassle. So I won't even need to hassle with alignment as long as I click "format" for ntfs as it's plugged into my 7 system, without all that other crap to weed through?
Click to expand...
Exactly. If you're not sure that it was initially partitioned in 7, you can delete the volume and partition, and go through the disk wizard again, from in Disk Management, to be sure. Basically every popular OS' tools automatically preferred making partitions aligned by 2009-10 (Windows 7, OS X, and free *n*xes, at least). Those guides exist mainly for people that stuck with just XP for a long time.
and does the fact my 7 system is 64 bit and my XP disk is 32 bit make any difference?
Click to expand...
None at all. You really just want to make sure that Windows 7 was allowed to create the partition. It should automatically align it for any SSD. You can use AS-SSD to easily check alignment, too (the line below the driver name will show the alignment, and end in OK if it's correctly aligned). So, if it's formatted NTFS form Windows 7 already, it may already be aligned, and you might not have to do anything.
 
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