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SSD Questions

L

Lil Frier

Platinum Member
So I got a SSD a week or two ago, and it finally showed up a couple of days ago (120-GB Kingston V300, Amazon seller had a pricing error that dropped it from $80 to $25, so I couldn't resist). I read throguh the FAQ and still had some questions, so I wanted to post them here before I move forward.

1. I was going to install the SSD and put the OS on, then make it the boot drive and reinstall the HDD. However, I wanted to know how to clear of the Windows partition on my HDD. Do I have to fully format the HDD, or is there a simpler way to clean it up?

2. I always read about how a portion of the SSD needs to be left unfilled. Like I said, mine is a 120-GB, so it is a set amount of GB or a percentage I should leave unused?

3. Any other general maintenance things to watch out for? I know not to defrag, is there a setting in Windows 8.1 to turn that off (I think it does it on its own right now)? Anything else to know going in?
 
Lil Frier said:
So I got a SSD a week or two ago, and it finally showed up a couple of days ago (120-GB Kingston V300, Amazon seller had a pricing error that dropped it from $80 to $25, so I couldn't resist). I read throguh the FAQ and still had some questions, so I wanted to post them here before I move forward.

1. I was going to install the SSD and put the OS on, then make it the boot drive and reinstall the HDD. However, I wanted to know how to clear of the Windows partition on my HDD. Do I have to fully format the HDD, or is there a simpler way to clean it up?

2. I always read about how a portion of the SSD needs to be left unfilled. Like I said, mine is a 120-GB, so it is a set amount of GB or a percentage I should leave unused?

3. Any other general maintenance things to watch out for? I know not to defrag, is there a setting in Windows 8.1 to turn that off (I think it does it on its own right now)? Anything else to know going in?
Click to expand...


1) While installing Windows, ensure that you have nothing else but the SSD connected to prevent the Windows Boot files being copied to the 2nd drive. The best way would be to format your HDD to clean it up, first back your data to an external HDD then format it.

If you really don't want to format it, you can manually delete the files but make sure you enable hidden files and folders and disable hide OS files in the Folder Options to be able to see all the files there are many deeply hidden files that's why the best is to simply format it.

2) Yes, it won't affect the performance NOW, but a little bit down the road, it will help keep a sustained nice performance that doesn't deteriorate with time and usage, that is called OP (Overprovisioning).

My Samsung SSD's Magician software recommends 10% OP but most people on the net swear by 20 to 30% OP which I personally think is overkill.

What you need to do, while you are at the partition screen in the Windows 7 or 8 setup, delete all partitions that may or may not exist. Then create a new partition, Windows will tell you that it may need to create additional partitions, say OK

Now when it comes to the size...

Let's say the default max size for your 120GB was 122880, so multiply that by the OP level, let's say 20.

12280* 0.80 = 98304 (the reason I put .80 is because the .20 is going for OP

so your result is to create the partition with a 98304 size.

3- I will break it down to you:

a) Right click on C: then uncheck the enable this drive to have indexed locations in addition to bla bla bla then hit APPLY and wait

b) Go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Defragment & Optimize Drives and then turn off the automatic defragmentation from the bottom

c) after installing all your drives, open a command prompt by running it via administrator, then type:

winsat formal

then hit ENTER

this will benchmark your computer, not that we care about that, but that also ensure that it tells Windows 8 you are using an SSD, so stuff like Superfetch and other settings will be optimized for an SSD

enjoy
 
For 1), Doing a quick format *is* the easiest thing to do to wipe everything from the drive.
For 2), you can do what G73S suggests, or you can shrink the partition down once you have everything setup, and have a "reserved" area, or just keep a eye on the SSD, to make sure it don't go below 10-12GB.
For 3), some people turn off indexing, others don't. Don't really matter that much.

Oh, also, make sure you keep backups of anything important. 🙂
 
Yeah, I really just want the OS on it, then I might put a couple of games on it. I don't do a whole lot on my PC right now, mostly web browsing and media consumption (VLC for TV shows and occasional music). How long's the format usually take (my HDD is 640 GB)?

It all is such a short-term pain because I don't have enough external storage to hold all of my internal stuff, so I have to transfer a bunch, move it to my cousin's PC, then get the rest, then take his disc drive (don't have one because I never need it).

I'm lazy, that's the problem here. But thanks for the info, should be a good help.
 
All righty, will have to do that once I get a chance to install my OS (hopefully tomorrow).

My dad mentioned some WD software that's supposed to make formatting faster, but he didn't know the name. Any idea what it is, and if it's worth using?
 
Lil Frier said:
All righty, will have to do that once I get a chance to install my OS (hopefully tomorrow).

My dad mentioned some WD software that's supposed to make formatting faster, but he didn't know the name. Any idea what it is, and if it's worth using?
Click to expand...

Formatting easier???? uhhh, it's just one click man, you right click on the drive, choose format, then ensure that the QUICK FORMAT is selected (which it should be by default)

there's nothing to make easier about this, it's as easy as a click :whiste:
 
The V300 is a SandForce based drive, so you don't really need to worry about filling it because of the real time compression engine. It will always have more over-provisioning since the data you write will be compressed, which means it will take less space and thus increases over-provisioning.
 
I used AOMEI Partition Assistant and moved my OS from my HDD to SSD. It has an option "Migrate OS to another SSD or HDD" that does just that. Though you'll need the new partition to be at least as big as the old one.
 
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G73S said:
Formatting easier???? uhhh, it's just one click man, you right click on the drive, choose format, then ensure that the QUICK FORMAT is selected (which it should be by default)

there's nothing to make easier about this, it's as easy as a click :whiste:
Click to expand...

Not easier, faster. As in, the format takes less time. I was speaking for the case of a full format.
 
DownTheSky said:
I used AOMEI Partition Assistant and moved my OS from my HDD to SSD. It has an option "Migrate OS to another SSD or HDD" that does just that. Though you'll need the new partition to be at least as big as the old one.
Click to expand...
that is the worst thing to do it will hurt performance. nothing beats clean format / reinstall of Windows. NOTHING
 
DownTheSky said:
I used AOMEI Partition Assistant and moved my OS from my HDD to SSD. It has an option "Migrate OS to another SSD or HDD" that does just that. Though you'll need the new partition to be at least as big as the old one.
Click to expand...

Ditto, free, and it's only 8 MB too! I have used this twice in the last two weeks with excellent results. The newest version will migrate OS to a larger or smaller drive. It copied my 60 GB system partition in 20 Minutes from a 500 GB drive to a 240 GB SSD. I have also used it to shrink and re-size partitions. It is a very fast and useful tool. Of course, a fresh install is always nice too! http://www.disk-partition.com/features/migrate-os-to-ssd.html

Jim
 
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All right, finally got the SSD in (Windows disc was ruined so I had to burn another, among other complications). I went with a 15% overprovisioning because a) I plan to basically leave the SSD untouched, just having the OS and one or two small programs on it, and b) I expect to upgrade to a bigger SSD before failure starts to kick in. Still have to format the HDD, but the important stuff is backed up already, so I'll start that after Windows is done updating.

That said, I'm still feeling low on space from the start. I have 47 of the 96 GB I started with filled, and that's JUST the OS and drivers. I'm wondering if there's anything from Windows that's unnecessary, meaning I can delete it or move it to the HDD. I don't really need the space for anything in the near-term, but I'm thinking that a game or two (though older ones, like DOOM) might end up on there eventually.

Also, how will installing programs change for me? Is it as simple as pointing custom program installs to the HDD directory? I know programs usually like to go to the Program Files or Program Files (x86) folders, but is that not necessary? Can I just create a "Programs" folder on my HDD and send stuff there (same for downloads)?
 
Lil Frier said:
All right, finally got the SSD in (Windows disc was ruined so I had to burn another, among other complications). I went with a 15% overprovisioning because a) I plan to basically leave the SSD untouched, just having the OS and one or two small programs on it, and b) I expect to upgrade to a bigger SSD before failure starts to kick in. Still have to format the HDD, but the important stuff is backed up already, so I'll start that after Windows is done updating.

That said, I'm still feeling low on space from the start. I have 47 of the 96 GB I started with filled, and that's JUST the OS and drivers. I'm wondering if there's anything from Windows that's unnecessary, meaning I can delete it or move it to the HDD. I don't really need the space for anything in the near-term, but I'm thinking that a game or two (though older ones, like DOOM) might end up on there eventually.

Also, how will installing programs change for me? Is it as simple as pointing custom program installs to the HDD directory? I know programs usually like to go to the Program Files or Program Files (x86) folders, but is that not necessary? Can I just create a "Programs" folder on my HDD and send stuff there (same for downloads)?
Click to expand...

1) Disable hibernation by typing the following command in an elevated command prompt:

powercfg -h off

2) Shrink your virtual memory/page file to a min size of 1024 MB and a max size of 2048 MB

3) After you do all the windows updates, Windows does not delete their temp installation files and they can safely be deleted to save about 500 MB of space:

Go to:

C: Windows\Software Distribution\Download

Don't delete the Download folder itself, just all the files in it..

After a clean install of Windows 7 Pro SP1 x64 + all Windows updates by doing the following then deleting the temp files, the whole size of the partition is only 11 GB

After installing my programs + 3 large games (Battle Field 3 + FIFA 2014 + Counterstrike Global), my C: partition is only 69 GB used
 
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Thanks for all of that. Reading what it says about paging, I understand what it is. Is changing the size for any specific reason? Is it to minimize SSD access and improve longevity or something (only guess I could think of)?

I turned the sleep stuff off in the power settings, but I also did the command prompt (not sure if it matters because of that).

Lastly, that folder was only about 20-something MB in size. However, after getting 8.1 installed and such, the SSD went from about 47 GB used to 20.5 GB used. I've got 74.something GB free now.

I greatly appreciate all the help you've given (everyone), it's made this all a breeze.
 
Lil Frier said:
Thanks for all of that. Reading what it says about paging, I understand what it is. Is changing the size for any specific reason? Is it to minimize SSD access and improve longevity or something (only guess I could think of)?
Click to expand...
one thing I forgot to mention, do this only if you have 8 GB + RAM


Reason being, by default, Windows sets a large amount of page file in case you ever get a BSOD then it will use that space for a crash dump file so you can investigate the reason. That being said, who really uses that? it is not worth it and just takes os much of precious space.

Now we don't want to completely disable the page file as some programs like WMP unfortunately still rely on it. Example, I have 32 GB of RAM, when I disabled pagefile completely since I always have about 29 GB of free RAM, still WMP would give me "low memory errors" because it is looking for the page file. So what we wanna do is shrink it to 1024 MB and a MAX of 2048 GB just incase to minimize its size

In my SSD's Samsung Magician, if I choose the OS optimization feature what it does is chooses a 200 MB Minimum size and a 1024 MB max size so you might wanna follow that if you have more than 8 to 16 GB of RAM
 
I kind of follow what you're saying. I've similarly got 32 GB of RAM (which I forgot is only clicked at 1333, though being rated for 1866, so I'll have to consider OC it sometime--maybe when I get a cooler and OC my CPU).

Kind of an odd side question, though. My CPU (4670K) used to run at a variable clock. It would hit the Turbo (3.8 GHz, I think) when busy, but it would also idle under 1 GHz when doing light tasks. However, after a while (can't say when, as I just kind of noticed it one day), it stopped doing that. It would chill at the base 3.4 GHz all the time, unless busy (it would still ramp up to the Turbo clock, but not downclock ever).

Now that I've done a fresh install and everything, my CPU is doing it again. Just wondering if you had a clue as to why it'd stop that clock throttling as time went one.
 
Lil Frier said:
I kind of follow what you're saying. I've similarly got 32 GB of RAM (which I forgot is only clicked at 1333, though being rated for 1866, so I'll have to consider OC it sometime--maybe when I get a cooler and OC my CPU).

Kind of an odd side question, though. My CPU (4670K) used to run at a variable clock. It would hit the Turbo (3.8 GHz, I think) when busy, but it would also idle under 1 GHz when doing light tasks. However, after a while (can't say when, as I just kind of noticed it one day), it stopped doing that. It would chill at the base 3.4 GHz all the time, unless busy (it would still ramp up to the Turbo clock, but not downclock ever).

Now that I've done a fresh install and everything, my CPU is doing it again. Just wondering if you had a clue as to why it'd stop that clock throttling as time went one.
Click to expand...

Just to give you an example:

My CPU idles @ 3.4 GHz. and then the Turbo kicks in on a single threaded application it jumps to 3.7 GHz.. If it's a an app that uses more than one core, then the Turbo would be less, that's how it works.

Now, if I change my plan to Balanced instead of High Performance, it idles @ 1.1 GHz. and jumps up accordingly.

I purchased a performance laptop to use it at max speed, so I'm always at the high performance plan, and have set min CPU utilization in advanced power management for both battery and power to 100%
 
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