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Welcomed to the world of SSD!

jhansman

jhansman

Platinum Member
Finally got my 64GB M4 installed last night, which was a breeze. While I love that Win7 boots up in a quarter (or less) the time it took with my Raptor, what really blew my mind was installing the OS from a USB drive. I started it, went to the kitchen for coffee while it was at the "expanding files" stage, and when I got back it was prompting me for login info. The 1TB Samsung spinner I'm using for data and some apps already seems like a archaic dog by comparison. So now, I have a couple of questions for the experts here:

1. Can I create an image of my install with something like True Image, or is this some kind of no-no with SSDs?

2. How important is preserving free space on the drive? Right now it's about 60% full and there are a few apps (Office, Adobe Lightroom 3) I'd like to put on it.

3. I am running a mobo with SATAII. Will I see much (some?) improvement if I move up to SATAIII? I am considering an incremental upgrade of mobo and RAM that would give me USB 3.0, SATAIII, and DDR3 memory.

Many thanks to any who chime in!
 
congrats on the M4, just installed mine last night too! I think you're fine with creating a backup image, I've seen people write about it on the forum, try a search here to see what you find.

To preserve space, make sure you disable system restore and turn off the recycle bin for you SSD. You mentioned your SSD is 605 full, is that with just the Win7 installation?

Regarding the mobo, you should see a difference when running mulitple apps or when you're multitasking, especially if you're on a DDR2 system with an older CPU. Other than that I dont think your boot times will change much IMO
 
Grab a copy of GetFolderSize (free), and see what's hogging all your space. If you haven't moved your user data to another drive already, that could be a big portion.

If you already own True Image, that's a great program for creating image files. If not, Macrium Reflect is excellent and free.
 
I'm actually tempted to create virtual mappings for things that get thrown on my SSD. For example, iTunes puts all back-ups in C:\User\<Username>\AppData\Roaming\iTunes\... and I'd rather it be with all the other iTunes stuff on Drive E.

I think they have a "Windows SSD optimizer" on the OCZ forums that you may want to check out. It will disable all of the stuff that you don't really need turned on with a SSD.
 
jhansman said:
1. Can I create an image of my install with something like True Image, or is this some kind of no-no with SSDs?
Click to expand...
Yes you can and you should. The problem is it may mis-align the drive from an image from XP. Making a copy from SSD doesn't cause issues, although it is wise to store the image on the HDD.

jhansman said:
2. How important is preserving free space on the drive? Right now it's about 60&#37; full and there are a few apps (Office, Adobe Lightroom 3) I'd like to put on it.
Click to expand...
For OS drive, you don't want to fill it up completely. Stay below 80% so it has some space for log and cache files. Proper clean up will free up some space after windows installation. If you have a HDD slave, store unimportant programs and files on it to free up even more space.

jhansman said:
3. I am running a mobo with SATAII. Will I see much (some?) improvement if I move up to SATAIII? I am considering an incremental upgrade of mobo and RAM that would give me USB 3.0, SATAIII, and DDR3 memory.
Click to expand...
With M4, SataIII helps.
 
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jhansman said:
installing the OS from a USB drive. I started it, went to the kitchen for coffee while it was at the "expanding files" stage, and when I got back it was prompting me for login info.

2. How important is preserving free space on the drive? Right now it's about 60&#37; full and there are a few apps (Office, Adobe Lightroom 3) I'd like to put on it.
Click to expand...

Welcome indeed, SSDs benchmark like a mutha, but unfortunately we don't process as much information everyday as fast SSDs can max out at. I encountered how stupidly fast the sequential of SSDs were once when I cloned an SSD to a new SSD. Holy hell. 16GB took about 1 1/2 minutes. It took longer for the Paragon Drive Copy to do it's bench testing. It takes longer for some of us to take a pi$$. It took longer for me to find the screwdriver.

The Crucial M4 is bipolar. Fantastic speed and latency, but it's at a cost. Luckily you're on Win7 where TRIM will help it. However, if and when you do end up getting close to filling up the drive, it's time and probably best to buy a larger one. Also yes, SATA III will get you a little more speed, but the latency will be the same. If you're happy with the everyday speed, you probably won't notice it.
 
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The image tool in Win7 works fine for backups and keeps alignment on restore too. Enjoy the SSD experience OP!
 
Great suggestions, most appreciated. I didn't even think about using the built in image tool in Win7. Now I'm trying to squeeze out every bit of performance I can from this drive, and getting a bit manic in the process (I know, no one here can relate). Kinda forgot how addicting hardware can be. Gee, the OCZ Colossal 1TB SSD is only $2800 and change on the Egg. I can swing that, right?
 
Be careful with the built in imaging tool. It's hit and miss weather it will work. It may be particular to the optical drive used, I'm not sure, but the reason it doesn't work (three out of three for me) is little consolation if you can't get your OS back. Unfortunately, the only way to test is to actually overwrite your current OS with an image file. If you have relied on the built in image tool, and it doesn't happen to work with your setup, well, it's start over time.

Macrium Reflect has always worked for me- except for image files that are copies, were moved or were run over with a defragger. Usually those still work, but they are not reliable. Best practice is to keep image files in their own dedicated partition for better protection.

One great thing about Macrium Reflect is that you can now actually mount an image file and extract a specific file or directory, without actually recovering the full image. It will also retain alignment on a partition that was aligned when the image was created.
 
I've been using SSD's in various systems for years now and there are some tweaks you should do to maximise space and performance, such as:

disable the scheduled defrag of the SSD from the windows defrag program
disable system restore (its cack anyway)
disable hibernation
disable turning off hard disks after x minutes
disable prefetch
disable superfetch

People will say that Windows 7 does most of the above automatically when it detects that you are using an SSD. I've had 1 X25-M G2 and 2 320's and its never made the above adjustments.

If you wanted to free up more space, you could uninstall windows components such as tablet pc and dvd maker.
 
With my 64GB SSD, I use Acronis drive clone. Takes about 10 minutes to clone the SSD to a small/cheap hard disk. That disk is immediately bootable if need be.

I also do drive images with TruImage, but the clone is better/safer, I think.
 
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