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Other How to set up SSD running properly?

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by Thanh55, 21 Oct 2010.

  1. Thanh55

    Thanh55 What's a Dremel?

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    Hi Experts
    I just got a OCZ Vertex 120 and going to install windows 7. I remember reading somewhere about paging file have to move to another HDD, is that right? and how to get TRIM on the Vertex? Many thanks for your help :eyebrow:
     
  2. Ph4ZeD

    Ph4ZeD What's a Dremel?

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    Theres really no need for that faffing about. Heres what I did:

    Physically installed drive.
    Restarted comp with W7 USB stick in drive.
    Booted the W7 setup.
    Formatted/removed old OS.
    Formatted new SSD.
    Installed W7 on SSD.
    Enjoyed W7 booting and patching in seconds.

    That is all. BTW if your tight for space, get rid of hiberfil.sys. Its a huge hibernation file. Google will tell you all.
     
  3. PocketDemon

    PocketDemon Modder

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    Ummmm... ...that's some slightly half-arsed/incomplete advice in places...

    Well, formatting the old OS means that the OP loses all of their emails in Outlook (or whatever), favourite websites, documents, etc, etc (& what if the SSD were DOA? - they'd then not have a working machine/have to reinstall everything on the HDD(s))....

    & you've been *really* unclear about formating the SSD as you should NEVER do a full one.


    A slightly better method is -

    1. physically install the SSD to the first SATA port & (temporarily) disconnect all HDDs.

    2. reboot &, in the bios, set the "Storage Configuration" (it'll be called something like that) to either achi or raid (ide mode is slower).

    3. run the Win7 install (using a USB stick or DVD or...?) but only do a quick format.[#]

    4. once the install's complete in some order to suit yourself -
    (a) do your updates (inc drivers)​
    (b) reconnect the other HDDs & copy the user data across that you need​
    (c) install the other software you want​


    [# i would hugely recommend making the partition as small as possible for your needs - the more free space, the more over provisioning the SSD has & the quicker it will continue to run... At least i'd try & aim for only using 100GB of it, but...]


    Having said that, i really agree with getting rid of the hiberfil.sys file unless you have some specific need for it as it just takes up space & can cause needless read-erase-write cycles...

    ...& that there's no real need to move the pagefile off of the SSD unless you're very short of space (i used to buy into it & it used to be the recommended practice, but the losses outweigh the gains) - though i would manually set the size to min 200MB // max whatever windows recommends as there's no gain in making a fixed sized one as there is with HDDs.

    Otherwise, altering the power settings to "never turn off HDDs" means that Trim &/or GC will always be able to run.


    Then, trim just works in Win7 with single drives - there's nothing at all to... (though again install the latest drivers for your disk controller).


    &, for other tweaks (up to you of course) this is the guide for the original Vertex & this for the V2... ...just in case you've actually got the latter then easier to give both.


    [edit] Oh, & prior to all of this then it's worth checking for a f/w upgrade - this is the page for all of them, but do read the instructions.
     
    Last edited: 22 Oct 2010
    Booga likes this.
  4. Thanh55

    Thanh55 What's a Dremel?

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    Absolutely clear here, thank you very much for your professional exp;ain and help. I'm will do it and report how I am getting on. Many thanks again.
     
  5. PocketDemon

    PocketDemon Modder

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    No worries :)

    Oh, & the one thing i forgot (no one's perfect) is to make sure you check that the defrag's disabled for the SSD...

    Go to All Programs -> Accessories --> System Tools ---> Disk Defragmenter... ...& make sure that any partitions you've put on the SSD are set to "never run"...

    ...or, if you're using a 3rd party defragger then check the settings for that - well, (at least) both the newer versions of Diskeeper (w. Hyperfast) & PerfectDisk have specific options for SSDs that will consolidate partly x amount of used blocks - i prefer the former as it's less aggressive for SSDs & works entirely in the background, but others disagree.


    Otherwise, just because it's recently been officially noted again on the OCZ forum (& to show that i've not been talking through my hat) -

    "All reducing OP does is reduce speed and recovery on the drive...E drives are slower than the normal drives.

    I really can not see the point of it, the drives work better with 28% OP.

    We released E drives to match competitors and to satisfy reviewers need to place a Price VS GB ratio as the most important factor you must consider when buying an SSD.

    Which in my opinion is utter crap.

    SSD drives should be run the way they perform best , or manually set so they perform better imo...

    To clarify...the reduction in speed is small BUT its still there and shows more with heavy usage data patterns"


    &, whilst it's obviously topic related...

    "For WL and GC there is no separated zones of user available NAND and OP NAND. The sum of these two are seen as one continuous pool of memory on the drive side of the FTL. OP NAND prevents the user from taking that space for their own use. Unallocated space done by the user would have similar results."


    Yeah, obviously this is in the SF specific part of the forum, but the same principle applies to all SSDs...

    ...for example this, whilst the reality of alt f/w has come to nothing so far (probably as people can just do it via under-partitioning), shows the exact same rationale of increased OP on indilinx controller SSDs having very +ve results.
     
    Last edited: 23 Oct 2010
  6. Publ!c Enemy

    Publ!c Enemy or Richard for short

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  7. Booga

    Booga Cuppa tea anyone?

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    Thanks for that Pocket, should be getting my Vertex 2 shortly (if Scan ever get them in).
    :thumb:
     
  8. PocketDemon

    PocketDemon Modder

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    Just watched this & it's actually pretty sensible in the main...

    The only things to note compared to what i wrote are -

    1. even if it's a brand new machine with blank HDDs you still want to only have the SSD connected - this helps to reduce issues with Win7 installation which can be a bit pernickety at the best of times (i've had it hang repeatedly simply by having a USB mouse connected - & yes i do have several legit copies as i subscribed to technet) & it makes it simpler to troubleshoot if for some reason it's not working properly.

    2. ahci vs raid - it doesn't actually matter providing it's one or the other as non-raid drives (when it's set to raid) will run as achi (which is faster).

    [i did of course mean ahci not achi in the earlier post]

    3. afaik, ahci (or raid) mode is not necessary for trim in Win7 & it will work in ide mode (if that's all you have on you mobo) - see here for reference (obviously outdated info about the intel drivers).
     
  9. Booga

    Booga Cuppa tea anyone?

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    This is all very handy information.
    With the popularity of SSD's as boot drives and more of us, lets say enthusiastic amateurs, getting hold of them, wouldn't it be great if there was a sticky with all this info in *hint hint*

    Found this thread to, don't know if it is of any use or says anything new.

    http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/474521-installing-ssd-tips-tricks-benchmarks.html

    http://www.ocztechnology.com/ssd_tools/

    http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...Vertex2)-expected-Benchmarks-and-General-Info

    http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/list.php?category/53-Sandforce-SSD-Guides

    http://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-7/windows-7-delete-hibernation-file-hiberfil-sys/

    P.S. Thanh55 you live just down the road from me. :)
     
    Last edited: 24 Oct 2010
  10. shadow19935

    shadow19935 Whats overclocking? :D

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    thanks this thread has helped me with the ssd matters :x
     
  11. Publ!c Enemy

    Publ!c Enemy or Richard for short

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    Hi just thought of something else, if i wanted to reinstall win7 from an old hdd what do i do about reavtivating win7. Or how to uninstall win7 with out loosing all the other stuff on the drive.
     
  12. PocketDemon

    PocketDemon Modder

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    if you want to do a complete reinstall (which is highly recommended) then you simply stick the same reg code in when you get to that bit - after x reinstalls then it'll ask you to do a phone activation, but if you've only installed it once (or a few times) then it's not a problem...

    ...you'd then reattach the hdd as a secondary drive (following the previous advice) & copy the stuff you want across.

    Of course you're going to have to reinstall all of the software but that's kind of obvious with a clean install.
     
  13. Publ!c Enemy

    Publ!c Enemy or Richard for short

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    But then when i plug the old drive back in wouldn't that will still have windows 7 on it. Wont that cause any issues?
     
  14. rob the bank

    rob the bank What's a Dremel?

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  15. Booga

    Booga Cuppa tea anyone?

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    It shouldn't do as long as your boot priority is set to the SSD.
    When you plug in your second drive it should allocate it a new drive letter say D:, which you can change to another letter if you want.
    You should be able to copy over any data you want to keep and you want on your SSD, like game set up/save files.

    As far as I am aware it will just treat the old OS as a folder of files once you have moved that data you want you could then format the old drive.
     
  16. Publ!c Enemy

    Publ!c Enemy or Richard for short

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    O right so once i format it windows7 will not be there then i can bjust use it for storage.
    1 other thing that i'm unsure of is if it goes onto the ssd wont windows say that it has already been activated then refuse to axtivate again?
     
  17. PocketDemon

    PocketDemon Modder

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    Not the biggest fan as i prefer to set things manually - that way i know it's been done properly - & there's a tendency for people to assume that everything will have a +ve effect for their usage & just randomly tick everything without reading up on it...

    Have a read of the OCZ guides that i linked to earlier towards the bottom of my first/the third post...


    This is completely correct - it's only if an OS install is connected at the same time as a new installation onto another drive (HDD or SSD) that there will be issues, as Windows will amalgamate the boot files into the original drive's ones...

    ...not the only reason for disconnecting all other HDDs/SSDs when installing Win7 though.


    (As above) you simply stick the same reg code in when you get to that bit - after x reinstalls then it'll ask you to do a phone activation, but if you've only installed it once (or a few times) then it's not a problem...

    [Should have added here that the phone activation isn't actually a major problem - more that it's an extra hoop to jump through if you get to that stage... it's a free call in the UK & just takes time]

    if you couldn't do this then Win7 would be a 'one use only' product - & if anything went wrong with your first (& only) install, you'd never be able to use it again... ...which would clearly be foolish.
     
  18. Publ!c Enemy

    Publ!c Enemy or Richard for short

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    Thank you all very much, thought i better ask as SCAN siad that my order would arrive tomorrow. So i want to get it right:)
     
  19. Publ!c Enemy

    Publ!c Enemy or Richard for short

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    Just found another problem, i got my pc from cyber power about a yearago because i was only just getting into all this, anyway they did send the installation disc but the phone number is theres.
    Any sugestions on how i could change this? :)
     
  20. PocketDemon

    PocketDemon Modder

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    tbh i'm not entirely sure what you're meaning by this...

    Well, 'if' you needed to do phone activation (either having installed too many times for internet activation or, as it's popped into my head, if you didn't have an internet connection), a window pops up where, you get a M$ activation phone no to call, a long code & a set of boxes to type numbers into...

    Otherwise, i'm not sure why you'd need a phone number... if it's just on the DVD sleeve then i guess it's so that you can ring the company if you needed to for some reason.
     

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