Hello guys! I just got my SSD yesterday - and i installed windows and so on. And i've moved the pagefile to another HDD, I'm not able to enable AHCI - my old motherboard dosen't support it, but is there anything else i need to do to optimize performance? Thanks
In theory yes, it reduces (or uses up ) some of the finite writes the drive can complete but in practice the average (and even heavy use) user will never see a drive die this way.
Upgrade your MB and OS so it supports AHCI and TRIM? Seriously though beyond enabling AHCI in the bios, and ensuring TRIM is enabled there isn't much more the average SSD user needs to do to enjoy all of the benefits that it offers.
Disable hibernation on the ssd, and never defrag it What motherboard do you have? It might be worth grabbing a sata3 add in card if your mobo doesnt support sata3 natively. Also run the wei (windows experience thingy) because it will configure a fews things to support the ssd (at least in win 7 it does)
IMO the whole 'lifetime' issue with SSDs is a bit of a nonsense really, I've got an M225 I've had for a couple of years and it's still showing at 98% health and that's after being used constantly and having W7 reinstalled at least half a dozen times. If you don't have your pagefile on the SSD then you lose some performance as most of it is used for small random read/writes which is exactly what an SSD has over a normal HDD. Are you using W7 by the way?
What SSD do you have? It might be worth checking whether there are any firmware upgrades available. There have been several since I got mine, one of which fixed a BSOD problem which was nice.
Agree with others. Don't move pagefile onto a slow mech hard disk. Disabling page file would be nice but you'd get file errors on downloads (torrent or otherwise). I installed my new Kingston 120gb Hyper X 3 days ago. Win 7 boots in about 7 seconds if that. I would upgrade your mobo, cpu and ram if I were u. i5 2500k is best cpu I have owned so far and I sold i7 860 to get it. It's faster and uses less power. Overclocks to 5ghz on auto settings with my Asus P8Z68-V/Gen3.
Be careful if you enable AHCI after you've already installed Windows or you'll probably have trouble booting. You need to make sure it's already enabled in Windows before changing it in the BIOS This might be of some help.
i wouldn't tend to see any value given by SSDLife (or whatever other program) for the calculated remaining lifespan as being at all accurate & so would very much question the validity of your claim. Well, i know with various OCZ SSDs then it's been all over the place &, having hit a zero figure, starts again... ...& a 2 second google search & depending on which f/w you're using on the M225, the figure can vary hugely for the calculated remaining lifespan... (Well, apparently, installing the 2030 f/w on the M225 knocked 4 years & 3 months off of someone's 'lifespan' - though targetbsp's comments 'could' be misinterpreted... ...well, it shouldn't be read as though that person's SSD will still last for 4 1/2 years - as, beyond pure coincidence, neither value is likely to have any basis in reality - instead that the actual remaining lifespan (of an unknown length) 'should' have increased slightly d.t. better GC.] Yeah, tbh, i don't think i've heard of any combination of SSD, f/w & program that's ever given anything approaching an accurate value... ...but, imho, this is predominantly down to misinformation on the part of the 'remaining life' program makers - the cycle values stored in the smart data only meaning anything to the SSD manufacturers when deciding if you've overused your SSD if you tried to RMA within the warranty period. & separately, rather than retyping again, a general list of what to do (& think about doing) with a SSD is here.
Very true but I must say my first SSD has already lasted longer than some of my HDDs and it's still going strong. I guess we won't know the reality until thousands of some of those that initially sold in bulk start to die off.
Thanks for all the replies ! The SSD is an Corsair Force GT 90 GB - regarding the AHCI, i can't find anything in my BIOS that says something with Enhanced Sata
Well, that doesn't surprise me at all having had the joy of the 1TB 7200.11s. it also, afaik, depends upon which M225 you got (as with the other early indilinx SSDs)... ...well, as with the Vertexes & whatnot, originally they used 5Xnm nand (usually rated for 10,000 cycles) but then all of the manufacturers tended to switch to 3Xnm nand (usually rated for 5,000 cycles). Having said that, looking further, the 2030 f/w for your SSD downgraded lots the nand for some reason (& a greater variety of types appear to have been used - i didn't even know that there was 4Xnm nand - clearly a short lived premise) - "Samsung 5x nm NAND : 10k -> 5k, Samsung 4x nm NAND : 10k -> 3k, Intel/Micron 3x nm NAND : 10k -> 5k, Hynix 41nm : 10k -> 5k, Hynix 32nm : 5k -> 3k" - i wonder why, as i've seen no mention of the need to do this elsewhere for any of the original indilinxes??? Now, whilst GC has improved significantly (&, in fact, trim & GC came in whilst at least the Vertexes were on sale) - which is a reason to update the f/w on older SSDs, though you would generally expect a newer controller to be better using identical nand - the cheaper current consumer SSDs use 2Xnm which, unless you use cherry picked/binned nand (which i think only intel have done), is usually only rated for 3,000 cycles.
