Migrating to an SSD

[Yousuf Khan]

Okay, got myself an SSD now. So I want to migrate my Windows boot drive
to it. I have access to a couple of cloning utils that can properly copy
system disks and make them bootable, so that's not a problem. However,
I'm wondering if it's really that simple? I understand that there are
some tuning that needs to be done to SSD's, such as setting its cluster
sizes, etc. Also there is something called TRIM support that Windows 7
needs to implement. Is this something that's built into Windows 7 right
away, or is it something that needs to be installed? Anything else?

Yousuf Khan

[Allen Drake]

You can simply clone your system drive as I did at first when I
upgraded all my systems but that is not always the best option. You
need to know about SSD partition alignment
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/113967-ssd-alignment.html

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/70822-ssd-tweaks-optimizations-windows-7-a.html

Al.

[charlie]

Besides all of the above, there is another, perhaps quite important
consideration. SSDs are a good host for "static" files, and not so good
for dynamic ones. It would seem that windows should be reorganized on
that basis, with static directories and files on the SSD.
The registry will likely need manual editing to accommodate the changes.

(I have two SSDs (120G each) in systems that I'm going to "reorganize",
as soon as I figure out a reasonable way to accomplish the task.

There seem to be significant differences in setup between various mfrs
ssd drives. I'm still researching this one!

I've run across two different recommended cluster sizes, 1K and 4K.
(rounded size, not actual)

A comment I ran across was that AMDs controller does not pass the Trim
command.

[dweebken]

On a new SSD, first I had to create a partition and format the drive. I
then used Acronis trueimage Home 2012 to clone my laptop's HD to the
SSD. Then swapped the drives and the SSD booted up just fine. Then
Windows recognised a new drive in the system and loaded the drivers for
the SSD quite happily. then rebooted and just enjoyed the incredible
speed. It was as simple as that. Windows 7 has TRIM support built in.

My SSD is a Corsair Performance3 256 GB device, on a Toshiba Portege
R830 Laptop using Intel Core i5, and Win 7 Professional 64 Bit. Also
have 8GB RAM.

Also, once I had it working, I installed SSD tweaker from
http://elpamsoft.com/Downloads.aspx?Name=SSD%20Tweaker
and ran that.

Oh, you might want to also run ATTO Disk Benchmark before and after too,
to see the speed increas for yourself. It's free.

My laptop used to take 10 min and more to boot up from cold to useable.
Now it does a full reboot in under a minute.


hth

[Bob I]

You will see a LOT of opinions, some good, some not so. For my
installation, I decided on the drive, and then followed the
manufacturers recommendations for installation, setup and configuration.
For me that meant a clean install and load. So before creating your own
install procedure, read up.

[Drew]

Recently did the same with a drive that had become too small to hold my
windows7.I installed a new Intel 120 gig ssd into my "box' and then
using the included Intel migration software it took approx 15 minutes or
less to migrate my boot drive to the new ssd. I then rebooted and
changed the boot order.At that point it changed my new drive to c: and
changed the old drive to L:. Worked perfectly and after 1 month I
formatted the old drive and it is now storage. Intel Migration Software
is just a free somewhat limited version of Acronis I believe and it is
updated frequently.I was leery about doing it but I found it was
amazingly easy and required very little on my part to perform this.
What brand of ssd did you purchase Yousuf?

[Yousuf Khan]

On 24/03/2012 3:16 AM, Allen Drake wrote:
> You can simply clone your system drive as I did at first when I
> upgraded all my systems but that is not always the best option. You
> need to know about SSD partition alignment
> http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/113967-ssd-alignment.html
>
> http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/70822-ssd-tweaks-optimizations-windows-7-a.html

Good info, I'll read through these.

Yousuf Khan

[Yousuf Khan]

On 24/03/2012 3:27 AM, charlie wrote:
> Besides all of the above, there is another, perhaps quite important
> consideration. SSDs are a good host for "static" files, and not so good
> for dynamic ones. It would seem that windows should be reorganized on
> that basis, with static directories and files on the SSD.
> The registry will likely need manual editing to accommodate the changes.

That's actually something I was thinking about. Should I move things
like the swapfile, Thunderbird data, and just "User" folder in general,
off to regular storage?

Yousuf Khan

[Loren Pechtel]

On Fri, 23 Mar 2012 22:20:48 -0400, Yousuf Khan
<bbb...@spammenot.yahoo.com> wrote:

Windows 7 supports trim, no problem.

The issue that matters is that a simple copy onto the drive will
produce a misaligned layout that will be bad for performance. There
are programs out there that will take a drive and correctly align the
data, I have never looked into them.

[Loren Pechtel]

On Sat, 24 Mar 2012 03:27:30 -0400, charlie <cdkn...@msn.com> wrote:

>Besides all of the above, there is another, perhaps quite important
>consideration. SSDs are a good host for "static" files, and not so good
>for dynamic ones. It would seem that windows should be reorganized on
>that basis, with static directories and files on the SSD.
>The registry will likely need manual editing to accommodate the changes.
>
>(I have two SSDs (120G each) in systems that I'm going to "reorganize",
>as soon as I figure out a reasonable way to accomplish the task.

That's the theory at least but even though I didn't do anything to
keep the dynamic stuff off the SSDs I'm happy with how they are
performing.

I have a 256gb that hosts my Win7 system and a 128gb that hosts two
virtual machines. They've been in use for a year now and I've managed
to write so much to the 128gb one that it's life is down to 99%. The
256gb is still at 100%.

[BillW50]

In news:2jesm7le4to7qaq26...@4ax.com,

Loren Pechtel wrote:
> They've been in use for a year now and I've managed to write so much
> to the 128gb one that it's life is down to 99%. The 256gb is still at
> 100%.

What are you using that tells you what the wear level is?

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3

[Allen Drake]

Did you mention which SSD you have? I just received number 10 a few
days ago. I have mostly Crucial and have had to update firmware twice
so far. Not a problem though.

[Allen Drake]

I would think it would depend on the capacity of the SSD. I use 256GB
SSDs and so far I have only used 60 GB. I do have backup HDDs
installed along with USB3 external for large video and music, etc.

I kept all the system files and document and download folders intact.

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <4f6e3bcb$1...@news.bnb-lp.com>, Yousuf Khan

When it is said that they "are a good host" or "not so good", is that in
terms of performance, or longevity? I'd have thought that in terms of
performance, even if non-optimal, having almost any file on an SSD would
be better; but I could also believe that certain much-written files
would significantly shorted the life of the SSD, especially if not
optimised (is that what this "Trim" thing is about?).
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

He spoke in sentences that made up paragraphs, with immaculate grammar and
punctuation. - Barry Cryer on Clement Freud 1924-2009, in Radio Times, 25 April
- 1 May 2009.

[Drew]

Not trying to be argumentative but wondering where you got that info. My
ssd scores a 7.2 (older motherboard does not support higher speeds) on
the WEI and I would think that is pretty good for a 6 year old system. I
am running a Intel 320 series 120gig drive and my old Intel x25 40 gig
had the same score. Running any programs or even everything open and
doing any work is like changing channels on a tv, it is instantaneous.

[Allen Drake]

On Sat, 24 Mar 2012 22:28:44 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
<G6...@soft255.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>In message <4f6e3bcb$1...@news.bnb-lp.com>, Yousuf Khan
><bbb...@spammenot.yahoo.com> writes:
>>On 24/03/2012 3:27 AM, charlie wrote:
>>> Besides all of the above, there is another, perhaps quite important
>>> consideration. SSDs are a good host for "static" files, and not so good
>>> for dynamic ones. It would seem that windows should be reorganized on
>>> that basis, with static directories and files on the SSD.
>>> The registry will likely need manual editing to accommodate the changes.
>>
>>That's actually something I was thinking about. Should I move things
>>like the swapfile, Thunderbird data, and just "User" folder in general,
>>off to regular storage?
>>
>> Yousuf Khan
>
>When it is said that they "are a good host" or "not so good", is that in
>terms of performance, or longevity? I'd have thought that in terms of
>performance, even if non-optimal, having almost any file on an SSD would
>be better; but I could also believe that certain much-written files
>would significantly shorted the life of the SSD, especially if not
>optimised (is that what this "Trim" thing is about?).

Follow The Below Steps To Increase The Life of Your SSD Drives On
Windows 7

http://www.computerforums.org/forums/computer-software-articles/how-increase-life-your-ssd-drives-windows-7-a-208106.html


This guide is a year old so I would suggest reading as much as
possible from different authors.

[Allen Drake]

On Sat, 24 Mar 2012 16:38:50 -0500, "BillW50" <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:

>In news:2jesm7le4to7qaq26...@4ax.com,
>Loren Pechtel wrote:
>> They've been in use for a year now and I've managed to write so much
>> to the 128gb one that it's life is down to 99%. The 256gb is still at
>> 100%.
>
>What are you using that tells you what the wear level is?

CrystalDiskInfo 4.3.0 will tell you Power On Hours. The FW update for
the Crucial SSD says it will assure there will be no more problems
when they reach 5000 hrs.

It seems many SSD manufacturers seem to quote 10,000 operating hours
for their warranties.

http://superuser.com/questions/325807/what-is-the-average-life-of-an-ssd


" Now assuming that this is lower than what the drives are actually
capable of that would still mean over a year of 24/7 running with
constant drive reading/writing. Now I don't have any stats as too
normal operating times but I doubt you'd be doing more than two hours
of constant reading/writing a day which would put the lives of the
drive at around 10 years of everyday use."

http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-State-Drives-SSD/The-lifespan-of-an-ssd/td-p/32064

Intel's claim is actually "at least" 5 years at 20GBytes of writes per
day.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/260718-32-what-operational-lifespan

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <eujsm7pjlugg5lb3h...@4ax.com>, Allen Drake
<ALD...@Spamex.com> writes:
[]

>Intel's claim is actually "at least" 5 years at 20GBytes of writes per
>day.

[]
I presume that's 20G randomly spread around the drive.

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

a little bit of me still feels that some southerners think we northerners are
issued at birth with doomed kestrels. - Alison Graham, Radio Times,
3-9/11/2007.

[Allen Drake]

On Sat, 24 Mar 2012 23:23:20 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
<G6...@soft255.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>In message <eujsm7pjlugg5lb3h...@4ax.com>, Allen Drake
><ALD...@Spamex.com> writes:
>[]
>>Intel's claim is actually "at least" 5 years at 20GBytes of writes per
>>day.
>[]
>I presume that's 20G randomly spread around the drive.

You know what happens when you presume don't you ;)

[Char Jackson]

On Sat, 24 Mar 2012 23:23:20 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
<G6...@soft255.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>In message <eujsm7pjlugg5lb3h...@4ax.com>, Allen Drake
><ALD...@Spamex.com> writes:
>[]
>>Intel's claim is actually "at least" 5 years at 20GBytes of writes per
>>day.
>[]
>I presume that's 20G randomly spread around the drive.

My understanding is that it's taken care of for you automatically,
i.e., wear leveling.

--

Char Jackson

[Yousuf Khan]

On 24/03/2012 6:08 PM, Allen Drake wrote:
> Did you mention which SSD you have? I just received number 10 a few
> days ago. I have mostly Crucial and have had to update firmware twice
> so far. Not a problem though.

Corsair Force 3 240GB.

[Yousuf Khan]

On 24/03/2012 6:20 PM, Allen Drake wrote:
> I would think it would depend on the capacity of the SSD. I use 256GB
> SSDs and so far I have only used 60 GB. I do have backup HDDs
> installed along with USB3 external for large video and music, etc.

No, I'm not worried about space, I bought one big enough to accommodate
everything that I have in my current boot drive. I'm more worried about
writing too much to the SSD. My understanding is that SSD's wear down
with too much writing to them. Thunderbird and the swapfile would be
some major recurring write events.

Yousuf Khan

[Yousuf Khan]

On 24/03/2012 6:28 PM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
> When it is said that they "are a good host" or "not so good", is that in
> terms of performance, or longevity? I'd have thought that in terms of
> performance, even if non-optimal, having almost any file on an SSD would
> be better; but I could also believe that certain much-written files
> would significantly shorted the life of the SSD, especially if not
> optimised (is that what this "Trim" thing is about?).

Yeah, longevity is my major concern here too, so should I avoid putting
anything that has too much writing happening to it? As for Trim, it's a
command that tells the SSD that a sector is no longer in use, so it can
go in and erase that area during idle moments in the background.

Yousuf Khan

[Yousuf Khan]

On 24/03/2012 6:49 PM, Allen Drake wrote:
> Follow The Below Steps To Increase The Life of Your SSD Drives On
> Windows 7
>
> http://www.computerforums.org/forums/computer-software-articles/how-increase-life-your-ssd-drives-windows-7-a-208106.html
>
>
> This guide is a year old so I would suggest reading as much as
> possible from different authors.

Although there is some good info here, it sounds like he's just giving
general advice on how to improve Windows responsiveness. My
understanding is that SSD's are pretty sensitive to writes, but there's
never a problem with reading from an SSD. But this article seems to give
advice on how to minimize reads too.

Yousuf Khan

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <4f6e9406$1...@news.bnb-lp.com>, Yousuf Khan

I'm not understanding what you mean by "erase" here. Are SSDs different
in some way, i. e. aren't bits erased anyway when overwritten?

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"He hasn't one redeeming vice." - Oscar Wilde

[Dave-UK]

"Yousuf Khan" <bbb...@spammenot.yahoo.com> wrote in message news:4f6e9350$1...@news.bnb-lp.com...

I think you are worrying too much about wear and tear on an SSD.
This will tell you how long you've got left. :-)
(There's a free or pro version)
http://www.ssd-life.com/

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <4f6ee5bc$0$1658$c3e8da3$f017...@news.astraweb.com>, Dave-UK

Interesting. Two things I note from that site:
>
1. The software (ssd-life) doesn't actually do any tests; it just
reports SMART data from the drive in a friendly way (including making
note if you run it two or more times and predicting a life from that).
>
2. I hope I've got this wrong, but it seems to imply that once an SSD
has reached the end of its life, which seems to be decided _by the SSD
itself_, it switches to read-only.
>
Oh, and a third thing: individual cells can be written to about ...
originally, 10,000 times; recently revised down to 5,000. With the wear
levelling that's (I think) built into the drive's hardware (more likely
firmware), this translates to 20G writes a day for 5 years for some
Intel drive (it gives the model number but not what size it is).

It seems to me, though, that as SSDs become more common, there needs to
be a tweak to OSs, such that frequently-written files - the registry,
page files, etc. - are treated differently by the OS. (Though if SSDs
are expected to last five years, that'll probably not happen, as OS
manufacturers want us to replace the OS - and by extension the computer
- more often than that. But that's just me being cynical.) Actually, I
think this sort of behaviour - commonly-modified files being treated
differently - should have been around long ago anyway.

[Andy Burns]

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

> individual cells can be written to about ...
> originally, 10,000 times; recently revised down to 5,000. With the wear
> levelling that's (I think) built into the drive's hardware (more likely
> firmware), this translates to 20G writes a day for 5 years for some
> Intel drive (it gives the model number but not what size it is).

As long as three years ago, Intel were guaranteeing that their SSDs
would last 5 years with 100GB of writes/day, the endurance of each cell
does reduce each time they switch down to smaller die sizes, but the
capacity goes up faster than the endurance goes down, so with wear
levelling, there is still an overall win.

[dweebken]

On 25/03/2012 9:34 AM, Drew wrote:
> My ssd scores a 7.2

My SSD scores 7.5 on a laptop on the WEI.

[Allen Drake]

I think at this early stage everything that is out there is mostly
speculation and simply conversations. It seems that using multiple
drives would be good plan in any event. I have always had external
drives attached for files I rarely use and a small fast drive for
system files. I have also read that when an SSD fails it will only be
readable which is fine with me. If an HDD fails most of the time you
are completely unable to access the files. Also I have seen some
compare the SSD to a flash drive that has lasted far longer then any
HDD that has been accessed as many times. It seems that a good backup
plan is always the bottom line. Using motherboards that has SATA III
speeds will also be a good idea. I just bought a Crucial Adrenaline
Solid State Cashe
http://www.crucial.com/store/ssc.aspx?gclid=CJ_Y-vqggq8CFcRM4AodDm7y0A&cpe=pd_google_us

This might actually be a better choice than a stand alone SSD.

[Tom Del Rosso]

Allen Drake wrote:
> You can simply clone your system drive as I did at first when I
> upgraded all my systems but that is not always the best option. You
> need to know about SSD partition alignment
> http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/113967-ssd-alignment.html
>
> http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/70822-ssd-tweaks-optimizations-windows-7-a.html

Cloning can create a new partition instead of using the existing one,
depending on what cloning tool you use.


--

Reply in group, but if emailing add one more
zero, and remove the last word.

[Allen Drake]

On Sun, 25 Mar 2012 14:19:06 -0400, "Tom Del Rosso"
<td...@verizon.net.invalid> wrote:

>
>Allen Drake wrote:
>> You can simply clone your system drive as I did at first when I
>> upgraded all my systems but that is not always the best option. You
>> need to know about SSD partition alignment
>> http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/113967-ssd-alignment.html
>>
>> http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/70822-ssd-tweaks-optimizations-windows-7-a.html
>
>Cloning can create a new partition instead of using the existing one,
>depending on what cloning tool you use.

Exactly and depending on how you have that application set up. All in
all I have been satisfied with the speed of my SSDs as I gradually
replaced the HDDs and had no idea of the alignment issue until I
stumbled on some threads related to that subject. I plan on a clean
install of Windows 7 to new SSDs sometime soon. That will take care
of any misalignment.
The biggest gain I see in speed are the systems that actually have
SATA III motherboards.

[Loren Pechtel]

On Sun, 25 Mar 2012 11:28:04 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
<G6...@soft255.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>1. The software (ssd-life) doesn't actually do any tests; it just
>reports SMART data from the drive in a friendly way (including making
>note if you run it two or more times and predicting a life from that).

I don't think it needs two or more times, it's just a simple
extrapolation of life used vs time in service.

>2. I hope I've got this wrong, but it seems to imply that once an SSD
>has reached the end of its life, which seems to be decided _by the SSD
>itself_, it switches to read-only.

Yup. When it considers all sectors to have reached their write limit
is no longer has anyplace to write to and it becomes read only.

[Loren Pechtel]

On Sat, 24 Mar 2012 16:38:50 -0500, "BillW50" <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:

>In news:2jesm7le4to7qaq26...@4ax.com,
>Loren Pechtel wrote:
>> They've been in use for a year now and I've managed to write so much
>> to the 128gb one that it's life is down to 99%. The 256gb is still at
>> 100%.
>
>What are you using that tells you what the wear level is?

SSD-Life.

[Loren Pechtel]

On Sun, 25 Mar 2012 09:48:43 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
<G6...@soft255.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>>Yeah, longevity is my major concern here too, so should I avoid putting
>>anything that has too much writing happening to it? As for Trim, it's a
>>command that tells the SSD that a sector is no longer in use, so it can
>>go in and erase that area during idle moments in the background.
>>
>> Yousuf Khan
>
>I'm not understanding what you mean by "erase" here. Are SSDs different
>in some way, i. e. aren't bits erased anyway when overwritten?

With a spinning drive you simply write new values into the magnetic
domains, the old values are irrelevant. SSDs don't work that way,
though. You can only write 1s to a block, a zero can't be written.
Instead you have to erase the whole block--and erasing a block makes
spinning drives look downright speedy.

If the block consists of all zeroes it can be written rapidly. If
there are 1s in the way you have to copy everything out of the block,
erase it and then write the good data back.

Thus the drive maintains a pool of empty blocks to be used for writes,
blocks that are released are queued for erasing as the drive gets the
time to do so. If you manage to write so much to the drive that you
deplete this pool you'll see your write performance plunge until it
catches up.

The drive maintains the pool by two methods. Part of it is that the
drive is actually a bit bigger than they tell you. If the drive is
listed at 100gb it's probably something like 105gb in reality. The
second part of it is the TRIM command. Windows tells the drive what
areas aren't being used, the drive can respond by erasing them against
future need. This is why TRIM support is considered a very good
thing.

[Loren Pechtel]

On Sat, 24 Mar 2012 15:34:47 -0700, Drew <Ayle...@donotspam.me.net>
wrote:

The alignment problem only affects writes.

[Tom Del Rosso]

Allen Drake wrote:
> On Sun, 25 Mar 2012 14:19:06 -0400, "Tom Del Rosso"

> > Cloning can create a new partition instead of using the existing
> > one, depending on what cloning tool you use.
>
> Exactly and depending on how you have that application set up. All in
> all I have been satisfied with the speed of my SSDs as I gradually
> replaced the HDDs and had no idea of the alignment issue until I
> stumbled on some threads related to that subject. I plan on a clean
> install of Windows 7 to new SSDs sometime soon. That will take care
> of any misalignment.
> The biggest gain I see in speed are the systems that actually have
> SATA III motherboards.

I mean you can follow the instructions to create an alligned partition and
it's all for nothing. I think Acronis can do what you want, although I'm
not sure how to verify that other than by dumping the MBR before and after
the clone to see if the table changed.

[Allen Drake]

You can use the DISKPART command to determine the alignment.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415

https://www.equallogic.com/uploadedFiles/Resources/Tech_Reports/tr-ms-sector-align_TR1012_v2-0.pdf

http://lifehacker.com/5837769/make-sure-your-partitions-are-correctly-aligned-for-optimal-solid-state-drive-performance

[Yousuf Khan]

On 25/03/2012 4:30 PM, Loren Pechtel wrote:
> With a spinning drive you simply write new values into the magnetic
> domains, the old values are irrelevant. SSDs don't work that way,
> though. You can only write 1s to a block, a zero can't be written.
> Instead you have to erase the whole block--and erasing a block makes
> spinning drives look downright speedy.
>
> If the block consists of all zeroes it can be written rapidly. If
> there are 1s in the way you have to copy everything out of the block,
> erase it and then write the good data back.

Good explanation of why the entire block needs to be erased first rather
than just overwritten on the fly.

Yousuf Khan

[Rob]

Yep. Interesting explanation and somewhat similar to what happens to a
CF memory card.

I use 32Gb CF cards and every now and then will have corrupt files which
pickup other bits and can have two pictures in one, segmented,

I would not like this happening to data.

[Yousuf Khan]

Well, initially I was having a bit of a problem with my imaging software
(Macrium Reflect, in my case). When it was restoring the image to the
SSD aligned to a 31KB boundary, rather than a 1024KB boundary that is
suggested. The 31KB boundary is known as the older XP alignment scheme,
geared towards CHS hard drives.

I sent a tech support message off to them, and they were kind enough to
show me some advanced option switches that allowed it to be aligned to a
1024KB partition. They call this alignment scheme the Vista/7 alignment,
geared towards not just SSD's, but also modern Advanced Format hard drives.

> The biggest gain I see in speed are the systems that actually have
> SATA III motherboards.

Well, I got it up and running. It's only got SATA II controllers, but
I'm seeing a Windows Experience number of 7.6 (out of 7.9) on the disk!
Outstanding, all of my system components are now over 7.0. The disk was
the only thing holding me back at 5.9 previously. Things do pop up much
faster now.

One thing to note, when I initially transferred the system over, I
didn't do any changes to the setup to improve performance other than
align the partition. Once I turned the Windows indexing off on this
drive, it immediately picked up from 6.9 to 7.6.

Yousuf Khan

[Allen Drake]

I can tell you that just now I replaced an SSD in one system that has
a SATA III mobo with a cloned HDD and the (Seagate Barracuda XT
ST33000651AS SATA 6GB/s) brought down the rating from 7.6 to 5.9. I am
not sure if the SSD is even aligned correctly and I haven't yet turned
off indexing.

I simply need more time to spend on this issue. Hopefully this
weekend. I appreciate you sharing your results and comments.

Al.

[Yousuf Khan]

On 30/03/2012 3:56 AM, Allen Drake wrote:
> I can tell you that just now I replaced an SSD in one system that has
> a SATA III mobo with a cloned HDD and the (Seagate Barracuda XT
> ST33000651AS SATA 6GB/s) brought down the rating from 7.6 to 5.9. I am
> not sure if the SSD is even aligned correctly and I haven't yet turned
> off indexing.

You replaced your SSD with another SSD or with an HDD? It's not entirely
clear to me from your quote above.

> I simply need more time to spend on this issue. Hopefully this
> weekend. I appreciate you sharing your results and comments.

I'm really pretty happy with how the SSD is performing now. I did my
first system image of the SSD, and it took just 6 minutes to do a full
backup! The same thing used to take 1 hour previously with the previous
HDD.

The responsive of the whole system finally seems commensurate with the
processor, RAM, and GPU that are already on the system, but were being
brought down by the hard drives.

Yousuf Khan

[Yousuf Khan]

On 25/03/2012 5:30 AM, Dave-UK wrote:
> "Yousuf Khan" <bbb...@spammenot.yahoo.com> wrote in message

>> No, I'm not worried about space, I bought one big enough to
>> accommodate everything that I have in my current boot drive. I'm more
>> worried about writing too much to the SSD. My understanding is that
>> SSD's wear down with too much writing to them. Thunderbird and the
>> swapfile would be some major recurring write events.
>

> I think you are worrying too much about wear and tear on an SSD.
> This will tell you how long you've got left. :-)
> (There's a free or pro version)
> http://www.ssd-life.com/

You're right, I was probably being pedantic about getting all write
operations off of the drive. Thunderbird, although it writes a lot to
disk, it doesn't really do anything too randomly or constantly. Most
writes are sequential since they happen to single database files, and
they happen maybe once every few minutes, not constantly. Thunderbird
does popup up really well when its database is located on the SSD.

However, I have taken the suggestion to remove the swapfile and disk
index from that drive seriously. Removing the disk index by itself
resulted in a 0.7 point increase in speed for the SSD (went from 6.9 to
7.6). That's probably a 9% increase.

Yousuf Khan

[Dave-UK]

"Yousuf Khan" <bbb...@spammenot.yahoo.com> wrote in message news:4f75ff66$1...@news.bnb-lp.com...

As I said before I had to stop Win7 from running the defrag schedule
but Win8 looks much better regarding SSDs.
The defrag option is now called ' Optimize and defrag drive' and
the 'Defragment now...' button is labelled 'Optimize'.
On running Optimize it takes about 2 seconds to 'trim' the drive (120 G/B).
Optimization is scheduled to run weekly by default.

[Allen Drake]

I reconnected an HDD that sits in a bay on a system that has that
drive installed as a backup. I did it so I could get the SSD ready for
either a clean install of W7 or alignment. At this time I am still not
sure what way to go. I have a total of 10 SSDs so far so I have to
plan on how I am going to use them. Some I may just keep as spare
hardware. I also bought a Crucial Adrenaline to play around with
sometime when I get the time.

http://www.crucial.com/store/ssc.aspx?gclid=CIPFoaTgj68CFcXc4AodO3-xvA&cpe=pd_google_us

I haven't really decided where to put it so it too sits on a shelf
along with several unused Crucial 256GB SSDs, a 90GB OCZ and a 128 GB
Kingston.

Out of all the advantages I see with SSDs is the two I have in an
Asus G73SW as it also draws less power and extends the battery life. I
just wish it has a SATA 6GB/s board.

Al.

[Ryan L.]

On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 19:25:34 -0400, Allen Drake <ALD...@Spamex.com>
wrote:

> I reconnected an HDD that sits in a bay on a system that has that
>drive installed as a backup. I did it so I could get the SSD ready for
>either a clean install of W7 or alignment. At this time I am still not
>sure what way to go. I have a total of 10 SSDs so far so I have to
>plan on how I am going to use them. Some I may just keep as spare
>hardware. I also bought a Crucial Adrenaline to play around with
>sometime when I get the time.
>
>http://www.crucial.com/store/ssc.aspx?gclid=CIPFoaTgj68CFcXc4AodO3-xvA&cpe=pd_google_us
>
> I haven't really decided where to put it so it too sits on a shelf
>along with several unused Crucial 256GB SSDs, a 90GB OCZ and a 128 GB
>Kingston.

You're old, right? When you die, can I come and rummage through the
stuff on your shelves? You seem to have more stuff than you have time
to use. No hurry, I can wait a bit.

/back to lurk mode

[Allen Drake]

Old? I don't think of myself as old. I will be 65 in July. I never
smoked or drank or did drugs. I take no meds and have no known
ailments. I feel like I have always felt since I was a youth. I am not
over weight or out of shape in any way. I work on my feet 10 hours a
day sometimes 7 days a week. I love what I do. I have no children and
owe no one a dime. I pay cash for everything I don't need. I did,
however, buy several lottery tickets today in Burlington Ma. If I will
I will cut you in for a few Mil. of the projected half a billion. Good
luck, I hope I win.

[Tom Del Rosso]

Allen Drake wrote:
> however, buy several lottery tickets today in Burlington Ma. If I will
> I will cut you in for a few Mil. of the projected half a billion. Good
> luck, I hope I win.

Your tax advisor should have told you that, since you know how to do
arithmetic, you are exempt from paying that tax.

[Char Jackson]

On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 22:05:56 -0400, "Tom Del Rosso"
<td...@verizon.net.invalid> wrote:

>
>Allen Drake wrote:
>> however, buy several lottery tickets today in Burlington Ma. If I will
>> I will cut you in for a few Mil. of the projected half a billion. Good
>> luck, I hope I win.
>
>Your tax advisor should have told you that, since you know how to do
>arithmetic, you are exempt from paying that tax.

Exactly. It's not by accident that they call the purchase of lottery
tickets a voluntary tax.

--

Char Jackson

[Tom Del Rosso]

It's astonishing when you consider that most governments outlaw casinos, yet
the odds at roulette are better by a few orders of magnitude.

If they outlawed booze, except for booze made by the state, would that also
be considered an acceptable role for government?

[Rodney Pont]

On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 21:23:49 -0400, Allen Drake wrote:

>I did,
>however, buy several lottery tickets today in Burlington Ma. If I will
>I will cut you in for a few Mil. of the projected half a billion. Good
>luck, I hope I win.

When you do can I have your SSDs :-)

--
Regards - Rodney Pont
The from address exists but is mostly dumped,
please send any emails to the address below
e-mail rpont (at) gmail (dot) com

[Allen Drake]

On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 22:05:56 -0400, "Tom Del Rosso"
<td...@verizon.net.invalid> wrote:

>
>Allen Drake wrote:
>> however, buy several lottery tickets today in Burlington Ma. If I will
>> I will cut you in for a few Mil. of the projected half a billion. Good
>> luck, I hope I win.
>
>Your tax advisor should have told you that, since you know how to do
>arithmetic, you are exempt from paying that tax.

What tax? A capitol gains tax? I bet I pay more then Romney pays for
what he gains every year.

[Allen Drake]

On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 23:06:22 -0400, "Tom Del Rosso"

<td...@verizon.net.invalid> wrote:

>
>Char Jackson wrote:
>> On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 22:05:56 -0400, "Tom Del Rosso"
>> <td...@verizon.net.invalid> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> > Allen Drake wrote:
>> > > however, buy several lottery tickets today in Burlington Ma. If I
>> > > will I will cut you in for a few Mil. of the projected half a
>> > > billion. Good luck, I hope I win.
>> >
>> > Your tax advisor should have told you that, since you know how to do
>> > arithmetic, you are exempt from paying that tax.
>>
>> Exactly. It's not by accident that they call the purchase of lottery
>> tickets a voluntary tax.
>
>It's astonishing when you consider that most governments outlaw casinos, yet
>the odds at roulette are better by a few orders of magnitude.
>
>If they outlawed booze, except for booze made by the state, would that also
>be considered an acceptable role for government?

They are now talking about building a CASIO somewhere is Mass. The
only gambling I do involves the 80 miles a day I drive to get to work.

[Allen Drake]

On Sat, 31 Mar 2012 06:22:03 +0000 (GMT), "Rodney Pont"
<mli...@infohit.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

>On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 21:23:49 -0400, Allen Drake wrote:
>
>>I did,

>>however, buy several lottery tickets today in Burlington Ma. If I win

>>I will cut you in for a few Mil. of the projected half a billion. Good
>>luck, I hope I win.
>
>When you do can I have your SSDs :-)

Sure. If by some chance I stop moving long enough to look back. Most
likely some shmuck that can't even spell SSD will inherit them when he
cleans out the abandoned home I leave behind.

[Rod Speed]

Tom Del Rosso wrote
> Char Jackson wrote

>> Tom Del Rosso <td...@verizon.net.invalid> wrote
>>> Allen Drake wrote:

>>>> however, buy several lottery tickets today in Burlington Ma. If I will I will cut you in for a few Mil. of the
>>>> projected half a
>>>> billion. Good luck, I hope I win.

>>> Your tax advisor should have told you that, since you know how to do arithmetic, you are exempt from paying that
>>> tax.

>> Exactly. It's not by accident that they call the purchase of lottery tickets a voluntary tax.

> It's astonishing when you consider that most governments outlaw casinos,

Not anymore.

> yet the odds at roulette are better by a few orders of magnitude.

But the possible win isnt.

> If they outlawed booze, except for booze made by the state, would that also be considered an acceptable role for
> government?

Nope.

[Yousuf Khan]

On 30/03/2012 7:25 PM, Allen Drake wrote:
> I reconnected an HDD that sits in a bay on a system that has that
> drive installed as a backup. I did it so I could get the SSD ready for
> either a clean install of W7 or alignment. At this time I am still not
> sure what way to go. I have a total of 10 SSDs so far so I have to
> plan on how I am going to use them. Some I may just keep as spare
> hardware. I also bought a Crucial Adrenaline to play around with
> sometime when I get the time.

Starting an SSD museum already? These consumer ones have only just come
out in the last few years. :)

Yousuf Khan

[Yousuf Khan]

On 30/03/2012 6:32 PM, Dave-UK wrote:
> As I said before I had to stop Win7 from running the defrag schedule but
> Win8 looks much better regarding SSDs.
> The defrag option is now called ' Optimize and defrag drive' and the
> 'Defragment now...' button is labelled 'Optimize'.
> On running Optimize it takes about 2 seconds to 'trim' the drive (120 G/B).
> Optimization is scheduled to run weekly by default.

What is Win8's definition of "optimization" for SSD's?

Yousuf Khan

[Allen Drake]

I simply plan to no longer use HDDs for anything more then backup and
storage devices. I have five desktops, a notebook and a netbook
sitting here along with my wife's desktop in her office that will
eventually all have at least one SSD. Once I got used to the speed I
just can't see going back to that old mechanical drive of the past.

Al.

[Timothy Daniels]

"Char Jackson" wrote:
> It's not by accident that they call the purchase of lottery
> tickets a voluntary tax.

I've heard it called a "stupid tax", i.e. a tax on stupidity.

*TimDaniels*

[Dave-UK]

"Yousuf Khan" <bbb...@spammenot.yahoo.com> wrote in message news:4f771882$1...@news.bnb-lp.com...

Nothing about SSDs in Help and Support yet for Win8, either off-line
or on-line so nothing to read there.
On Googling around a bit this is all I found that mentions Win8:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_Defragmenter_(Windows)

And I found this on my search, which recommends disabling System Restore
on an SSD. Item 3, 'The most important piece in this guide'.
I'd not heard of that one before.

http://thessdreview.com/ssd-guides/optimization-guides/the-ssd-optimization-guide-2/

And when I check my Win8 box (Intel SSD) the System Restore is turned off by default.
So I check back on my Win7 box (OCZ-Vertex3) and that is also off with a weird folder
icon for a 'missing C: drive'. The settings for this missing drive are greyed out.

http://www.admin1.myzen.co.uk/restore7.PNG

When I try to restore from an earlier time I've no restore points to access.
I am sure I did not manually turn System Restore off ???

[BillW50]

"Dave-UK" <1...@2.com> wrote in message
news:4f776604$0$2448$c3e8da3$4e33...@news.astraweb.com...

Yes all true! You heard about keeping the swapfile off of the SSD too,
right? And if that is all you got, then to turn the swapfile off.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Windows Live Mail 2009
Centrino Core2 Duo T7400 2.16 GHz - 1.5GB - Windows 8 CP

[Dave-UK]

"BillW50" <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote in message news:jl7q3c$bvq$1...@dont-email.me...

>
> "Dave-UK" <1...@2.com> wrote in message
> news:4f776604$0$2448$c3e8da3$4e33...@news.astraweb.com...
>>

>> And when I check my Win8 box (Intel SSD) the System Restore is turned
>> off by default.
>> So I check back on my Win7 box (OCZ-Vertex3) and that is also off with
>> a weird folder
>> icon for a 'missing C: drive'. The settings for this missing drive are
>> greyed out.
>>
>> http://www.admin1.myzen.co.uk/restore7.PNG
>>
>> When I try to restore from an earlier time I've no restore points to
>> access.
>> I am sure I did not manually turn System Restore off ???
>
> Yes all true! You heard about keeping the swapfile off of the SSD too,
> right? And if that is all you got, then to turn the swapfile off.
>

What do you mean , ' all true' ? Who disabled System Restore ?

[Gene E. Bloch]

On 3/30/2012, Allen Drake posted:
> capitol gains tax

capital gains tax

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

[Gene E. Bloch]

On 3/30/2012, Allen Drake posted:

Well, OK, but don't keep it a secret. How *does* one spell SSD?

Thanks in advance, I need the help :-)

[BillW50]

"Dave-UK" <1...@2.com> wrote in message

news:4f7783fe$0$27219$c3e8da3$5245...@news.astraweb.com...

Who disabled System Restore? I dunno, maybe the driver or something. Or
maybe Windows 7 does this for all SSD drives by default, I dunno. And it
has been over 2 years ago that I ran Windows 7 under an SSD. So I don't
recall what it did for System Restore.

[Yousuf Khan]

On 31/03/2012 5:16 PM, Dave-UK wrote:
> And I found this on my search, which recommends disabling System Restore
> on an SSD. Item 3, 'The most important piece in this guide'.
> I'd not heard of that one before.
> http://thessdreview.com/ssd-guides/optimization-guides/the-ssd-optimization-guide-2/

I wouldn't do this, this is a safety feature.

> And when I check my Win8 box (Intel SSD) the System Restore is turned
> off by default.
> So I check back on my Win7 box (OCZ-Vertex3) and that is also off with a
> weird folder
> icon for a 'missing C: drive'. The settings for this missing drive are
> greyed out.
>
> http://www.admin1.myzen.co.uk/restore7.PNG
>
> When I try to restore from an earlier time I've no restore points to
> access.
> I am sure I did not manually turn System Restore off ???

Well, if yours was already disabled, then you're probably not going to
miss anything.

One of the other suggestions in the above guide was to disable disk
defragmentation, and I found that the SSD wasn't even listed on the
defrag schedule, so there's no way to disable it, since there's no way
to enable it either. The only things listed in the defrag schedule were
my proper hard disks.

Yousuf Khan

[Yousuf Khan]

On 31/03/2012 4:40 PM, BillW50 wrote:
> Yes all true! You heard about keeping the swapfile off of the SSD too,
> right? And if that is all you got, then to turn the swapfile off.

In my case, I just moved the swapfile to an alternate drive.

Yousuf Khan

[Allen Drake]

About three hundred at a time.

[Gene E. Bloch]

On 3/31/2012, Allen Drake posted:

???

I'm OK with a small degree of subtlety, but now you've gone way too far

[Loren Pechtel]

On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 21:23:49 -0400, Allen Drake <ALD...@Spamex.com>
wrote:

>Old? I don't think of myself as old. I will be 65 in July. I never
>smoked or drank or did drugs. I take no meds and have no known
>ailments. I feel like I have always felt since I was a youth. I am not
>over weight or out of shape in any way. I work on my feet 10 hours a
>day sometimes 7 days a week. I love what I do. I have no children and
>owe no one a dime. I pay cash for everything I don't need. I did,
>however, buy several lottery tickets today in Burlington Ma. If I will
>I will cut you in for a few Mil. of the projected half a billion. Good
>luck, I hope I win.

Who are you, John Carter?

[Loren Pechtel]

On Sat, 31 Mar 2012 01:52:25 -0400, Allen Drake <ALD...@Spamex.com>
wrote:

It that what a ruler pays for having a center of government?

[Loren Pechtel]

System restore works on my Win 7 SSD-equipped machine.

[Allen Drake]

On Sat, 31 Mar 2012 17:22:37 -0700, Gene E. Bloch

Well, that's about how it went with me. I surely didn't get them all
at once. On an off week or so I might have slipped in a 128GB or the
Crucial Adrenaline but most are the 256GB versions. I even put one in
my Netbook. That one really needed something to bring it up to speed.

[Allen Drake]

No, I've never been to Mars.

[Tom Del Rosso]

Maybe you don't remember.

[Allen Drake]

On Sun, 1 Apr 2012 15:18:10 -0400, "Tom Del Rosso"
<td...@verizon.net.invalid> wrote:

>
>Allen Drake wrote:
>> On Sat, 31 Mar 2012 18:23:52 -0700, Loren Pechtel
>> <lorenp...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > Who are you, John Carter?
>>
>> No, I've never been to Mars.
>
>Maybe you don't remember.

This elephant never forgets.

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <s94gn75s9qhnesgoh...@4ax.com>, Allen Drake
<ALD...@Spamex.com> writes:
[]

>at once. On an off week or so I might have slipped in a 128GB or the
>Crucial Adrenaline but most are the 256GB versions. I even put one in
>my Netbook. That one really needed something to bring it up to speed.

And how well did it succeed?
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Santa's elves are just a bunch of subordinate Clauses.

[Allen Drake]

On Mon, 2 Apr 2012 21:14:48 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
<G6...@soft255.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>In message <s94gn75s9qhnesgoh...@4ax.com>, Allen Drake
><ALD...@Spamex.com> writes:
>[]
>>at once. On an off week or so I might have slipped in a 128GB or the
>>Crucial Adrenaline but most are the 256GB versions. I even put one in
>>my Netbook. That one really needed something to bring it up to speed.
>
>And how well did it succeed?

Very well. It still has XP but I gave it more ram so it is more than
I expected. The upgrade cost more then the original purchase but fits
nicely mounted on my right and can still fit someone in the passenger
seat. Does a great job as a 10" screen GPS with DeLorme Street Atlas
software installed.

[Bob H]

On 25/03/2012 12:42, dweebken wrote:
> On 25/03/2012 9:34 AM, Drew wrote:
>> My ssd scores a 7.2
> My SSD scores 7.5 on a laptop on the WEI.

My SSD scores 7.9 on a desktop PC

[Yousuf Khan]

That usually just means that you have SATA3 rather than SATA2.

Yousuf Khan

[Bob H]

Actually, I initially connected the SSD to a sata 3 port on my main
board and it either scored 7.3 or 7.5, not sure now. Then more recently
I bought a PCI SATA 6Gbs card and connected the SSD to that, and it is
because of that it scores 7.9