MBP 15, SSD, Win7, Bootcamp, ACHI and TRIM.

Hi there,

one more day and finally my new mbp will be arriving. One of the reason of get a mbp is I can run win7 via bootcamp as a native system. So, I got my mbp with a SSD unit to run OSX and Win7 from the SSD since I already own a laptop with SSD and the benefits and speed are awesome. My idea is to create two partitions for OSX and Win7 in the SSD, but I real in the web apple only allows to bootcamp hdd run in IDE mode (ancient but more compatible mode). I also found this mode doesn't allow to use neither trim features to extended the ssd life nor NCQ, taxing the performance from the ssd. Si I wonder if the lacking of ACHI mode will impact in the performance of win7 and the ssd life (OSX runs with ACHI activated).

On the other hand, I'm planning to install a second HDD replacing the SuperDrive and to use this unit only as a media storage unit. So now I'm not sure if will be a good idea to run Win7 from either the ssd or the hdd unit, since this second unit runs at IDE 1.5 Mbp.

Any enlightenment/experience/suggestion. Thanks.

 

A few things:

1) It's possible, albeit rather fiddly to enable AHCI on the Windows side. Instructions are available here.

2) If the drive has good idle-time garbage collection, TRIM is not as necessary, though it will never be as good a substitute. It would be very important to leave ~20% free space on the SSD available for this purpose.

Edit: Forget what I said about not being able to use a USB flash drive. Apple documentation apparently does allow it if you have an .iso file of the version of Windows 7 you want to install. My bad.

 

Thanks for your response, but looking around found:

1) You can actually install Win7 from USB using rEFIt. Also, my original plan is install win7 from dvd an later do the swap of the superdrive unit.

2) Sure, you can enable ACHI but for that, you must rely in some complicated hacks that not work all the time. Also, you will lost lose some features as sleep and bootcamp configuration from the windows side.

3) I bought the 120GB SSD from apple, so, no idea if that you indicated is applicable to this unit.

So, I'm still in the dilemma if will be better install win7 in the ssd via partitioning or in the second HDD.

Thanks.

 

If you have the actual Apple drive, TRIM will work in OS X. It also uses a Toshiba controller that has very aggressive idle garbage collection that works nearly as well as TRIM. It's basically the same controller used in the (discontinued) Kingston SSDNow V+100.

 

So, according to that, will be safe life-wise to install in the ssd.

One more think, what should be the recomendaded format the the second unit, FAT32 or NTSF since I will using paragon driver to read NTSF directories.

Thanks

 

It's NTFS, not SF, and that's the format you want to use. If all you're doing is reading and copying from your Boot Camp partition, OS X handles that on its own. It's only when you need to write to an NTFS drive where you'd need 3rd-party software.