Got my SSD today

I have finally got my SSD today, it's a Kingston ssdnow v100 64GB at an affordable price.
My system is Acer Aspire 5610z,more than 3 yrs old, no AHCI only IDE mode available. I have done a clean install of Vista Home Premium and the following:
1.Disabled Hibernation
2.Turned off Indexing
3.System Restore reduced to 1GB
4.Disabled Automatic Defragmentation.

My reboot time now 42sec compared to 58secs with HDD, Programs response is faster and I'm pleased with the overall performance.
I am a little concerned that I don't have Trim support, is there any alternatives for me?. Many Thanks to all who helped me with advice and suggestions.

PS: I have noticed the SSD temperature is a bit higher than my HDD, it used to be around 44 but now it's around 50 C.

 

TRIM doesn't work on IDE i think so its going to be manual garbage collection...You might also want to do additional tweaks like turn off superfetch , prefetch, install intel RST drivers and look for JJB's and Stanimax's SSD tweaks... they might help with performance.. only issue is with TRIM.. not sure there.

Panther214

 

Congratulations on your purchase!

I, personally, find indexing to be very useful, because I search from the Start Menu, not from windows explorer.

You should also disable prefetch and superfetch. This will improve your boot up time. I think that 42 seconds is still a bit high. Did you do a clean install of your OS when you installed the SSD?

 

i live without trim since years on several ssds (that predate the trim technology). it's no problem to not have it, really (depends on the ssd, of course).

there's no need to disable indexing, that's an actual feature that, once you get used to it, is awesome. but yeah, superfetch can be disabled.

to anseio: boot time depends on the system, too. i have systems, that, because of the drivers it needs, never boots below 40 seconds. still, with the ssd it's much faster with everything else (you can see the hdd light not flashing at all for >10 seconds while some driver initialises). (and indexing is great when searching in explorer, too.. without it, search is slow, unimportant where. with it, it's fast, unimportant where)

 

Thank you both anseio and davepermen, I haven't disabled the Indexing(windows search) but disabled Index this drive for faster search in local disk properties.
I have disabled Prefetch and Superfetch as you have suggested, I must say that the SSD exceeded my expectations in my ancient laptop, I'm more than happy with it at the moment.
Thanks for clearing my Trim worries and Merry Christmas to All.

 

the index-this-drive is not really used anymore anyways, it's just there for backwards compatibility for apps that access it xp style. so disabling it had no effect on anything, really.

merry christmas

 

Did you install Windows in IDE or AHCI mode? That also makes a difference. Though some systems are flaky with AHCI (older machines) but for modern systems AHCI should have no problems. You can always do the IDE to AHCI registry fix later on.

Also if you go to the manufacturer's website, they should have a garbage collect utility for download, I know OCZ does, in case the drive does not support TRIM.

And I always recommend a clean install of Windows, but sometimes it can't be helped using manufacturer discs.

 

If you really want to see how well your SSD performs, try throwing some multi-tasking usage patterns at it. Try loading 3 apps at once, and see how fast it comes up. An SSD will absolutely dominate a mechanical hard drive in multi-tasking use patterns like that.

 

Oh and HWmonitor has a bug with SSDs, it showed my OCZ Agility 2 at 96C (over 200F)

 

42 seconds boot time on fresh Windows install does seem kind of slow. It's probably due to the fact that laptop doesn't support AHCI. But if your general usage feels snappy and fast, that's all that matters.

IMO, there is absolutely no need to use Indexing on an SSD, ESPECIALLY not on a 60GB one. I'd not worry about 50 C temp, it looks normal to me.

 

It says reboot my friend

 

Well that's a good point, cause sometimes Dell BIOS take like 2 minutes to load...otherwise "Windows" is usable in like ~15 seconds

 

I measure 25 seconds to usable Windows desktop.

8 seconds in POST, 17 seconds on Windows boot + login.

 

Yeah but you've never gotten a Dell BIOS that inches along?

My friend who has a Precision said if you do an improper shutdown, it does a memory check during the POST. I've always had the POST behavior to the fast setting...

 

Thank you guys for all your inputs, my driver for the disk shows an old Microsoft dated 2006, do you think I should update that with a newer one from Kingston or just leave as it is?
I have no problem with the disk and I do not want to meddle with it unnecessarily.

EDIT:
No need for new driver,confirmed by Kingston Support.

 

Yes, I have had that before with Dell BIOS'es. This happens to me specifically when I either swap hard drives, or I reboot the machine before the POST completes.

I have never had this happen with my Alienware machine, no matter what I do to it.

 

yeah, because instant search is useless /facepalm. an indexed search is always faster than a non-indexed one. and not by a factor 2, or something, but by a HUGE factor (the more data, the bigger the difference, of course).

no matter how fast the ssd is, you don't want it to go trough all your files if it doesn't have to. with an index, it never has to. that difference is massive. (if you want to get technical, learn a bit about O(n) vs. O(log2(n)).

 

davepermen is correct about this.

I've have my Intel G25-M since the beginning of August. I prefer to to my file searching from the Start Menu. When I have indexing turned off, the Start Menu returns little to no results compared to when it's on and then I can find my files with ease.

You have two options... you can allow indexing to be off, in which case you must wait for Windows to search your files and then return results. In my case, 35GB on my SSD, and another 200GB on my HDD. OR... you can leave indexing on and Windows will only have to reference a very small file with all of the file information in it.

Indexing is faster and more efficient. It does not benefit the SSD to have it disabled, as the amount of writes it makes to the SSD is pathetically nominal. My index is currently 148MB. That's .0019% of my usable 72.9GB SSD. The issue of write cycles in nil when it comes to indexing.

Referencing The SSD Optimization Guide | The SSD Review, written by someone who has extensive knowledge of SSD's. Les has this to say about indexing:

Like toys and couches, SSD's were meant to be USED & ENJOYED, not to be wrapped in plastic and kept in fantasy perfect condition.

 

Awesome statement! (and i'm thinking of toystory right now )

a hint: tons of such tweaks are what a programmer calls "premature optimisation". which normally always fails at enhancing something, but actually makes it less useful in the end.

indexing is what makes it possible to search trough billions of websites in milliseconds (see google search result informations). no matter how fast storage can be, those speed gains can not be archived without indexes.

but the important thing is the scaling: if you double your file count, non-indexed search takes twice as long. indexed search doesn't. it takes one searchstep more.

 

Again, you're soooooo correct.

I started out using all of the tweaks on the SSD review. After using for a while, I realized that over half were unnecessary for my uses. I still have great read/write rates for my SSD and let TRIM & Garbage Collection do their jobs.

 

i haven't done any tweak that was not automatically done by windows, or the provided tools of choice of my ssd manufacturer (intel toolbox mainly).

i made some changes on my systems not related to it. but no tweak "for better ssd performance, longer life, or what ever" and use them since years now.

 

Looking back at the SSD Optimization site, the only one I've kept is pre/superfetch. I've got a few others as well, but they're more related to the behavior of Windows, independant of my SSD. Like program kill time. I've disabled hibernation as well, since sleep recovers so fast anyway.

Were I not to be accessing the web via bluetooth tethering with my cell phone and being required to reboot at least once a day to reconnect when the BT connection breaks, I might have the need for hibernation.

Yeah, the SSD toolbox will make the necessary changes for better performance. Those being pre/superfetch. That's such a good toolbox.

I can't wait for G3 to come out. Want to upgrade eventually, get more RAM, and change out my 2nd HDD for the Hitachi 7K750 that's coming out early next year.

 

i have no need for the g3.

but i'll sure get it

i don't use hibernate anymore myself, too, but haven't turned it off (nice when battery runs out accidentally). superfetch/prefetch got disabled due to the toolbox. system restore points are disabled as i have win home server. other than that, i think i changed nothing

 

Few of us actually have the NEED for these grown up toys, but we'll get them anyway.

I'd like the extra storage of a G3 at a hopefully more affordable price. The more I use my SSD, the more I want to put it to task.

 

i actually need it. on stage, having a device that doesn't die because of vibrations, or when being dropped is very important. and a device that does not result in audio stutters because it has to access some fragmented file is important, too, of course.

there are much needs for an ssd. but i guess, there aren't much to replace a g1 or g2 with a g3...

 

The driver for the SSD isn't so important as your chipset driver. Intel just relealse 10.1.0.1008 and you can download the 64bit version from here:
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Det...oduct=Mobile+Intel®+5+Series+Chipset&lang=eng

This is just the driver, not the Intel Rapid Storage Technology software, which you don't need anyway unless you've got a RAID setup. Just extract the files and manually search for the driver to update it.

 

I know it's quite OT but i have a question about SSD, i take advantage of this thread...
Can anyone that use an SSD tell me how long does it take to resume the system from Hibernation?
I know most of SSD user disable ibernation, but i'd like to know that, does anyone can make a test??

 

I just enabled hibernation and did a stopwatch test:
25 second to resume. I can boot in that timeframe. Sleep resumes in a matter of just a few seconds.

 

Thanks anseio, my OS is 32bit and got my chipset updated to the latest driver, I am amazed how this little SSD turned my laptop in to a very fast one. Though I'm not in need of a SSD, I wanted to see what all these hype about SSDs and I love it. Thanks again for all your help.

 

Thank you very much for the test, very useful for me 'cause a always use hibernation (i arrest and restart only if some program installation requires it).
I can resume from hibernation in 25s too with a common hhd, i'd bet that the windows animation boot is the limiting factor...

 

should be much faster. exactly 16 seconds it should be (maybe your bios is slow?).

anyways, even while you might boot in the same time, hibernation is still great to have. it allows to continue where you left when going to hibernation. restart doesn't. (great, too, when battery runs out)

 

Just to add to some of the excellent points that you brought up:

Sleep mode drains battery life at about 2% of normal drain rate. Hibernate drains nothing. Sleep mode also resumes in the same amount of time regardless of whether you are using a fast SSD or a slow 5400rpm mechanical hard drive. An SSD really doesn't help you resume from sleep.

Hibernate restores your computer to its last state. All of your apps will still be open, etc. A fresh reboot does not do this.

Also, I think it's important to define "boot" times. Some people consider boot times to be when a machine reaches the Windows desktop. Personally, I consider boot time to be when a machine reaches the Windows desktop in a usable state. It does not do me any good if my machine is at Windows desktop, but is unusable because it's still busy loading startup apps or starting Windows services.

This is typically only a problem with mechanical hard drives, because they tend to choke when you throw multiple I/O requests at it.. A machine with an SSD will be usable even if it is still loading things in the startup process, because it is so much more efficient at multitasking scenarios (due to the fast random read speeds, the high IOPS it can handle, and how performance scales when you stack commands on an SSD with NCQ).

I've pimped this video I made many times on these forums. It shows an extreme example of how well an SSD handles "boot". Loads Windows 7 + 27 applications, and brings me to a usable desktop in about 60 seconds.
YouTube - Why I love my SSD - Windows 7 boot + loading 27 applications in about 1 minute.

 

Impressive !!
With an HHD it would take days
However, hibernation "solve" also this handicap of HDD among SSD, because there's nothing to load.

Of course we'll see the main great benefit of the SSDs in launching and loading apps during usage.