Got my first SSD

Hello everyone,

I received an OCZ Vertex 2 120GB Sandforce SSD from a family member as a gift recently, and having got it installed in my Toshiba and Windows 7 loaded on to it, I need to know what to do to properly take care of it, get it running at full speed, etc.

So do I need anything specifically to get TRIM working, or to get it running at it's rated speeds? Do I need Intel's Rapid Storage drivers, or drivers from OCZ?

What do I need to do to get the astronomically low boot times like other people here have?

Sorry if I sound like a noob, but I'm new to using and taking care of an SSD, as I have never used one before.

Thanks.

 

Dear Shadow-Who-Sounds-Like-A-Noob,
You took too long to get an SSD.
Love, Forge.


On a serious note, about the only real thing you need to do to get TRIM up and running is install the latest Intel RST drivers. That'll both get TRIM and your best speeds.

For boot times, I'm not too sure. I treat my SSD as a low-capacity HDD with no defrag. It should be wickedly fast--compared to an HDD--without any tweaking.

 

But seriously, I just installed Intel RST and now the laptop won't even get past the "Starting Windows" screen.

I'm...confused. Really confused.

Thanks for the helpful info.

 

Which version did you install, and from where? I'm running 10.1.0.1008 direct from Intel and I'm not having problems. I know, different SSDs with different controllers, but that shouldn't be a problem.

Hmm. Can you reach Windows through safe mode? If so, try another install of the IRST drivers.

 

I nuked the install and reinstalled Windows 7. Installed the same version (latest I believe) direct from Intel.

Although I did some scouring on the intarwebs, and it seems somebody else got RST installed with amazing results on their Vertex 2.

I'll get on to it once I've got this display driver crap sorted out. Toshiba's Windows 7 support on their older models is bat**** crazy, and I can't install drivers from AMD.

Reformatting on this machine is a complete nightmare.

 

Can you adopt me and I get a 120 GB SSD also?

Are you installing in IDE or AHCI mode? And yeah Toshiba site for drivers is woeful to be nice about it.

 

Haha, I wish, lol. Don't think my family would take to kindly to a stranger showing up on their doorstep.

As far as I can tell, it's set to AHCI mode. My BIOS is just a tad...basic. The only option that I can see that could possibly relate to this is "SATA Controller Mode [AHCI]". The only other option is "Compatibility mode", which I suppose is just another term for Legacy mode or whatever it is in other systems.

To add, for those of you that don't have a Toshiba notebook, they have two different sites for Windows 7 drivers, and Vista and XP drivers. Also, there seems to be a lot missing in the Windows 7 section, and it doesn't even specify whether it's 64 bit or 32 bit.

 

Well I am taking donations for a 160 GB Intel SSD for my Latitude 13...let me know.

Yeah that's AHCI. Sometimes with older laptops AHCI is flaky with Windows, you might want to try the legacy setting and switch to AHCI mode later with the registry fix. Modern OS shouldn't have a problem with AHCI.

 

Already got Windows installed fine...and things seem okay. But I'm still unsure what I need in terms of drivers, RST, TRIM support, etc. Sorry if it feels like I'm pushing you around or something, I'm just a noob.

I suppose now that 7's installed, all I need is guidance to what needs to be done to have it running full speed and TRIM'ing. Then I'll do a benchmark and see how things are.

 

TRIM should be automatic, it's an OS level thing and Windows 7 should automatically send the TRIM command when you delete files. You can try running this command line to see if the TRIM command is being sent ("fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify", 0 means TRIM is enabled), but the only way to really "test" is to fill it up and then delete the files and check speeds... which would just put wear cycles on your SSD.

 

According to cmd, it is working then. Thanks for that, even if it is yet to be confirmed. I have a little more faith that this thing is working properly.

Maybe I'll try RST again. Hopefully, this time it won't wreck my system.

EDIT: *sigh* RST FUBAR'd my system again. I'm going to reinstall Windows 7 on it again for the fourth time today. If it's utilizing TRIM, and I'm getting a 16 second boot even when Superfetch hasn't got itself together, I'm pretty happy, I guess.

 

I wonder if it's because Toshiba doesn't play nice with reference drivers? I can't think of a reason why IRST is doing that to your machine.

 

the cmd line check for TRIM only confirms that Win7 is sending the command, not that TRIM is actually happening. Given that you've got a brand spankin new SSD, it would have to support TRIM in its firmware. You should be able to confirm this with a google search. So... yes, TRIM is going to be working fine.

Why are you installing Win7 over and over? Make a backup system image to an external drive and recover from it. Why aren't you using system restore to move back to before you install RST?

Lastly, you don't actually need the RST program, just the driver. RST is really there to benefit RAID setups, but offers no improvements in a single drive setup. So, you download the driver pack from intel for 10.1.0.1008:
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3172&DwnldID=19601&ProductFamily=Chipsets&ProductLine=Laptop+Chipsets&ProductProduct=Mobile+Intel%c2%ae+5+Series+Chipset&lang=eng
This is just the driver, not the RST software. Once you've extracted the files. Go to:
Device Manager > IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers > Intel 5 series (or whatever your comes up as) > right click, Update Driver Software > Browse my computer for driver software > navigate to the folder that you just extracted and let Win7 do the rest of the work.

p.s. - the link i provided is for the 64bit driver, not the 32.

 

^Betcha that will stop it from booting again. Gah. I'll try it anyway, I've got nothing to lose.

Also, the reason I'm not system restoring is because I'm getting real OCD about it. When I want a clean OS, I want a spotless OS.

@Forge: I know right? IRST even installed on the G73 without a problem. It even halved the boot time as well.

EDIT: Also, WEI reports a 5.9 for disk performance, should really be up around 7.8 or so.

Double EDIT: What did I tell you. I told you it wouldn't work, and it didn't work.

If worse comes to worst, I'll put it in the G73 instead. The only reasons I put it in the Toshiba in the first place is because a) it's more used than the Asus, and b) there are A LOT of large games installed on the Asus.

Thanks for trying to help people, but I have an extremely non-cooperative notebook on my hands here.



Third EDIT: I can also confirm that booting in Safe Mode does not work after RST has been installed - the driver that gets stuck during the loading screen is called CLASSPNP.sys

 

But your G73 has dual hard drive bays. You know you want to do it.

And I guess you're stuck with whatever drivers Toshiba is releasing if you can't install IRST. That bites.

 

Well if you don't like your new SSD, I am taking donations.

In all seriousness, does Windows 7 install fine on the Toshiba? You are only having problems when tweaking it?

 

Is this after installing the RST program & driver, or just the manual update of the driver?

CLASSPNP.sys is not part of the mamual driver package.

 

Shadow , look at the beta intel RST drivers... the new ones were causing a lot of issues for me and yeah i wasn't going past the windows loading screen... use the intel beta drivers.. they worked properly for me and were faster too.
Get them from here..

intel drivers pour Raid/Sata/Ata/Ahci

You want 10.0.0.1046. Try this because this fixed my SSD issues.

Panther214

 

Hehe, I think the G73 will get it eventually. It always does end up being my performance laptop. Only thing is, it's gonna take a LOOOONG time for my games to backup. And as far as I'm aware, they may not even work when I put them back in the steamapps folder on the new install.

As far as I'm aware, Toshiba doesn't haven't have customized RST or even chipset drivers.

Windows 7 itself installs fine, but it's really only when I try installing the RST driver that it messes up the machine.

Both. Both of the methods and packages for install stop the machine from successfully booting.

 

Just use the W7 default driver then. It is just an older version of Intel driver being modified by Microsoft AFAIK.

OCZ said it didn't pass on TRIM properly which is the reason why they initially asked people to use RST. Yet there are other issue with RST(which OCZ didn't want to admit like causing BSOD after sleep/resume on certain models) and as for TRIM, it is not that effective on SandForce(i.e. your drive) anyway. It has its own brain.

 

Oh, silly Toshiba.

Anyway, in what sense are you going to be backing up your games? I haven't had problems with the in-built backup feature, but several people--I know Wingnut is one of them--has said simply copying your steamapps folders works, as well.

 

Last time I reformatted the G73, I copied the steamapps folder to an external, installed a new copy of Steam on the reformatted machine, and then copied the steamapps folder into the new directory. The game actually showed up as installed, but it wouldn't open. It would just say "Preparing to run **** ***** *" or whatever it says, but nothing would come up. I had to delete the the folder and re-download the game for it to run properly. Luckily the only game I had installed was Just Cause 2, but this time I have about 5 or so games actually installed on it, and re-downloading them is going to be a PITA.

Decided I'm gonna try the Vertex 2 in the G73. Hopefully, things aren't so "proprietary" when it comes to Asus laptops.

EDIT: I guess you're all getting pretty sick of me now, but I just came to say that the SSD wasn't actually causing the problem with RST. It still happens with the 200GB Fujitsu coffee grinder edition that I chucked back in about 30 minutes ago.

Since the G73 has no problems with RST, the Vertex 2 is going in that tomorrow. Personally, I can't wait to see my incredibly fast machine get even faster.

 

Follow Les Guide, there are others here in the forums aswell that are really good, but i find Les guide a little simpler since everything is together and good results on my part and 3 friends, also frees a ton of space.

 

Then definitely try out the built-in backup program. I know for sure that it'll work.

 

Shadow YG(MANY)PM's ha

 

Congrats on the upgrade