T430 SSD Clean Install: How important are AHCI drivers during install process?

As the title suggests, I have a T430 with the 2.6 Ghz i5 3320M and I have purchased a 500 GB mSATA SSD and have installed Windows 7 Professional on this drive.

The performance jump is not as large as I thought it may have been and I'm wondering if it's because I did not load the AHCI drivers from the Lenovo website before I selected the partition I wanted to install on. The Lenovo (Intel) AHCI drivers did install through the system update utility after I had installed Windows, but I wonder if I should re-do everything and load the drivers while I'm installing rather than after?

Any thoughts? Thanks.

 

Necessary drivers were built-in Win7 from the beginning, system update just upgraded existing ones. If you had none, then you would not have been able to install windows in the first place (remember WinXP...)

 

You may want to nuke the recovery partition on the SSD and leave that space unpartitioned, That would be my first step.

I have noticed a difference in system responsiveness when the partition is removed. YMMV.

 

Perhaps running your mSATA through Crystal Mark (or other benchmarking utility) and posting the results here might help illustrate your concern more clearly.

 

Good call.

Add a HD Tune benchmark in as well, and we'll take it from there.

Which mSATA SSD are we discussing to begin with, BTW?

 

I decided to use UEFI when I installed Windows 7 Professional on the SSD. As far as I could tell, there was no recovery partition on the drive when I purchased it. Due to using UEFI I have a 100 MB EFI System Partition, a 128 MB MSR partition and a 120 GB NTFS partition for Windows 7. The remaining unallocated portion of the hard drive will be partitioned into space for Linux and for storage when I get that far along.

I wonder if you're referring to what would be on the drive had I cloned the original drive. Perhaps you were referencing the factory recovery partition that was on the computer when it was new. I got rid of that and did a fresh install of Windows 7 immediately after the computer arrived nearly 2 years ago.

 

I'm using a 500 GB Samsung Electronics 840 EVO mSATA drive. I retained the old 7200 RPM 500 GB drive in the original hard drive bay.

 

Thanks for the thoughts guys. I guess I'm not terribly concerned about the computer having poor performance. It's fast enough. It's just that from what I've heard, everyone talks like an SSD should make your computer lightning fast compared to the way it was. To me it just seems like the normal improvement you would expect from doing a fresh install of Windows after you've been using it every day for two years. It's not poor performance, it's just not as big of a jump up as what I expected.

A few days before I did that upgrade, I also upgraded the RAM from 4 GB to 16 GB. That made a huge difference in performance, and that was before re-installing Windows.

I'm not complaining. I just wanted to make sure I set things up correctly. It sounds like not installing the Intel AHCI drivers during the Windows install is not a big deal so I probably won' worry about it too much.

Anyway, thanks for your thoughts. I appreciate it.

 

Try the Intel RST drivers:
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=&ProductID=2101&ProdId=2101
If you haven't already.

Going from a spinning disk to SSD is night-and-day different. However, it does nothing for tasks that don't need the disk. If the system is just doing math, the speed of storage is irrelevant. SSDs won't make games run more frames per second, and won't make Excel do pivot tables faster. However, games will load quicker, and so will Excel.

 

Thanks. I guess where I was expecting a large performance gain was primarily when loading Windows. My computer was getting pretty slow to load before even after I installed the RAM. I usually notice a significant boost when re-installing Windows. This time I re-installed Windows on an SSD so I thought the difference would be more dramatic than it had be when I have re-installed in the past. Instead, it seemed about the same. It's a subjective measurement and I would imagine the SSD is performing fine.

 

I'd still like to see a HD Tune graph...it would take you less than 10 minutes to download the software and run the benchmark, and another minute to post the results here, but it's obviously your call...

 

HD Tune: Samsung SSD 840 EVO Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 92.0 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 222.6 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 190.8 MB/sec
Access Time : 0.1 ms
Burst Rate : 131.4 MB/sec
CPU Usage : -1.0%

I'll post the graph in a second.

 

I haven't uploaded images here before. Usually use photobucket or something so we'll see how this goes. I may end up editing it a few times so please be patient.

 

My two cents: I don't like the graph. It doesn't seem consistent, and the spikes are fairly serious in my opinion.

To understand what I mean by "consistent", here's a graph from an ancient ThinkPad using an ancient SSD. Disregard the overall speeds - they can NEVER come anywhere close to your machine or SSD - it's just that I'm typing on that antiquity right now...



If the system were mine, I'd re-install the OS...using - possibly - the conventional BIOS settings and see whether it makes a difference...

Good luck.

 

I noticed the large bumps down on the test seemed to correspond with me going away from the HD Tune software and browsing on the web while it was continuing the test. Regardless, even when it wasn't a huge spike down, it still was not stable.

I ran the Samsung Magician software to tune the SSD, verify the latest firmware and tune the OS for SSD use (I used it to emphasize tuning for reliability rather than speed). Then I ran the HD Tune test again. Here were the results the second time:


HD Tune: Samsung SSD 840 EVO Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 133.4 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 228.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 199.4 MB/sec
Access Time : 0.1 ms
Burst Rate : 130.8 MB/sec
CPU Usage : -1.0%

 

I just read on another site that when the HD Tune graph is very consistent like what yours is, it means the hard drive is not the limiting factor in speed, but rather the SATA controller is the limiting factor. Could that be the case in your situation?

 

Well...yes and no.

Yes, because the machine in question is a FrankenPad which is incapable of even SATA I speeds in the true sense, while the SSD is a SATA II (3.0) unit.

No, because there's absolutely no reason for a SATA III drive in a SATA III port - even in a SATA II port - to have the spikes that your EVO shows. I'm not even touching the speed aspect, just the consistency.

This has been my experience, which is by no means absolute and universal but is quite extensive. Take it for what it's worth. Or don't.

 

The changes I made before installing Windows 7 Pro on the new drive was to update to the latest BIOS (I'm under the impression the old BIOS did not support UEFI but I didn't check either). Then I selected "UEFI only" rather than "both" or "Legacy" in the BIOS settings. Finally, I verified that AHCI was enabled and then installed Windows.

Are you saying I should re-install in Legacy mode? It seems odd that bypassing the boot loader and instead using UEFI to boot the OS would cause a difference in the way the HD performs, but I'm sure there are stranger things.

 

I'm not saying that you should do that, but that's what I would do...

Your ThinkPad, your call.

 

Thanks for your help ajkula66. I'm getting the vibe that you have perhaps not appreciated this exchange as much as I have. I am sorry if the manner in which I've approached it has been less than satisfactory. I've been working on this computer more than I wanted to during this process and I'm sure that may have reduced my enthusiasm for additional steps. I probably let that spill over into this thread and definitely should not have let that happen when I was communicating with people who were trying to help me.

I am very thankful for your contributions on this thread as well as those of the others who have commented.

I hope your Christmas has been and will continue to be wonderful .

 

Nothing for you to be sorry for, no offense taken and no hard feelings on this end...:hi2:

Been there and done that...more times than I'd like to remember...

Thank you.

N.B. - If you choose to follow the re-install path, I'd suggest making a backup of your current image, since you're not *that* displeased with the machine's current performance. It's also a good way to compare mental notes with oneself, for a lack of better term.

Good luck.