Excessive SSD disk access on TZ - Crap!

I own a TZ190N and have had it in generally two configurations; 1) Vista Semi-clean install w/ Outlook 2007 and 2) XP Pro w/ Outlook 2007.

In the Vista configuration, Firefox and Outlook would lock up (independently) and throw the SSD to full utilization while memory usage never exceeded 40% and CPU 5%. It became so frustrating that I completed a full downgrade to XP, only to find that the Outlook lock up occurs more frequently and with greater severity (during Outlook disk access, Explorer freezes as well).

Has anyone else experience high disk access on the TZ? Any tips on improving disk access performance?

The performance seems more comparable to my older S360 with 4200rpm drive than my friend's SZ with 5400rpm drive. I had figured that the SSD would trump both.

 

do a complete reformat

 

Take a look at:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/10/samsungs-64gb-ssd-better-faster-stronger/

There are some cases where a traditional HD may be somewhat faster - especially random writes.

I have a 32GB SSD - the older gen - in my G and it is about as fast as the 7200rpm in my SZ.

 

Get rid of Outlook 2007 and go back to Outlook 2003. I'm going to be doing that on my next TZ. Outlook 2007 is a complete hog and crashes at least twice a day in my experience. While it's "self-repairing," which helps quite a bit with crash recovery, it does freeze the computer, and Explorer, too frequently. What a pig. A $6 billion pig!

 

After installing XP, I did notice about a 50% faster boot time, but really, I just kept the laptop in suspend mode most of the time when not using it... so the boot times were at that point comparable.

Outlook 2007 must be problem, but it runs fine on my desktop (7200rpm drive, 2GB ram) which only differs from the TZ in processor speed.

What burns me is the heavy disk usage when there is so much RAM available to use. Can we tell windows to cache more in the system RAM?

 

Are you using ReadyBoost? That's a Vista feature where you can assign up to 4G of a memory card to serve as a RAM cache -- downside is it only works with high speed memory cards -- I'm using a Lexar 8G ExpressCard for my ReadyBoost. On my TZ190N I found this was quite effective, once I got rid of the Sony bloatware and tweaked Vista a bit.

 

From what I've read, most say there are no noticeable gains with ReadyBoost, so it's another Vista time! (get it? Vista time! )

 

So you found Readyboost to be effective even though you have a SSD? I'm currently reinstalling vista and planning on using outlook 2003 unless I hear another method.

What other tweaks did you make in Vista? Were you having problems with disk access?

 

you shouldn't see any improvement when using readyboost with a SSD setup. readyboost only offer advantage on mechanical HHD, which has higher random access time and slower small I/O transfer.

 

I removed 2007 as soon as i got this laptop. and went back to 2003 pro.. im in the process of optimizing the system to boot as fast as my xp and ill post results in a new thread when im done

 

If you run an SSD, readyboost will not show any improvement whatsoever. The main advantage of readyboost is the access time differential between the hard drive and the readyboost drive. Unless you can show a quicker flash drive than SSD, there will be no effect and, actually, it can be deemed to slow your system.

 

Anybody install 2003? I found some sites that claim SSD does not do good with large files, so seems like 2003 would also be just as bad... I don't have 2003, but will buy it if it solves the issue...

 

I have a TZ195 with 48gb SSD drive.

1. Readyboost didn't show any performance improvements after implementing it with a 16gb Lexar SSD express card. I bought it more for the expanded storage space without having to have external peripherals like USB memory sticks or external harddrives.

2. I have run both office 2003 and office 2007 and 2003 upgraded to 2007 and had no issue with large files sizes or crashing. My outlook PST file is in excess of 2gb and no unusual performance spikes.

3. On a side note if you don't like the GUI changes that office 2007 suite has download a program called classic menus 2007. It makes office 2007 look like 2003.

I would recommend doing a fresh install of the OS as it is very unusual for a SSD drive to be acting like that. It is very unlikely that the Office suite is causing the issues. I'm assuming you have 2gb of ram installed (from memory that was the default spec for your model).

 

Even better get the non bloatware image discs that Portable One offer. Either Vista Business or XP Pro are available.

That's what I use.