Slow boot times with Crucial M4 RAID 0

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Hi folks. Sorry for pestering this section of the forums the past few days but all the replies have been really helpful.

I seem to have another issue now. Past night I swapped drives around so that I now have my OS on the RAID 0 setup running off the Intel Chipset. I have benched the drive(s) using ATTO and the results are pretty much bang on the OCUK stated speeds. However when booting into Windows 7 it seems to take a lot longer than it should. A few reviews I've read of the drives say that they boot into Win7 within 10 seconds. For me though, it's anywhere between 25-30 seconds. I have AHCI set and can't see anything wrong with BIOS settings either.

Any help on this matter will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers
Ross
 
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How are you measuring your boot time ?
As a lot of the sub 10 second times you see are using boot timer programs. These do not add POST time into their result.

Ie Boot timer tells me that my system boots in 16 seconds. But if I use a stop watch and time from the click of the power button its more like 30 -35 seconds
 
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Also a lot of them have stripped out the services and startup items in the msconfig to the bare minimum.

Take it all with a pinch of salt... and look behind the scenes to get the real answer to a lot of these super duper boot times being bragged about on places like Youtube :)
 

Rab

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Try booting to safe mode, see if it improves, if so it could be something initialising that's causing the boot to slow up.

maybe this, see u have a gigabyte board. i seem to have this slow boot if have likes of easy tune installed. so fast to windows if not on pc. maybe an idea
 

mrk

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Also a lot of them have stripped out the services and startup items in the msconfig to the bare minimum.

Take it all with a pinch of salt... and look behind the scenes to get the real answer to a lot of these super duper boot times being bragged about on places like Youtube :)

I wouldn't consider stripping out services etc on SSDs as a factor in slow boot times unless a user is using ancient resource hungry software (McAfee/Norton etc maybe?) because everything else loads so fast it's not even worth considering disabling.


I've disabled no startup services and have 23 startup processes, boot time from the moment the Windows logo appears is about 15 seconds. Add 1-2 seconds for me to enter my password on the logon screen. That's on a 2009 install of Win7 which I migrated from HDD to SSD, and back then that was migrated from a slower HDD to a faster one too :p
 
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I wouldn't consider stripping out services etc on SSDs as a factor in slow boot times unless a user is using ancient resource hungry software (McAfee/Norton etc maybe?) because everything else loads so fast it's not even worth considering disabling.


I've disabled no startup services and have 23 startup processes, boot time from the moment the Windows logo appears is about 15 seconds. Add 1-2 seconds for me to enter my password on the logon screen. That's on a 2009 install of Win7 which I migrated from HDD to SSD, and back then that was migrated from a slower HDD to a faster one too :p


I hear u bruv :)
but I have in excess of 40 services staring on mine plus startups so it takes over 30 secs easy

horses for courses time again :D

where u start timing boot to desktop is a wide area of discussion that never will be resolved :)
 
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How are you measuring your boot time ?
As a lot of the sub 10 second times you see are using boot timer programs. These do not add POST time into their result.

Ie Boot timer tells me that my system boots in 16 seconds. But if I use a stop watch and time from the click of the power button its more like 30 -35 seconds

40 services is nothing though, processes and services are 2 entities remember!


And u are timing from when?

If I simply cut boot splash screen and enable quick boot in BIOS I'll shave seconds off :)

disable steam and origin in startup etc

get my drift?

EDIT

This is an example of boot to 44 running apps in 44 secs from boot? but the actual detail is missing of how it was done in real world terms :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=temsl-6BKSA

This is an example of what I'm running in RAID 0 from startup > TF2 > shutdown in 1.37 minutes! but it means jack sh** to real computer users

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Edrp1aGw1Z4&feature=related
 
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mrk

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Timing from the moment the Windows logo appears. I leave STEAM and Origin enabled at startup, they don't really affect anything as they're installed on the SSD and are usually fully loaded within a few seconds anyway.
Nothing else has been tweaked.


~17secs to get to the desktop at a usable state, ~3 of which to type in password and exit the logon screen.
WinAmp loads the playlist (13GB) off the media HDD though hence the slower start of that.

NoGUI boot would save a few more seconds yep.
 
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This is the rub

MY Steam folder is 209GB (at the moment) and the Origin Games is 23.3GB (at the moment) are located on a mechanical HDD, although this will not really effect boot to desktop as much as people imagine, and of course using the mklink trick you can transfer often played games to your ssd, as of, and when required

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/262456-14-guide-transfer-steam-games

My main thrust, is that I don't disagree with your timings and really nice vid, thanks :) , but with the absolute mindnumbing, blind servitude to speed of boot and " why am I slow " questons that are raised, and not the real life facts that sometimes are hidden from "our" forum members/readers. These can be many and varied in depth and fractions of a second can be gained or lost by really simple or complex solutions. Dependent on a whole host of variables that can have profound effects even on 2 rigs sat side by side at the same desk even.

Enough of banging on a stupid drum

Happy New Year Everyone :)
 
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I don't have that many start up processes to be perfectly honest maybe only 5 or 6


That cant be right, 50 or 60 maybe.
Boot windows then check task manager for how many processes are running.

On a different note. I dont really worry how long it takes to boot, as the system is only rebooted maybe 2 - 3 times a month. Just use the sleep option. Almost instant on / off system
 

mrk

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That cant be right, 50 or 60 maybe.
Boot windows then check task manager for how many processes are running.

On a different note. I dont really worry how long it takes to boot, as the system is only rebooted maybe 2 - 3 times a month. Just use the sleep option. Almost instant on / off system

I think he means 5 or 6 programs in the user startup list(s) instead of Windows system processed, of which there will be 50-60+ - None of which need disabling on Windows 7.
 
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I think he means 5 or 6 programs in the user startup list(s) instead of Windows system processed, of which there will be 50-60+ - None of which need disabling on Windows 7.


If you want to reduce your boot time there's a few you can disable, but you must be absolutely sure you don't need them. If you have a Nvidia card for instance, the driver installs HDaudio and stereoscopic vision driver by default, you don't need either of them if you don't use 3D vision or audio over hdmi. Just those two alone will add 1-2 seconds on start-up.

I used to be obsessed with how long the system took to boot. But nowadays since I got a new mobo and sleep mode now works properly, its all irrelevant as I use sleep mode instead.
 
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For me the windows part is lightning quick, it's the bios part that takes the time, mainly detecting USB, I would say it takes about 40 seconds from a cold boot to the desktop in all.
 
Soldato
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Just read this,

" if you want your laptop/computer to startup super fast press windows key + R and type msconfig in the tabs click boot put timeout at 3 seconds, click NO gui boot, goto advanced and click mamium number of processes and then click maxium usage of ram and click apply and the restart your laptop/pc. THESES ARE THE SETTING I HAVE ON MY LAPTOP AND IT BOOTS IN 11 SECONDS"

These settings safe?
 
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