*** Crucial M225 SSD's Available From £102.99 inc VAT ***

Spyder said:
It looks to me like Partition 1 - which is unused - is being used to pad the disk to provide an offest of 1024kb for Part 2 (the reserved system partition).

I suspect the original HDD that I'm miorroring from might have been used under Vista so that might be why the padding has been added.

Do the more informed amongst you concur or am I hopelessly wrong?
Click to expand...

Well, a fresh install of Win7 still gets you the 100Mb system reserved partition and the 1024k default offset without needing a tiny 990Kb partition. If you want, you can delete that small partition and resize the system partition over it and still maintain the 1024k offset for the remaining partitions.
 
Some pretty random figures from a 256gb M225 - running on an ICH9R controller with RAID enabled (single drive mode).

It doesn't help the benchmarks when your OS is installed on it as there's always likely to be something accessing the drive. Despite that, in real world use it doesn't feel the slightest bit different between the slowest and fastest configs/loadings.

Clean install of Windows 7 RTM using default drivers;

default.jpg


After installing apps/games (about 100gb's worth);

default_loaded.jpg


After installing apps/games and on Intel 1023 drivers;

SSD_17082009.jpg


And a comparison with 2 Raptor X 150gb drives in RAID0 (no OS installed);

Raptor_17082009.jpg


And WEI consistently has the drive as 7.3 not that WEI is the best measure of anything lol :D

wei.jpg
 
Last edited:
LOL the Windows Experience Index actually rates my SSD as the highest performing component. My system is actually being bottlenecked by my RAM and CPU at 6.4 while the SSD gets 7.1. :p

Yes, I know it's a rubbish benchmark, I just find it amusing after years of having my hard drive be the major bottleneck of my computer. For comparison, my WD Velociraptor got 5.9.
 
I've just installed my Crucial 256GB SSD into my PC and installed Win7. I manually created a partition with 64K alignment and 4K allocation during install (SHIFT+F10 on first install screen).

Windows installed fine, I haven't run any benchmarks yet however it seems like Windows doesn't realise its an SSD. In Device Manager it just appears as "CRUCIAL_CT256M225 ATA Device".

From a quick look it seems as it a pagefile is enabled on the drive (its set to "Let Windows manage it" and it says "Total paging file size for all drives: 4095MB".

Where have I gone wrong? The whole point of using Win7 was so that it would be able to do TRIM on it automatically etc.

Please help! :(
 
Durzel said:
I've just installed my Crucial 256GB SSD into my PC and installed Win7. I manually created a partition with 64K alignment and 4K allocation during install (SHIFT+F10 on first install screen).

Windows installed fine, I haven't run any benchmarks yet however it seems like Windows doesn't realise its an SSD. In Device Manager it just appears as "CRUCIAL_CT256M225 ATA Device".

From a quick look it seems as it a pagefile is enabled on the drive (its set to "Let Windows manage it" and it says "Total paging file size for all drives: 4095MB".

Where have I gone wrong? The whole point of using Win7 was so that it would be able to do TRIM on it automatically etc.

Please help! :(
Click to expand...

You shouldn't need to do anything to format the disk in Win7. It should automatically set a 1024k offset with 4096kb cluster.

Device manager identifies mine as a "CRUCIAL_CT256M225". Probably without ATA as I'm on the RAID controller.

The page file is about 8gb, no difference to on a HD, as it's based on the installed memory. I should probably change this, but haven't felt the need with it running so nice.

Finally TRIM won't work until Crucial release the updated firmware.

If you go back a few pages there's a link to a Win7 developers blog which gives a lot of information about how Win7 deals with SSDs. There's nothing immediately obvious you can see in Win7 that tells you it's setup for SSD.
 
Thanks. So did you do anything with DISKPART at all, or just insert the Win7 DVD, create a partition during install (I assume you have the 100MB one too then) and let it do its stuff?
 
I just let it boot from the DVD, custom setup, selected the drive and let it do it's thing.

Once I installed I checked using Diskpart (see fornowagain's posts in this thread) to make sure the alignment was correct (i.e. a 1024k offset on the 100mb partition) and also clustersize.

One thing I did notice is that the standard defrag doesn't list or let you select the SSD when you go into configure a schedule. It's not immediately obvious though especially if you have a single drive as it just asks you to check Select All Disks. When you have a normal HD in as well, it has check Select All Disks plus the individual HDs but doesn't list the SSD individually. Makes me think defrag is disabled on SSDs - but it's not clear.
 
Mine is missing from the schedule too so maybe that's a positive sign.

My CrystalDiskMark figures are closer to your "After install apps/games" figures than your starting point and I've already disabled the pagefile, Windows Search service, etc. I haven't installed any apps/games yet either.

I am however running it on an ICH7R controller in AHCI mode.

Not sure whether the lower performance is due to me using a 64KB offset right at the start. Ho hum. :)

Also where are the "Intel 1023" drivers please?
 
For the first one I did absolutely no tweaking I ran it as soon as I was in Win7. No tweaks. No additional drivers or anything. I think CrystalMark only gives an indicator though - especially once the OS is on there - as you won't see the same results twice.

I don't think the 64kb offset will help matters tho, but I don't know enough about it as to how much it would affect performance.

Hopefully this link will work for the drivers; http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Det...2&DwnldID=17882&strOSs=163&OSFullName=Windows Vista*&lang=eng

If not go through the 3 series chipset and select Vista as the OS. I've noticed some of Intel's drivers show Win7 in the description, but won't be listed when you search for them.
 
Not sure it measures dual GPU cards/XF/SLI correctly - it does mention "The gaming graphics score is based on the primary graphics adapter. If this system has linked or multiple graphics adapters, some software applications may see additional performance benefits."
 
Well I've really managed to balls it up now. :(

Thought about reinstalling and just letting Win7 create the partition (I don't want it to take up the whole drive) so booted back off the DVD, deleted the partition in DISKPART and then went to the next step. At this point I found out apparently you can't just wipe the partitions like a normal drive, you have to use HDDErase or something? Is this correct?

Since I've deleted the original partition I had previously installed on I have to reinstall now.

Urgh this is doing my head in :(
 
Durzel,

I've not done that...and I've reinstalled a number of times playing with things like Wiper. So maybe I've made a balls up too :s

I didn't use diskpart from the DVD. Just went into a custom install, then when the drives/partitions are listed deleted all the partitions and selected the unallocated disk. YOu can choose advanced options at this point and format, create partitions etc.

Edit: thinking about it the HDDerase would help, but it's not doing anything more than TRIM will do when enabled by clearing the areas of the disk marked for deletion. So the worst that can happen is that you'll lose a bit of performance. I doubt it will make a big difference until the drive has been filled. And if you're using AHCI you can always run Wiper til TRIM is enabled.
 
Last edited:
Sly, it's exactly the same as a HD. But there's a benefit of wiping the drive of all data that has been marked for deletion, as ultimately as the drive fills up it will lower performance. On a brand new drive I can't see this being much of a problem, not with a 20gb install on a 256gb drive. And if I'm thinking straight wiping the disk prior to an install is only the equivalent of TRIM anyway.

I could be totally way of mark - cos I'm still learning tho :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom