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

[[timko]]

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.

You haven't gone wrong anywhere. Read this to understand what Win7 does and does not do when it finds an SSD...

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx

I'll give you this next bit for free (but you should still read all of that article): disabling the pagefile isn't one of the thing Win7 disables, nor is it recommended. The pagefile is actually BEST suited on an SSD since its activities are small random reads or larger sequential writes. You'd be hard pushed to get the same kind of performance from a mechanical disk than you would on an SSD such as this Crucial for pagefile activities.

 

[SlyReaper]

You haven't gone wrong anywhere. Read this to understand what Win7 does and does not do when it finds an SSD...

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx

I'll give you this next bit for free (but you should still read all of that article): disabling the pagefile isn't one of the thing Win7 disables, nor is it recommended. The pagefile is actually BEST suited on an SSD since its activities are all small writes. You'd be hard pushed to get the same kind of small write performance from a mechanical disk than you would on an SSD such as this Crucial.

"The page cannot be displayed because an internal server error has occurred."

 

[[timko]]

"The page cannot be displayed because an internal server error has occurred."

I clicked it just now (10:10pm) and it works. Must have glitched when you tried it.

 

[miniyazz]

since its activities are all small writes

Actually they're mostly small reads and larger writes.

/pedant

 

[[timko]]

Actually they're mostly small reads and larger writes.

/pedant

That late night skim reading is catching up with me again

 

[Durzel]

This is what I get on mine.

I reinstalled with 1024K alignment (no 100MB partition). Fresh install of Win7 with no tweaks done, default drivers (not Intel, yet). I've installed a few apps and a couple of games. ICH7R controller operating in AHCI mode with 2 regular HDDs on the same controller.

Hope thats ok?

 

[JessicaD]

DrMekon,

Thank you for evaluating Windows 7 and it's great to hear that you are enjoying your experience so much! If you are planning on purchasing Windows 7 when it is released it may be helpful to know you don't have to wait until October to reserve your copy of Win 7! You can pre-order your copy of Windows 7 Home Premium or Windows 7 Professional today. For more information, see the Windows 7 Pre-Order offer page here: http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/buy/offers/pre-order-ended.aspx

Jessica
Microsoft Windows Client Team

 

[Durzel]

(Windows 7 feels a lot nicer than Vista tbh, but I never really had any issues with Vista either)

 

[drunkenmaster]

You haven't gone wrong anywhere. Read this to understand what Win7 does and does not do when it finds an SSD...

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx

I'll give you this next bit for free (but you should still read all of that article): disabling the pagefile isn't one of the thing Win7 disables, nor is it recommended. The pagefile is actually BEST suited on an SSD since its activities are small random reads or larger sequential writes. You'd be hard pushed to get the same kind of performance from a mechanical disk than you would on an SSD such as this Crucial for pagefile activities.

Pagefile is literally preloading a bunch of stuff into memory so when you try to open things instead of waiting for the high latency access and slower speeds of a normal hard drive, it can access it almost instantly in the memory. Considering a SSD is essentially instant already, 99% of the benefits of pagefile simply aren't their on a ssd. It also does a LOT of writingn which isn't the best thing possible. I'd still say buy a load of cheapo system memory, ie 8/12gb depending on your system and just set up a ramdrive and assign your pagefile to that as frankly, while your system should be fine without a pagefile, some programs freakout without one.

I'd stick temp files and internet cache onto a mechanical hd also(or on the ramdrive but can get irritating if the ramdrive fails to load for whatever reason).


The easier option is simply to disable pagefile, you probably won't run into trouble with it, temp folders aren't that bad, and just live with the internet cache folders on the SSD, its not that much data tbh.

 

[DanB]

Just in case this helps inform anyone's purchasing decisions, and rather than just show screenies, I've posted a comparison video with the Crucial M225 (64GB) vs the original SATA HDD in my Dell Studio XPS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V76srJRJvtE

Let me know what you think - first ever Youtube video!

More to come, with comparisons vs Samsung 1st Gen SSD and Western Digital 640gb Green Power. Also got Win 7 RTM today, so will try that too.

Dan

 

[explicit4u]

nice little video there, must say, that those boot times are really good.

PS its better to disable your password for those tests so it boots straight in to windows.

 

[Duff-Man]

Nice video - thanks

Side-by-side comparisons really put things in perspective.

 

[Undesirable]

Tests should be performed with exactly the same hard drive contents (preferably both clean install of Windows), otherwise they may be subject to other factors such as variation in the number of Icons on your desktop, the size / quality of the background image and registry clutter.

 

[grumpybeard]

Thanks very much for link to MSDN blog on SSDs [timko], very informative.

 

[Spyder]

Pagefile is literally preloading a bunch of stuff into memory so when you try to open things instead of waiting for the high latency access and slower speeds of a normal hard drive, it can access it almost instantly in the memory.

I think you may be thinking of prefetch. Pagefile is used to offload data from memory to disk when available memory becomes low. I agree that with our current crop of 6 and 12GB machines that may not be needed.

The easier option is simply to disable pagefile, you probably won't run into trouble with it, temp folders aren't that bad, and just live with the internet cache folders on the SSD, its not that much data tbh.

Without a pagefile you will hit problems as you approach the limits of available memory and - if memory serves - will not be able to analyse crash dumps.

 

[ChileanLlama]

This is what I get on mine.

I reinstalled with 1024K alignment (no 100MB partition). Fresh install of Win7 with no tweaks done, default drivers (not Intel, yet). I've installed a few apps and a couple of games. ICH7R controller operating in AHCI mode with 2 regular HDDs on the same controller.


Hope thats ok?

That looks good I'm tempted to try in AHCI mode instead of RAID as from what I'm seeing it seems to be slightly better performance.

What are your thoughts on the single drive coming from the RAID0 Raptors? Are you still tempted to get another drive and go RAID?

 

[[timko]]

Tests should be performed with exactly the same hard drive contents (preferably both clean install of Windows).

I agree with this. If you still want to keep the Win7 install of the HDD then just image it to a backup first, fresh install Win7, bench and record again and then restore the backup image.

Also, to disable login password for Win7...

http://forums.techarena.in/operating-systems/1169846.htm

Remember to re-enable after you're done benching.

 

[grumpybeard]

Hey guys,

I will be building my new PC in a week when I get home. I've just bought a Crucial M225 128Gb SSD which I'll be using as my OS/apps drive. I also will have 2xWD RE3 1Tb drives that I want in RAID mode for games etc.

My motherboard is an Asus Rampage II. I dont know anything about the BIOS setup for the ICH10R controller, and the various options eg SATA/ACHI/RAID that you guys mention.

Would it make sense to:

* Clean install W7, letting W7 configure SSD with no tweaking (Timko's link to MSDN blog seems to infer that W7 will do everything for you, just leave alone). Bios ICH10R controller probably set to SATA?

* Install motherboard drivers and Intel Matrix Storage Manager Controller, which in turn installs the ACHI drivers.

Upon reboot do/should I change the ICH10R controller to anything other than default eg ACHI/Raid, for best performance of SSD bearing in mind the 2 RAIDed WD drives?

Many thanks in advance, good stuff doing the groundwork on getting the SSDs setup, cheers!

 

[DragonQ]

Crucial M225 SSD vs Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 boot comparison (Studio XPS)

A video comparison between a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 SATA 750gb HDD and a Crucial M225 64GB SATA SSD. This is a straight swap between my current operating ...

www.youtube.com

Hmm even your SSD setup seems slower than my HDD setup after the Windows 7 login screen. I can load a webpage instantly and my anti-virus etc. loads straight away also. The actual loading of Windows is quicker on your laptop but mine is slowed down by the stupid wait to turn on my external drives (which I can't wait to disconnect after I've recovered all of my data from them).

Just nab yourself a cheapo SATA PCI-e controller card for £15

Well I was kinda thinking that I should wait until SATA 6Gbps comes out and then get a 2 port 4x PCI-E card for a pair of SSDs and then use the on-board ports for the larger drives (a 4 port would require an 8x card, which is fine but it seems unnecessary for now). Seems like a good idea.

I'm glad that Windows 7 sorts out the alignment thing automatically. Providing I end up getting drives that do TRIM whilst in RAID 0, I am very much looking forward to SSDing in the next year or so.

 

[Durzel]

That looks good I'm tempted to try in AHCI mode instead of RAID as from what I'm seeing it seems to be slightly better performance.

What are your thoughts on the single drive coming from the RAID0 Raptors? Are you still tempted to get another drive and go RAID?

Feels snappier than the Raptors, unfortunately having installed a brand new OS (which I hadn't tested before) it's tough to say how much of that is just from the OS/freshness, how much is placebo effect, or whatever. TF2 definitely loads quicker though.

I think someone else summed it up previously - it's not jaw-droppingly paradigm-shifting faster, but it certainly feels faster.

I don't think I'll bother going with RAID SSD for the moment, I don't imagine my ICH7R would handle it particularly well, and with 256GB capacity that I've already got I wouldn't really need more space.