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

[drunkenmaster]

Managed to get the scores up a little in atto, 5-10mb through all the high end writes and the pretty horrible 8/16kb reads are up from 65 and 90 to 95/110. Probably need a few more tweaks and maybe try a couple different raid drivers.

Is anyone bothering doing many "other" tweaks, like pagefile either not used or on a ramdrive, disabling any services, moving temp folders/net cache to ramdrive of a different hdd?

The OCZ site is fast descending into a quagmire of opposing idea's with no up to date single tweaks thread which makes it very difficult to know what helps, what doesn't, what might and whats easiest.

The one thing I hated about ramdrives was saving/deleting the image on shutdown/boot as it made it obviously way slower, what I ideally want is to not have an image but have a ramdrive simply setup a new drive each boot with preset folders, so it would literally take seconds each boot to sort out. I'd put temp and pagefile on there and internet cache on the ssd or another hdd.

 

[fornowagain]

Are you supposed to be able to run that firmware update .exe from within Windows? (i.e. to create a bootable floppy or whatever it does). I downloaded "CT256M.exe" for my SSD, tried running it and it said it wasn't compatible with my version of Windows (Win7 64bit).

Do I have to create a bootable floppy, copy the CT256M.exe to it and run that from within DOS?

Runs from DOS, USB bootdisk will do. 1711 works OK, possibly a touch slower in places.

Change Log:

1. ATA8 ACS2 TRIM Support
2. SATA Rx SSC is turn off by default, Now Rx and Tx SSC both off
3. IDENTIFY word 69 bit 14 is cleared (Non deterministic trim)
4. IDENTIFY word 60-61 are changed (User addressable logical sectors for LBA28)
5. FPDMA error return code was not adequate
6. SMART related changes were made (BBM error log was removed)
7. SATA error handling code was enhanced
8. Bug Fix: a bug in error handling in Set Multiple mode command
9. Bug Fix: a bug that caused 1.5Gbps diagnostic failure
10. Bug Fix: SMART related bugs were fixed
11. More ICs supported

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Bootable usb in case anyone wants a go.

http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=197

Grab the 'HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool' and DOS files, format fat32 and make bootable. Stick the firmware exe on the usb and boot from it in IDE mode.



Or use a command prompt, either way the final drive should look like below.

 

[[timko]]

What adjustments did you make?

I was using WinXP 64Bit at the time which had no optimisations at all when it came to SSDs, since it came out way before SSDs even made it to the market. The default offset it applies for any type of drive it finds on installation (whether HDD or SDD) was not suitable for SSDs. As such, I adjusted it to 128k, which is apparently recommended for XP with SSD and RAID 0, and got the improved results as previously listed. I didn't try other values, eg 64k, 256k etc so I can not comment whether 128k is the best value or not, all I know is that it's better than default for XP.

Are you supposed to be able to run that firmware update .exe from within Windows? (i.e. to create a bootable floppy or whatever it does). I downloaded "CT256M.exe" for my SSD, tried running it and it said it wasn't compatible with my version of Windows (Win7 64bit).

Do I have to create a bootable floppy, copy the CT256M.exe to it and run that from within DOS?

This http://images.crucial.com/pdf/productFlyer/ProductFlyer_M225-Firmware.pdf does say to save the exe to a bootable piece of media, USB memory stick etc. You then reboot in to DOS via that memory stick and then run the .exe from there. If you haven't previously made that stick dos bootable then go here and download unetbootin...

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

Run it, at the top select FreeDOS in the Distribution drop down list. Then at the bottom choose the drive letter of the stick and click OK. I can't remember if it wipes the contents of the stick or not so back up anything you need from it first.

When all that is done, then put the exe on the stick, reboot the PC, you might have to change BIOS settings to get it to boot from your memory stick first. Then follow the rest of the instructions in that PDF linked above.

 

[[timko]]

Is anyone bothering doing many "other" tweaks, like pagefile either not used or on a ramdrive

Well, I previously quoted from a Microsoft blog that they recommended to leave the Pagefile on the SSD. You then presented a case why you thought they were wrong and so I would have thought you would jump at the chance to disable/move it on your rig

 

[fornowagain]

The one thing I hated about ramdrives was saving/deleting the image on shutdown/boot as it made it obviously way slower, what I ideally want is to not have an image but have a ramdrive simply setup a new drive each boot with preset folders, so it would literally take seconds each boot to sort out. I'd put temp and pagefile on there and internet cache on the ssd or another hdd.

I don't save anything, having 6GB ram I just create a new 1GB ramdrive with temp folder. Redirect the temp variables and pagefile, Firefox cache etc. Fills up with loads of dross and cleans itself out when I reboot. No delay at all, straight in and shuts down in seconds. I don't do it save wear as its not really an issue tbh, its just to keep the rubbish in one place and make it easy to clean.

 

[Durzel]

Thanks for the firmware tips.

As for tweaks I haven't bothered doing anything with mine. I figure it's got such a long warranty (5 years) that if the worst should happen and it degrades to the point of uselessness it'll be replaced easily enough. Crucials RMA service is awesome.

Depends on how obsessive you are about it I guess.

 

[[timko]]

Thanks for the firmware tips.

Did you flash the firmware already?

 

[Durzel]

Not yet no, wlil do it later once I find my USB stick.

 

[drunkenmaster]

I don't save anything, having 6GB ram I just create a new 1GB ramdrive with temp folder. Redirect the temp variables and pagefile, Firefox cache etc. Fills up with loads of dross and cleans itself out when I reboot. No delay at all, straight in and shuts down in seconds. I don't do it save wear as its not really an issue tbh, its just to keep the rubbish in one place and make it easy to clean.

Ta, I'll try out the diff ramdrive program, I was using dataram which as far as I could tell would only load in startup if loading from an image file which again from what I could gather needed to be saved as big as the drive you wanted.

WIll give that one a try and, its less about the saving of writes, more about pure speed to be honest, I also do like the idea and was trying to find a way to get Dataram to do what your app apparently does, largely for the ease of use and lack of cleanup needed.

 

[tynanrw]

Tried the firmware myself, it says it can't find my drive(64GB), although it did show up along with a F1 spinpoint, but again still didnt detect it, the firmware installer that is.

Anyone else having issues with installing the firmware?

I do have 8 sata drives and I removed all of them and my motherboard is a ga x48 dq6. I used freedos and the HP drive method on a usb, ran the setup program ok it just couldn't see the drive.

 

[fornowagain]

Is the motherboard controller in IDE mode?

 

[IT Troll]

I don't save anything, having 6GB ram I just create a new 1GB ramdrive with temp folder. Redirect the temp variables and pagefile, Firefox cache etc...

Sounds like a good strategy for temp files etc. But is this a good idea for the pagefile and if so is 1GB really enough?

 

[tynanrw]

Is the motherboard controller in IDE mode?

Nah it's in AHCI.

 

[tynanrw]

Changed to IDE and it actually found it straight away no probs.
I had Win7 RC installed, and I'm going to reformat and install RTM just for a fresh install.

 

[wesley]

i tried to install XP but wouldnt work so i had to change to IDE from AHCI in Dell Studio 15.

in benchmarking, a little slower than win7 with ACHI enabled but in real world, i havent noticed any speed slow down in XP with IDE to be honest.

 

[fornowagain]

Sounds like a good strategy for temp files etc. But is this a good idea for the pagefile and if so is 1GB really enough?

Doesn't look like many programs actually use it, seems to be fine. I leave it on system managed and its currently using 532MB. There's plenty of system ram free, I could always use a bit more. I figure system ram is still faster than the SSD.

Nah it's in AHCI.

Then it won't work. Hence the bit where I said boot in IDE mode

 

[JaseUK]

Guys,
I just cannot get this firmware .exe file to boot.
I have tried booting from my USB stick using unetbootin and even using the HP boot disk method. All I get is a command prompt.

Crucial have really annoyed me by making this so hard.

 

[fornowagain]

Run through the steps you've taken using the HP method and I'll have a look.

 

[[timko]]

All I get is a command prompt.

That's what you're supposed to get. Assuming you copied the firmware to the USB stick, you then have to type the name of the firmware .exe to get it started.

 

[JaseUK]

Run through the steps you've taken using the HP method and I'll have a look.

I manage to make the USB stick bootable no problems using the HP boot program. I change my boot order around as to boot from the USB stick. When it boots I get a windows 98 boot screen and then it goes to a command prompt at C:\