How to tell SSD detected - w7 is allowing defrag

Becky9 · 25 Oct 2009 at 11:23

Have just installed w7 on a new build with a single intel 160g g2 ssd, installed fine - haven't installed any other drivers or software yet.

Reading through a few posts w7 should id the drive and react accordingly if its been set to ahci in the bios.

Is there anyway to know definatively if its working correctly - trim etc....?

edit: This is on a ex58-ud3r

Shamone · 25 Oct 2009 at 11:47

I set mine to IDE in the bios and Win 7 allows defrag on mine too.

Becky9 · 25 Oct 2009 at 11:52

Shamone said:
I set mine to IDE in the bios and Win 7 allows defrag on mine too.

I had a thought after I posted, that mine is in IDE too, but I'm not sure it should be. I think it should be in native sata. I've changed it now, but not sure a reinstall would be required.

As far as I'm aware w7 doesn't allow defrag on ssd, so this is the concern - if its allowing it, its not detecting the drive as an ssd and hence not optimising for it.

Windows 7 will disable disk defragmentation on SSD system drives. Because SSDs perform extremely well on random read operations, defragmenting files isn’t helpful enough to warrant the added disk writing defragmentation produces. The FAQ section below has some additional details.

the above from ssd w7 faq

Vampyre · 25 Oct 2009 at 11:57

My Crucial 128Gb is the same, mines in AHCI mode, apparently it has something to do with chipset drivers but don't take that as gospel.

Have you done the Windows performance experience test yet? According to the Windows 7 team if it acts like an SSD (low latency etc) then it should recognize it as one, although it hasn't on mine.

I just disabled the unnecessary services myself, defrag, indexing, prefetch etc

Becky9 · 25 Oct 2009 at 12:01

Vampyre said:
Have you done the Windows performance experience test yet? According to the Windows 7 team if it acts like an SSD (low latency etc) then it should recognize it as one, although it hasn't on mine.

Yes I have, one of my thoughts was that this (primary drive) was low compared to other intel g2s - mine at 7.4 others at 7.6. Possibly because of other system variables but still.

Durzel · 25 Oct 2009 at 12:33

AFAIK Windows excludes the partitiono(s) on an SSD from automatic defragmentation schedule, but that doesn't stop you manually defragging them.

Vampyre · 25 Oct 2009 at 12:34

Durzel said:
AFAIK Windows excludes the partitiono(s) on an SSD from automatic defragmentation schedule, but that doesn't stop you manually defragging them.

That is what is supposed to happen, what we're experiencing is that the SSD is not being recognized as an SSD by Windows and it therefore still sets up an automatic defrag schedule.

Becky9 · 25 Oct 2009 at 12:47

Vampyre said:
That is what is supposed to happen, what we're experiencing is that the SSD is not being recognized as an SSD by Windows and it therefore still sets up an automatic defrag schedule.

I'm not even sure it is supposed to allow you defrag at all - not without changing settings to allow it. Thats the impression I get reading the engineering faq.

but as you say its scheduled my drive for automatic defrag too.

Becky9 · 25 Oct 2009 at 12:48

edit: need to do the shopping but will reinstall when I get back after changing sata to native mode.

Ducky Spud · 25 Oct 2009 at 13:48

You can manually defrag the drive, but if you click on Schedule Defrag it should just list HDD's. You cant set it up to automatically run a defrag every week or whatever like you can with a hard drive

Becky9 · 25 Oct 2009 at 16:56

Ok have reinstalled with it set to native mode, and if anything it seems worse because although its still scheduled to defrag, its now enabled superfetch - although "fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify" reports 0, which means that trim is enabled??

Prior to reinstall (with sata set to legacy) superfetch was disabled and DisableDeleteNotify also=0, but still scheduled defrag.

Perhaps I have the wrong end of the stick here, but with only 1 drive and scheduled defrag enabled - set to all drives, that would seem to indicate its going to defrag the drive on the scheduler.

Xerai · 25 Oct 2009 at 17:17

I have just setup an intel G2 80GB in my system today. I set it to AHCI in the bios as I have two esata ports running off the controller and I read its perfectly fine to set AHCI for G2 SSDs.

After installing windows 7 Pro 64, Defrag was set to Manual. I followed the instructions copied below and disabled it so there was no chance of running it by accident:

Disable defragmentation
Description: Defragmenting a hard disk's used space is only useful on mechanical disks with multi-millisecond latencies. Free-space defragmentation may be useful to SSDs, but this feature is not available in the default Windows Defragmenter.
Instructions: Start Menu -> Right-Click Computer -> Manage -> Services and Applications -> Services - > Right-Click Disk Defragmenter -> Startup type: Disabled -> OK

I get the scores shown below and am happy with its performance:

molar · 25 Oct 2009 at 22:58

My defrag scheduler won't let me allow me to select the SSD drive. Thats all great but the Superfetch service is still enabled. Also C:\Windows\Prefetch is filling up with files.

The WEI for the SSD drive is 7.3. It was 6.6 before I switched to AHCI.

By the way I think running the Windows Experience tool has a bearing on whether Windows detects your drive as an SSD or not.