my first ssd

NoobieOCer

NoobieOCer

NoobieOCer

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9 May 2007
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okay i got my first ssd second hand. its a ocz vertex 2 60gb drive.


what i want to know what can i use to check if the drive is okay?
i know trim is used to clear old stuff away to keep it snappy, but do i need to do it manually or the drive does it automatically?
anything else i need to know in maintaining or using a ssd?
 
Welcome to the club :)

You can run some disk benchmark software such as the crystaldiskmark or the AS ssd benchmark then gawk at the transfer rate/access time.

TRIM is performed in the background I believe, just make sure you have your SATA configured as AHCI in the BIOS. And also read the SSD sticky if you haven't already.

One thing though SSD requires different partition alignments from convention disk drives, if you did a fresh install of win7/vista then this would've been sorted out for you. If you, however, just migrated your old os partition from HDD straight to the new SSD partition using cloning software like I did then it won't be properly aligned. In which case performance will take a hit, and it is said that it will wear your SSD down quicker than if it's properly aligned. One way to check this is to fire up AS ssd benchmark, just above the drive capacity if the readout is in green - OK then you're fine.
 
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ssdbench.jpg


is this okay? seems way off the 200mb/s...
 
You need to use the ATTO benchmark for Sandforce drives because their rated speeds are for compressible data, whereas most benchmarks use incompressible data.
 
Is AHCI a new(ish) feature to be placed on motherboards?

I cant seem to find the option in my bios for it, only IDE mode.
Spec is in sig.
 
As far as I know, AHCI is the mode supposed to be used by SATA controllers and drives, whilst "IDE mode" is purely there for compatibility (especially when XP was still commonly shipped with new machines because you can't install XP to a SATA HDD in AHCI mode without using the F6 third party driver thing). AHCI should in theory make your drives a bit faster due to Native Command Queueing, plus it allows hot-swapping.

Some motherboards don't call it AHCI though, they might use "enhanced SATA" or "enhanced IDE" for example.
 
i just put AHCI on and when booting into windows 7 it got 1 BSOD, then i reverted back to ide mode.

when in ide mode it restarted after the windows loading screen without a blue screen once, after that it booted up normally...
 
oops sorry forgot to mention once you set AHCI mode windows need to be reinstalled.. otherwise you get BSOD on startup.

IDE mode is just that - it treats SATA ports as legacy PATA (IDE) devices for compatibility purpose, so you get none of the SATA advantages such as NCQ, hot swapping...etc. But speedwise you shouldn't lose out too much. However TRIM commands for SSDs only work if it's connected in AHCI mode.
 
o okay, i tried it again and i cant get back on windows it keeps crashing lol, i now got AHCI options in bios anything else i need to enable to disable?


thanks for help :D
 
You do NOT need to reinstall Windows to enable AHCI usually. You just need to change a registry setting before you make the change:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

If you do this, Windows should install proper SATA drivers for you when you boot back into Windows with AHCI enabled. From there, you can install vendor-specific drivers, such as Intel RST, which give you better performance sometimes (depends on the vendor).
 
i think i may have broken it... i tried reinstalling windows with the drive in AHCI mode and i got this error:

imag0085u.jpg



i thought it was a AHCI thing, but when i put it back to IDE it got the same error.....



what u think its gone?
 
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okay i think i found the problem. i was using a IDE-USb converter to install windows. and some how between the install this morning and this install i damaged the converter. im now using a IDE cable and it seems to be installing.

wierd...
 
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