New SSD OS drive tomorrow : Office installed on F: drive : Will it still work?

Draeger said:
Ok, downloaded the drivers and tried installing but I'm getting a message saying "This computer does not meet the minimum requirements for the software" and it terminates the installation.

Are these drivers only for RAID setups?.
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Hi... I have a suspicion that your motherboard has the base ICH9 SATA controller and this does not natively support AHCI. Hence why the Intel RST drivers will not install. I would personally stick with the Microsoft drivers that W7 installs. As these should work fine and they also pass the TRIM command fine. I also believe that ASUS even removed the AHCI support (for some reason) from some variations of the P5K in later BIOS's.

If you have a look at the datasheet for the ICH9 controller (page 54 I think) you will see what I mean.

See http://www.intel.com/assets/pdf/datasheet/316972.pdf

If it's not been mentioned already. I would suggest checking your partition alignment. As if this is off, it can have a MAJOR effect on SSD drive performance.
 
DragonQ said:
Well, they're specifically designed for their chipsets and generally offer better performance.
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I know everyone keeps says this. But this is not my experience.

After much discussion with an OCZ techie on the OCZ forums, I've stuck with the standard Microsoft drivers that W7 installs and my drive performance is up there (give or take a very small difference) with folks that have installed the latest Intel RST drivers. I've done this for the same reason as the OP, IE. that I have the base level ICH9 controller and there are issues with this and the Intel RST drivers.

W7 initially gave me a WEI of 7.8 (now 7.7 with drive a bit fuller / used) and benchmarks thus:

SSDATTObenchmark.jpg


SSDASbenchmark.jpg


PS. If the OP has not done it yet. I would suggest a run of ATTO would be interesting to see. WEI sometimes seems to have a bit of a fit and the results seem a bit dubious. I've seem a number of posts on the Net where people have got hung up about their WEI score and when they get round to doing some real benchmarking (not too much folks... don't want to degrade that new SSD), the results are fine.
 
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Thanks mikeo, that article about the P5K and ICH9 SATA would go some way to explaining the issue I am having. As far as partition alignment goes, I thought a fresh install of W7 took care of all that during the installation?. Is there a way to check my alignment is ok?.

I'll run ATTO and see how that goes.
 
I just used the one I downloaded, version 2.46 I believe. Here are the results, do they look ok folks? :-

2zybq0w.jpg


I didn't muck around with any settings on the ATTO tool, just ran it and clicked on Start, is that right?.
 
Draeger said:
As far as partition alignment goes, I thought a fresh install of W7 took care of all that during the installation?. Is there a way to check my alignment is ok?.

I'll run ATTO and see how that goes.
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Sorry about that. I thought that I had seen you comment that you had cloned your drive. On re-reading your posts, looks like you did a clean W7 install. So your alignment should be OK. I think your test results would be a lot worse than they are if your alignment was out.

To check (being paranoid).

Click START
Type MSINFO32 and hit enter
Expend Components, expand Storage and select Disks.
Examine the one for your SSD.
Look at the Partition Starting Offset.
It should be a multiple of 4096.
Probably 1,048,576 for the MBR and 105,906,176 for main partition.
 
Draeger said:
I just used the one I downloaded, version 2.46 I believe. Here are the results, do they look ok folks? :-

I didn't muck around with any settings on the ATTO tool, just ran it and clicked on Start, is that right?.
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Results not too bad, but slightly behind the best.

Almost identical to Admiral Huddy's ATTO results and he's on a similar ASUS motherboard. see post #8 on http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18204557

Looks like a BIOS / ICH9 / driver issue on these boards to me. So you might well be stuck with what you've got. Still pretty quick compared to a mechanical HD.

I'm assuming your are connecting your SSD to the first port on the IHC9 controller? and that you've got the standard Microsoft AHCI drivers installed. Double check Device Manager. Should say something like:

Standard AHCI1.0 Serial ATA Controller

And as I've said before. Nothing wrong with these, they work just fine with the Vertex drives (including TRIM). So I think unluckily, it's your mobo causing the slight speed issue and probably nothing you can do about it!

PS. Just noticed that you posted on the end of the thread that I pointed you to.
 
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Kinda thought as much. The P5K was a solid little overclocker back in the day ( in fact it still is a pretty good clocker ) but it is obviously lacking as far as support for SSD's go. I changing the mobo for something that pairs up with the SSD better at this point in time, would be a bit over the top value wise. I'll wait till I am ready to change CPU etc before I go down that route. Results are still good as you say and it certainly is a damn sight quicker than my old Raptor was. So I'm happy. The MS drivers seem to be working fine for now so I'll give up with trying the Intel RST ones as they are clearly not going to work on my current setup.

I did decide against using an image to clone the drive, yeah. Went for the fresh install so all should be well with my alignment.

I'm assuming your are connecting your SSD to the first port on the IHC9 controller? and that you've got the standard Microsoft AHCI drivers installed. Double check Device Manager. Should say something like:

Standard AHCI1.0 Serial ATA Controller
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Yep, all present and correct. :)

msinfo shows this :-

1zof38z.jpg


That look ok?. Ta.
 
Yep.. Looks fine.

I tend to agree with you about carrying on with your current kit (IE. mobo/CPU etc.) for a while yet. Little point in even thinking about changing until the new Intel/AMD chipsets / CPU's come out next year. I went through this "should I / should I not" upgrade mobo/CPU a few weeks back and decided to get an SSD instead. Lots of life left in 775 yet.
 
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