Cloned from IDE HDD to SATA SSD -- performance now hopeless!

[palaeo7]

Hello all -- I've lost track of how many sites I've posted this query on to no answer, but we must live in hope, eh?

So, I 'upgraded' my 2006-vintage XP Home installation (on a Sony VGN-FJ1S) to a SSD, cloned from my IDE HDD, and performance went down the toilet. ASSD benchmark shows 'PCIIDE Bad' with joke fw-Mb/s read and write speeds, and device manager shows that I only have an IDE controller installed (PATA/IDE), yet if I try and install the Intel SATA drivers I get BSOD on reboot.

Now, the problem is that my (up-to-date) BIOS has no Advanced options for changing IDE to SATA, so I'm not surprised it's blue-screening, but that appears to leave me without options. I'm afraid that an XP reinstall just isn't possible (OEM XP disc, too many non-Win 7 compatible legacy programs that I no longer have the sources for).

And yet. If XP didn't have a SATA driver it presumably wouldn't see the drive or boot, so what is going on?.

Does anyone have experience of this -- presumably common -- issue? Pertinent advice welcome; a confirmed cure more-so!

cheers,
Palaeo

 

[dextermat]

Hi,

The big problem is that xp is not fully supported by a ssd, you lose performance because their is no trim support and such.
Also if you cloned a disk that had bad sectors or disk errors, you might be having trouble because of that.
Word of advice, get windows 7 / 8 since, anyway, xp is about to expire.

 

[laviniuc]

any bios for a sata motherboard should have the option to switch betwen ide and ahci. ide is the one emulated on sata drives not the other way around

 

[expl0itfinder]

Have you changed the registry value to ACHI yet? Windows changes the registry value to IDE by default, so if you install an SSD, it will perform at IDE speeds until you switch it to AHCI in BIOS AND the operating system registry. Here is a guide:

http://www.neowin.net/news/neowin-guide-how-to-change-from-ide-to-ahci-without-reinstalling-windows

Also, in XP, you need to manually force the AHCI driver to replace the default IDE driver in Device Manager. Then, it should boot without issue. However, I do recommend upgrading to Windows 8. Windows XP is going to be dropped pretty soon, and you do not want to be sitting on a vulnerable OS.

 

[photonboy]

http://www.mysolutions.it/tips-migrating-windows-xp-ssd/

It is very POSSIBLE to get things working, however you probably need to REINSTALL WINDOWS from scratch.

You should be able to download an IMAGE of XP, burn it to disc, install it, then change the CODE to match your legal one since I doubt you have an original disc. You can Google that. You'd likely have far more luck with Windows 8 but then that's another $95.

You could even try UBUNTU on the SSD as that's free and it would be interesting to see if it would install and run well.

 

[palaeo7]

Thanks for the replies. As I stated in my post, reinstalling XP or moving to W7 (or indeed W8) is not an option.

Obviously, the poor performance resulting from the IDE driver has nothing to do with "...trim support and such", but can Laviniu expand on the suggestion that "...any bios for a sata motherboard should have the option to switch betwen ide and ahci", given that I've already explained that I don't have any drive switching options in my BIOS? If that means I don't have a SATA motherboard then how is it my SATA drive is seen by the OS and works (albeit with poor performance)? Perhaps my SATA drive is 'emulating' IDE, I dont have a SATA board, and I'm screwed.

I looked at the Neowin registry code about a year ago exp0itmaster, but I don't have the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci" entry in my XP registry. Neither is there any Start entry for the "# HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Pciide" key, although that's easier to remedy. Even if these are both added, I don't see a SATA/AHCI option appearing in my BIOS as a result, but I'd be happy to hear that such BIOS switching isn't necessarily required.

I could move my SSD and Win XP installation onto a newer PC with a SATA motherboard, although I would still lack all the registry entries and would then have the problem of an OS that won't start because of the different hardware causing HAL.dll to fail.

Like I said, a problem that has me stumped for over a year now, given that I am perfectly happy with XP and do not have any wish to change my OS (four times [95>98>NT>2000>XP] is enough already).

 

[laviniuc]

you obviously have a sata port or the ssd wouldn't be plugged at all. the option should be somewhere in the integrated peripherals menu. if you would share the motherboard model perhaps we could find the manual and point you to the option.

 

[palaeo7]

you obviously have a sata port or the ssd wouldn't be plugged at all. the option should be somewhere in the integrated peripherals menu. if you would share the motherboard model perhaps we could find the manual and point you to the option.

Ok, CPU-Z shows my mainboard to be a 'Q-Project' model running the i915GMS/i819GML chipset, rev 03, The LPCIO is 'NS PC87591'. My BIOS version is R0140X6.

thanks again,
P

 

[laviniuc]

so under integrated peripherals, onchip ide device, on chip serial ata. try to set it to enhanced or sata only...

 

[popatim]

If I remember right the setting back the was normal or compatible, in which case you want normal

Also, since you cloned the drive you will need to leave the setting in whatever mode it was in that worked with the harddrive. You can try changing it after you get the ssd booting properly. If you don't recall which mode it was in, put the hdd back in and if it doesnt boot then change it to the other one and it should boot fine then.

Lastly, if i remeber right again, many sandforce ssds had issues with these old 915 chipsets, which SSD do you have?

 

[palaeo7]

so under integrated peripherals, onchip ide device, on chip serial ata. try to set it to enhanced or sata only...

Thanks for your further response -- when I last looked under the Advanced tab in the BIOS when I briefly installed the Intel iastor SATA driver I didn't see any 'Integrated Peripherals' option but I'll reboot and look again and let you know.

If I remember right the setting back the was normal or compatible, in which case you want normal

Also, since you cloned the drive you will need to leave the setting in whatever mode it was in that worked with the harddrive. You can try changing it after you get the ssd booting properly. If you don't recall which mode it was in, put the hdd back in and if it doesnt boot then change it to the other one and it should boot fine then.

Lastly, if i remeber right again, many sandforce ssds had issues with these old 915 chipsets, which SSD do you have?

Thanks for replying, but I'm not sure that I understand your message -- if I "...need to leave the setting in whatever mode it was in that worked with the harddrive", how am I going to change anything? My understanding is that the Intel driver is added in Device Manager, the machine is rebooted and the boot interrupted to go to BIOS to change drive setting (else the machine will blue-screen when it tries to access the disc. Referring back to my OP, I don't have any problem with booting of my SSD -- I cloned an IDE HDD to a SATA SSD and put it back in the same machine and it boots fine; it just runs extremely poorly (ASSSD benchmark: http://postimg.org/image/opdlc7kld/)

My SSD is the Crucual V4: a SATA II drive specifically designed for older chipset machines, and I've tried 2 -- they both perform the same.

thanks,
P

 

[laviniuc]

actually those speeds are normal considering you're bottlenecked to sata1. is it slow during normal usage? or you think it's running poorly because of the test results?

could you post the results of a crystal disk info/mark main page?

 

[palaeo7]

actually those speeds are normal considering you're bottlenecked to sata1. is it slow during normal usage? or you think it's running poorly because of the test results?

could you post the results of a crystal disk info/mark main page?

Oh, it's not the numbers that make me think it's slow! I had a snappy, lean, well-tuned XP setup before and only changed to SSD to avoid the possibility of hard-drive failure. On changing, the difference in performance was immediate, dramatic and remains to this day. Rather than the 20x advertised increase in speed, my laptop is now 20x slower -- literally. Here are some observed examples:

Opening a file properties dialogue box takes about 30 secs for a kb-size file;
Scrolling any webpage with image content, even thumbnails, results in pc-locking pauses of 10-30s;
Unraring or unzipping a Gb-sized file that used to take 4 or 5 minutes with my IDE HDD now takes an hour with my SATA SSD;
Entering Hibernate mode (i.e., writing the contents of my 2 Gb of RAM to the hard-drive) used to take ~ 15 secs -- now it takes about 10 mins;
Any file-writing activity is affected by slowness, stutters and pauses while the SSD is accessed. So, for instance, if I start Task Manager to view Page-File Usage and then do something that pushes the system to use the PF -- in this case, starting a DVD playing whilst copying a 6-Gb file from usb to the system -- the PC becomes unusable for half an hour or more while the system gathers enough resources to start playback of a DVD file whilst copying another.

All of these things are common activities for me and ones that I could do more or less instantaneously with my IDE HDD-equipped system. Since going to a SATA SSD, they have become activities that take minutes and even hours.

Link to my Crystal Info as requested, and Crystal Mark bench from today: http://postimg.org/image/aswcp6909/

I'm surprised to see SATA 3.0 as the Transfer Method in Crystal Info, as the V4 is definitely a SATA 2.0 drive. Anyway, apparently, it's not uncommon for different benchmarking software to give different results -- today's Crystal Mark gives a result more consistent with my day-to-day experience of using the laptop. Just this single-pass benchmark alone took 30+ mins to perform...

Palaeo

 

[laviniuc]

it's not sata 3. it's sata 300 which is another name for sata 2. (same as sata 600 and sata 3 are the same thing). i'm surprised it says sata 300 actually i thought the motherboard was sata1 (aka sata150).

did you find anything in the bios?

the read speeds are within limits, the writes are very low. could you free up an additional 10-20gb of space - just for testing? and leave it idle for a couple of minutes so the garbage collector does it's magic? then retry the speed tests?

 

[laviniuc]

also what did you use for the cloning? the tweeks are indeed probably not needed but the alignment problem looks like your problem
http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-State-Drives-SSD/One-stop-Crucial-SSD-software-utility-toolkit/td-p/105404

try the paragon partition alignment tool...

 

[palaeo7]

also what did you use for the cloning? the tweeks are indeed probably not needed but the alignment problem looks like your problem
http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-State-Drives-SSD/One-...

try the paragon partition alignment tool...

did you find anything in the bios?

the read speeds are within limits, the writes are very low. could you free up an additional 10-20gb of space - just for testing? and leave it idle for a couple of minutes so the garbage collector does it's magic? then retry the speed tests?

Thanks for the further reply Laviniu; if you look back at the ASSD screen-shot from my earlier post you'll see that I don't have an alignment problem -- my drive is 4K sector aligned, using both GParted and the Apricorn cloning utility provided with my drive. I remain of the opinion that my lack of a SATA driver in XP is the problem -- as shown by 'PCIIDE: BAD' in my ASSD benchmark. I've yet to reboot, so I'll post back what I find in the BIOS as soon as I do.

I appreciate that a full-ish drive will make the speed tests look worse, but I can't re-do the tests -- I've discovered that Crystal software comes loaded with a silent spam/malware application called 'SmileysweLove' that has fcked my Firefox installation nicely. A degree of improvement in the speed tests won;t reduce the slowness I see in use; the laptop was just as slow when the drive was 75% empty

 

[popatim]

My Bad, I was under the impression the SSD drive was not booting for some reason.

 

[palaeo7]

it's not sata 3. it's sata 300 which is another name for sata 2. (same as sata 600 and sata 3 are the same thing). i'm surprised it says sata 300 actually i thought the motherboard was sata1 (aka sata150).

did you find anything in the bios?

Hello again Laviniu et al., and Seasons Greetings to you all.

Ok, I've been into the BIOS and my memory of affairs there was correct. There is nothing in the Advanced section of the BIOS (or any other section) that pertains to disc drives, 'Advanced Peripherals' or otherwise (in typically Sony fashion, there's lots of useless crap like audio jingle on boot and Vaio flash screen, however). I have read elsewhere (and on Tom's) that Sony has a habit of blocking BIOS functionality in even their newest laptops (e.g., VT tech in Win7), so currently I'm screwed and have only two remaining options to get my SATA drive working as it should and could.

1) Find a BIOS hack that will enable this Advanced Menu functionality. As this has the potential to brick my laptop, I'd want to be very sure about this first and have any suggestions well-substantiated.

2) Replace my IDE VGN-FJn series laptop with a secondhand designed-for-SATA one with XP drivers, e.g., the VGN-SZn series. Because the hardware (Core Duo, motherboard, etc.) would all be very different, it is certain that the Hardware Abstraction Layer (hal.dll) would fail at boot, so I would need to clone my SSD using the 'Universal Restore' facility of Acronis True Image. My question here -- for someone who has done something like this please -- is whether my Windows XP installation will still work or would ask for its license key/need reactivating. I ask because my laptop only came with OEM software (of the xxxx-OEM-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx serial variety) and it is said that these licenses are no good for anything other than a fresh install.

Your further festive advice, ladies and gentlemen?

best,
Palaeo

 

[laviniuc]

So yep, then 1) is out of the question, i'm not sure you can even find a bios version that will do this. for 2) i'm inclined to think your assumption is correct, for win7 at least whenever there's a big change on the hardware side the windows decides to ask again for activation.

are these the drivers you are trying to install and you get the bsod after you install them?
http://www.sony.co.uk/support/en/product/VGN-FJ1S_R/downloads/Preinstalled_Drivers_HD_2216

and these should be the intel drivers:
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?DwnldID=17882

 

[popatim]

As for your Activation question. The OEM windows XP is only authorized for the one motherboard and not legally transferable to another motherbd or system. Here at Toms we stick to the very legal side of things so any discussion of circumventing the license would only result in deleted posts and bannings for those involved.

I do admire your foresight in seeing that the OEM license possibly posing a problem for you. Most people dont think of that during the planning stage. I would suggest searching to a used retail version which is fully transferrable.

from the Windows XP EULA (retail):

14. SOFTWARE TRANSFER. Internal. You may move the Software to a different

Workstation Computer. After the transfer, you must completely remove the Software from the

former Workstation Computer. Transfer to Third Party. The initial user of the Software may

make a one-time permanent transfer of this EULA and Software to another end user, provided

the initial user retains no copies of the Software. This transfer must include the Software and

the Proof of License label. The transfer may not be an indirect transfer, such as a consignment.

Prior to the transfer, the end user receiving the Software must agree to all the EULA terms