Kingston V+ 128gb SSD problems!

[bigbud13]

Just bought a 2nd hand 128gb ssd, and having serious problems, for some reason ssd wont boot when set as primary boot,but if i set cd-rom then let it flick past the "press any key to boot from cd " prompt it boots fine.Had some issues on installing xp onto drive as previous owner had win7 or vista on there had to delete 1 of partitions on the drive then create new one and install to there. butnow it just wont boot as primary I get error msg 0xc0000225 could not find nece ssary hardware or something along those lines. Should i reinstall and delete all partitions reformat and try again?,wanted to avoid this cos of writes issue. Second partion on ssd (100mb) seems to be boot data. Any help for the noob appreciated!!!!

System specs amd athlon x2 6000
Crosshair m/b
4gb corsair ram
200gb wd ide drive(no o/s installed storage only)
nvidia 8600gt 512mb
Win xp pro sp3


in disk manager ssd shows as healthy,boot
second partition shows as healthy and active
ide drive shows as healthy ,system

Cheers Craig

 

[sub mesa]

You should not use SSDs with Windows XP; you will decrease the lifetime of your SSD by over 50%, and performance will suffer too.

The partition you deleted was actually aligned, and now you created a misaligned partition by using XP to create a partition. XP creates partitions the 'bad' way that affects both SSDs and RAID-arrays.

So either get Windows 7, or continue to use XP at your own risk. If you want to use XP, do a zero-write or secure erase (HDDerase) on the SSD, then repartition and install. It may be possible to manually align the partition under XP, but i don't think so. Creating a partition using GParted (available on an Ubuntu Linux livecd) might also be an option.

Without alignment, your writes would affect multiple flash blocks, so writing 4KB of data may actually cause 2x 2x 512KiB = 2 megabytes of physical writes on the SSD. Kinda bad, isn't it? This is called write amplification, and Intel SSDs have very low (=good) write amplification, but other SSDs are less efficient. The result is, that over time you may have written 20GB to the drive, but physically the SSD has already 100GB of writes done; so it amplifies your writes. The misalignment issue accelerates the write amplification.

 

[sub mesa]

Sorry if that was too technical. In short, using XP with SSDs is not recommended; its best to use Windows 7, do a complete format and then repartition and install.

 

[bigbud13]

So if I change over to windows 7, delete all partitions and do a clean install, this should solve the problems I`m experiencing??.Will Win 7 installation dics create partitions ok or would you recommend following instructions as you posted. I can post current alignment as reported by AS SSD if this helps BTW.Thnx for speedy relies

 

[sub mesa]

Windows 7 would have proper alignment and is the prefered Windows OS to use in combination with SSDs.

I also recommend that you do a full format in Windows 7, as that would zero-write the SSD also - unlike in XP where a full format only reads sectors and wipe the file table.

To make sure your SSD stays fast, create a partition that's smaller than the full capacity. So on your 128GB drive, a 100GB or 110GB partition is prefered. That would make sure the SSD stays fast over time. Never use this free space, it will be used by the SSD internally. This way you also don't really need TRIM support, if your drive doesn't support that. Even if it does, reserving some more space might be a sensible thing to do.

 

[bigbud13]

Thnx for your help m8, off to purchase Win 7 this w/end I`ll post n let u know how I go with new install.Thnx again.

 

[bigbud13]

Just out of interest now that I`ve ordered Win 7 Ultimate(64) what would you recommend as the install method, use Win 7 disc to delete partitions and format, or use hdderase then gpart for partitions. The drive doe support TRIM and as its currently formatted is 119gb,what would you recommend as partition sizes,and would you recommend having TRIM enabled or not?

 

[sub mesa]

TRIM enabled? Of course if its supported its useful! Whether or not that means you need to make a smaller partition; to reserve extra space for the SSD, it depends. I still would, though it makes it less urgent. If 119GiB if your formatted capacity, a 110GiB partition should do fine with trim. That would leave 9GiB unused. Without TRIM i would reserve at least 15GiB.

 

[sub mesa]

And in Windows 7, just do a long full format to zero-write the drive, then setup partitions on it. That would make it work just fine.

 

[bigbud13]

So use the Win 7 disc to delete,reformat and then create new partitions.Thnx once again for a speedy reply.

 

[bigbud13]

I assume that Win 7 installer will reset alignment/offset values aswell?