ssd to hd and back to ssd

[Don Heaton]

I have an ssd that has slowed down, could I clone it to a hdrive defrag it and back to ssd

 

[WyomingKnott]

Defrag is completely irrelevant to SSD. It seems that you know not to defrag the SSD itself because that will just put wear on it for no reason, but even a nice defragged image restored to it will make no difference.

That said, there are a few things that can cause an SSD to slow down. The most common is that it is either nearly full or / and TRIM was not enabled. May I ask
) What version of OS are you running?
) Was is initially installed to that SSD or cloned from an HD installation?
) What motherboard are you using or, if a pre-built system, the make and model?
) In the BIOS, is the hard drive controller set to AHCI or IDE mode?

And there's always the last resort - but if you don't have proper TRIM or the drive is full, it will just slow down again some time after doing this.
1) Do an image backup to an external HDD.
2) Test the heck out of that backup. Your system's survival will depend on it.
3) Do a Secure Erase of the SSD. This will reset it to factory condition.
4) Restore the image backup to the SSD.
This process is equivalent to a full-disk TRIM. Now, there are members who will disagree with me, some strongly and nastily, and say that Garbage Collection will take care of things even if TRIM is not enabled. If they are right, then I am wrong. You pays your money and takes your chances.

EDIT: Slowed down how much? It would have to be pretty extreme, or the load that you put on it pretty intense, to notice a significant difference.

 

[Don Heaton]

Thank you for your reply,
My OS is 7
cloned from an HD installation
Motherboard is Gigabyte P55-UDA
I think the BIOS is IDE

 

[Don Heaton]

Thank you for your reply,
My OS is 7
cloned from an HD installation
Motherboard is Gigabyte P55-UDA
I have set the hard drive controller to AHCI in the BIOS ( it was IDE) but when I restart the computer is said no drivers but then starts ok but does not show up in Device Manager under IDE ATA/ATAPE controllers

Defrag is completely irrelevant to SSD. It seems that you know not to defrag the SSD itself because that will just put wear on it for no reason, but even a nice defragged image restored to it will make no difference.

That said, there are a few things that can cause an SSD to slow down. The most common is that it is either nearly full or / and TRIM was not enabled. May I ask
) What version of OS are you running?
) Was is initially installed to that SSD or cloned from an HD installation?
) What motherboard are you using or, if a pre-built system, the make and model?
) In the BIOS, is the hard drive controller set to AHCI or IDE mode?

And there's always the last resort - but if you don't have proper TRIM or the drive is full, it will just slow down again some time after doing this.
1) Do an image backup to an external HDD.
2) Test the heck out of that backup. Your system's survival will depend on it.
3) Do a Secure Erase of the SSD. This will reset it to factory condition.
4) Restore the image backup to the SSD.
This process is equivalent to a full-disk TRIM. Now, there are members who will disagree with me, some strongly and nastily, and say that Garbage Collection will take care of things even if TRIM is not enabled. If they are right, then I am wrong. You pays your money and takes your chances.

EDIT: Slowed down how much? It would have to be pretty extreme, or the load that you put on it pretty intense, to notice a significant difference.

 

[WyomingKnott]

Thank you for your reply,
My OS is 7
cloned from an HD installation
Motherboard is Gigabyte P55-UDA
I have set the hard drive controller to AHCI in the BIOS ( it was IDE) but when I restart the computer is said no drivers but then starts ok but does not show up in Device Manager under IDE ATA/ATAPE controllers

OK, there is the problem. TRIM was not enabled. When you delete a file, TRIM tells the disk that the blocks that the file used to occupy are no longer used. Without it, the disk still thinks that the data in those blocks is needed, and it can't re-allocate the space to overwrite it. So you end up with a bunch of space that is actually free and you can't use it, and the Garbage Collection spends some of its time shuffling that unused data around.

If you change the controller mode, you will indeed have boot problems. I suggest that you
1) Change the controller mode back to IDE and boot and make sure that everything is happy.
2) Follow the well-established trick to change an IDE Win7 installation into an AHCI one. No, I don't know what it is, but I'll look on windows 7 forums and post a link. EDIT: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/61869-ahci-enable-windows-7-vista.html
3) Then do my backup, secure erase, and restore process to make the disk perfectly TRIMmed.

Once again, a warning that a large fraction of SSD users think I'm wrong and that GC will do the work if TRIM is not enabled. I, of course, am convinced that I am right.

 

[Don Heaton]

I have done what you have suggested re controllers and changing the values in the register and changed the BIOS
When I restart I get a message saying Detecting Drivers none - no drivers found, and then it starts normal but I don't think it has changed to AHCI
No use going any further until get this right I suppose!