Windows 7 and Optimization for Solid State Drives

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darkguset

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"When a solid state drive is present, Windows 7 will disable disk defragmentation, Superfetch, ReadyBoost, as well as boot and application launch prefetching."

Does that mean that if you have a mix of HDDs and SSDs, those features will be completely disabled or just disabled on the SSD drives? It is not quite clear on that.
 

solymnar

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Total speculation on my part but since windows incarnation of defrag, etc. does it per hard drive I would "guess" that it will also turns off such things and enables this "trim" operation per hard drive as well.
 
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jacobdrj

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Last night I was JUST about to install W7RC on my TX2500Z. I got distracted, and opted to set up a Media Computer on the same platform. Vista worked fine, but W7RC needed some tweaking. Thank you nVidia for posting W7 drivers! So far, it seems a RAID-0 array of 3 36GB 1st generation Raptors is in fact slower than my 1 OCZ Vertex 60GB SSD at the installation of Windows (Vista Ultimate x32 or W7RC)
 

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[citation][nom]squarewheel[/nom]Say "dncashman", and then press space for money!Bonus points if you get the reference.[/citation]

Three words... "Shake it Baby!" :)
 
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I have a mixture of ssd and traditional disks in my win7 beta desktop. according to defrag program, it has never been run on the ssd and has run as a scheduled job on the trad disks. This is not something that I have set up so I guess it is already implemented on a per disk basis
 

blackened144

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When I first got my 30gb Vertex drives the other week I installed Win7 64bit on the ssd raid0 array. It did not do the above tweaks, I had to do them all manually. I think this is because the raid controller was sending the array information to the OS and the OS doesnt see it as an "SSD" array. Anyway, I had a few little problems and after 4 days I ended up formatting and installing Vista 64bit. Its running MUCH better on Vista. I might try the RC of Win7 in a few weeks but the Beta I had previously ran better on my traditional rotating hdd.
 

backbydemand

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[citation][nom]bill gates is your daddy[/nom]Why does it sound like WIN 7 is going to be a decent piece of software? Correct me if I am wrong but we are talking about the same company that created Vista?[/citation]

OK, by that reasoning let's not buy German cars because, correct me if i'm wrong, isn't that the same country that started WW2?
 

backbydemand

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I have put a new SSD in my rig, it has the OS (Win 7 v7600) and most programs on it and 2 other HDD's.

The defrag is not set for automatic for any of the drives but I can put a scheduler on for the HDD's and miss out the SSD. Superfetch and Readyboost are not enabled. All is looking pretty sweet.

Also I have 8Gb of DDR3 so I have reduced the swapfile size to 16mb before disabling it, so no swap file at all. I am getting boot times between 20 and 23 seconds consistent.
 

bc3tech

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I have an SSD in my Asus EeePC 1000 and can say the Superfetch IS enabled on my Win7 installation, defrag IS allowed (though i have not dared to click it, the button is enabled), and Readyboost IS able to be done on an external SDHC card (not sure if this is expected or not)

so i'm not sure what's up w/ the Asus EeePC's Phison SSDs, but Windows 7 certainly doesn't seem to do what's been said here.
 

subarooster

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Windows 7 OS to install on SSD as boot drive or system drive, and have all user files and folders, and maybe some or all program files to install or reside on the 2nd drive normal hard drive
How do you make SSD your primary drive and all data and files on your second hard drive normal spinner hard drive with out registry edits etc
 

subarooster

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Windows 7 OS to install on SSD as boot drive or system drive, and have all user files and folders, and maybe some or all program files to install or reside on the 2nd drive normal hard drive
How do you make SSD your primary drive and all data and files on your second hard drive normal spinner hard drive with out registry edits etc
Review SSD upgrade review,
Review SSD instead of normal hard drive review
Review on why not to use a green drive as your main or primary drive that the operating system is installed on.
Review on bluray upgrade to blu-ray player

I would really like to use an SSD drive as my boot drive for windows 7 and have the user files (photos, video, etc) from everything i can find about doing this seems that is makes parts of windows not work right.
Like going to your documents folder, and properties and telling it to reside on my normal Hard Drive, many people have posted all sorts of REG. hacks but it seems that making the files, and user accounts, and maybe even the program files hang out on the normal drive makes windows updates stop working as well as many other issues. also if theses changes are not made during installation before user accounts are set up, using dos like command prompts etc (IE: if you try making this change even right after install or on an existing install has even more issues.)
I got the Intel value 40GB SSD 05/07/2010 and did the install on the SSD, not knowing i would run into these issues. I did the install and let windows do all its updates and installed all my drivers and then started looking around the web to see if there were directions on how to properly make only the necessities hang out on my SSD, and the rest of the info be on the normal Hard Drive. NO LUCK, only hacks that don't end up working right, that cause more problems then the are worth.
On windows website they state that they realize that people would like to do this and it would make things like backing up data easier, or if they ever had to wipe the drive with the OS then you don't have to worry about transferring the personal data on that drive as only the OS and drivers etc hang out there....But they don't have any directions on how to do it properly.... I found things in their TECH NET portion of Microsoft site it noted the issues that a person would have if they did this..... SO why would they say you can do it and it would have great effectiveness and in another place say if you do your causing a lot of problems.... SO MANY PEOPLE USE SSD, or want to use SSD....I'm sure someone has figured it out.. Is there a fool proof guide to make the bare min reside on the SSD, or the min. + the items that would benefit the user with speed by being on the SSD like temp files? or what things should be on the normal Hard Driveto extend the life of the SSD..
What I am currently doing is just manually saving or moving my data pics, video, docs to self made files on my 1TB normal Hard Drive, but I would really like to use my user account and just have it and other things stored remotely on the internal Hard Driveinstead of the SSD..
All i have to say is if you don't believe SSD is fast, or may not be worth the $ price per MB compared to a normal drive just go for it... I cant even explain how fast this drive makes the simplest and even the more complex things run. Even if you have an old system or a newer low end system this will make you feel like you have a much faster computer. No wait time for loading sites, no system hangs as you open a program.

TIME=MONEY
SSD=MONEY-but it save so much time its like paying yourself.


I got the bare min 40GB value Intel SSD, i could only imagine what a faster more capable SSD would feel like too. This drive can do like 5 consecutive data streams, the EXTREME Intel SSD drives can do 32 consecutive data streams.
I used to only know about Hard Drivespecs like MB/GB per sec, and sustained and average transfer speeds etc, but it seems there is a speck called IOPS, and though I don't fully understand IOPS, but I found that where a normal Hard Drivemy be doing like 100-200 IOPS even the value SSD blows a normal Hard Driveout of the water. SSD IOPS are from like 25,000 to like 60,000 per second compared to like i said 100-200 on a normal Hard Drive, these specs and comparisons I found on Intel's site, and other sites as well. On Intel's site i found a video that showed them doing the comparison with a program that showed the live stats of both normal Hard Driveand SSD. WOW.. I still can not believe that even my value SSD (got for a little more then $100) is unrealistically fast, it will amaze any one. OLD SYSTEM OR NEW
I would go for a bigger one like maybe 120GB ouch on the price but i could store way more and each thing on the drive would then be able to take advantage of the amazing speed, but even just the small drive takes the lag away from the OS trying to do its thing, and the other system bottle necks, although my understanding it a typical Hard Driveis usually the main bottle neck. I started on this project because my brand new computer ended up coming with the ONLY drive being a green drive by Western Digital. From what i can find these drives are ok for a data drive but, never use then for the drive the Operating System is installed on you will never forgive yourself or if you get a computer that is has the green drive as the main drive from the manufacture, make an image and move it to a normal drive or even better SSD for the OS and data on the green drive, or like I did OS on SSD and bought a Higher End Normal Hard Drive and sell the green drive. They only save like $14.00 max per year, but the amount of lag and system hangs, and "this program or task is not responding, or quit responding" will drive you nuts, will waste more then $14.00 of your time per day, and will really make you hate your computer experience. I am sure in the future they will fix these issues in green drive, i hope by moving to all SSD or Nano Dot, but we will see.

Issues with my old system, window 7 professional (originally was bad Windows VISTA ) slow AMD 64 3800+ processor, running out of Hard Drivespace on a 160GB Hard Drive, lots of pics etc, also i was going to upgrade video so i could do dvi or hdmi out to TV and wanted to add bluray, but i found that you have to have at least a dual core, with a higher speed, and so it would cost more to upgrade processor ect on my old computer so for like 6 months or more i was looking for a mid to high end system that was Intel based and had hdmi and or dvi out so i could go to my tv and monitor, and also wanted bluray.
On line and on computer video content stuttered a lot as well.


I wanted to step up to an Intel processor from my old AMD system and I wanted to be able to watch Blu-Ray movies and on line content hulu, netflix, tv ect on the computer on my tv. Basicly I wanted to replace everything in my entertainment center with a computer that would do it all, and i wanted a computer that would work well as my home desktop as well, and some gaming. But not spend a ton

I was hoping to stay in the mid to high mid price range, though I would have loved to had a Core i7 6 core 6 thread machine, I wanted to stay reasonable in price

After a lot of shopping and searching for the like 6 months or more I got a Gateway 4831-03, I heard from a lot of techs that they work on a lot of HP, and also Dell, SONY and many of the other would be great name computers and Bestbuy and Fry's etc said they had a lot of those brands come back as returns or repairs the consensus was Gateway or build it your self. I found that most systems that had Bluray were HP, or had AMD, both of which I was trying to stay away from. Then just the other day Fry's had a sale on the Gateway 4831-03

Intel Core i5 650
8GB ram 4 stick X 2GB dual channel
Nvidia Actual video card, not on-board, and it has 1GB of its own memory
Bluray drive
CD multi read multi burn 2nd optical drive
ect ect

I tried bluray first thing after i un-installed Norton and other bloat ware that was sent with the computer, once it got playing it was good, though the CyberLink program they use for video and bluray said it wasn't compatible with windows 7 visual settings or something, that flashed up really quick, my screen and the tv flashed a couple times and it looked as though something display resolution, or maybe window 7 aero graphics choices changed, or something and then it took me into its interface with the option to play the bluray. I didn't like how it kind of took over the computer, wanted to run full screen on my monitor on top of every thing else I had to alt + tab or something to get arround it and had to find a way to minimize it and drag it to my tv my second display. It played the Bluray ok after it had a few pauses, and it looked great, supposedly the software and graphics card will upconver dvd's as well, though I havnt tried that yet. next online video content, it did way better then my old computer but I still wanted better, plus i noticed that some times, especially when i had many windows open, but not to many the system would hang, or go slow or say this program has quit working. That is when I found that I had a green hard drive, and did some research, and everyone else has the same problem it seems. So i was going to just do a normal, but higher end Hard Drive, but I ended up getting the entry level SSD instead, and WOW

The SSD and the Higher End Hard Drive is the only hardware changes i made to my computer here are the things that I have seen so far that amaze me.
Basicly all of my pet peeves were resolved.
No lag or halts or this program has quit working, to crazy fast boot time, open browser for internet and intant, instant each webpage, email instant ect.
No shuttering video playback on bluray or online content.
It is just amazing, same system differnt hard drive, and POW crazy fast computer.

I went back down to frys and played arround with many computers that had similar specs with normal a normal Hard Drive and way better computers even some mid range core i7 with fast normal Hard Drive, and wow what a differance, my computer with a core i5 and new SSD Hard Drive beat them all. except maybe the core i7 system that came with ssd
 
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Before installing your new SSD make sure to use this guide and optimization tips http://surreystore.com/Forums/tech-reviews/the-ssd-optimization-guide/
 
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