Talk me into keeping my SSD

nodle

nodle

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Apr 9, 2001
Messages
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No need to bump this thread anymore. I ended up returning it and keeping my velociraptor. I am much happier now. But thanks to everyone that posted!



So I just received my new Intel X25-M drive yesterday. I was moving from a 300gig velociraptor. I enabled AHCI and I also have the latest firmware. But I must say I am not all that impressed. I am thinking about returning it. First off I thought when you loaded windows 7 I thought that it was suppose to disable things like superfetch, defragmenter, etc. automatically? All of my stuff was still enabled though. I looked this up online and alot of people have this problem. I mean the startup is alot faster but not that much faster than my velociraptor. I have used about 50% of it up just by loadind my OS, PS, and BF2. I sometimes reload my OS quite a bit to test stuff with and if I continue to do this I will probably wear it out quite fast. I do enjoy the no noise and the faster boot up speeds, but I don't know if it was worth the money. Am I missing something here? Should I keep it or just return it?
 
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and if I continue to do this I will probably wear it out quite fast.
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No it will not. Intel specifies 20GB per day every single day for 5 years. I assume you will not reinstall your OS that often..
 
But why should you do the tweaks? I thought Windows 7 was suppose to recognize a SSD out of the box for you?
 
Windows 7 doesn't totally disable defragmenter all together, because if you have mechanical drives in the system they'll need access to it. It'll just make it so that the SSD doesn't get defraged by the scheduler. Even with a SSD, Superfetch is best on, again it'll help if you have mechanical drives also installed.
 
SicKlown42012 said:
Windows 7 doesn't totally disable defragmenter all together, because if you have mechanical drives in the system they'll need access to it. It'll just make it so that the SSD doesn't get defraged by the scheduler. Even with a SSD, Superfetch is best on, again it'll help if you have mechanical drives also installed.
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I thought everyone said to disable it?:confused:
 
A lot of those "tweaks" were from when the only SSDs where based on the shitty JMicron controller. They limited the amount of data the SSD wrote in order to avoid stuttering. On a modern SSD, in my testing, they don't help.
 
rive22 said:
run a virus scan watch how fast it goes.

Here's a page with instructions for all the main tweaks.
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=63273
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While most info there is of no use to me the 2-3 things there I used were awesome!
- Disabling Aero (I thought it was but not fully).
-- This fixed a font issue with outlook I couldn't fix, wahoo.

- Quick Launch Tool Bar

And a few other misc things for win7 I didn't know how to do.
 
nodle said:
I do enjoy the no noise and the faster boot up speeds, but I don't know if it was worth the money. Am I missing something here? Should I keep it or just return it?
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That's really a call you need to make - how can anyone else tell you whether the speed benefits you are seeing are worth the money you spent? From your post, it sounds like you want to return it, and are just looking for someone else to tell you that is the right course of action (in the aviation CRM world we call that "looking for allies"). If you aren't happy, then return it (or sell it to me at a substantial discount ;))
 
Ya i know, I will spend some more time with it. Thanks everyone. Drescherjm's post kinda helped me so I am not to worried about wearing it out. Thanks again all. Thanks also to Forceman, I like the allies thing lol.
 
Do you need the extra 200 bucks? if so return it because it doesn't sound like you really need the boost in HD speed.

22 second boot and 2 second shut down is 90% of the reason I bought my SSD.
 
The speed for me was huge (same drive).

Faster loading for everything. It's finny to hear my old SATA platter spin up when I check out my music files. Can actually hear it revving up.

I don't regret my purchase at all. The performance gains were instant.
 
If you can spare the time and drive, try cloning your SSD's install to a HDD. Anand said that when he first tested out an SSD, it didn't really seem any faster. However, once he sent it back and put his HDD back in, it seemed broken. He didn't notice the increase until it was taken away. Switching back to HDD might bring to light the speed increase of the SSD.
 
defrag isn't actually enabled for the SSD. It detects which drive is an SSD and just skips it.

don't worry about superfetch. it doesn't cause wear and in fact would still speed up your search because indexing is still faster than not having it
 
nodle said:
So I just received my new Intel X25-M drive yesterday. I was moving from a 300gig velociraptor. I enabled AHCI and I also have the latest firmware. But I must say I am not all that impressed. I am thinking about returning it. First off I thought when you loaded windows 7 I thought that it was suppose to disable things like superfetch, defragmenter, etc. automatically? All of my stuff was still enabled though. I looked this up online and alot of people have this problem. I mean the startup is alot faster but not that much faster than my velociraptor. I have used about 50% of it up just by loadind my OS, PS, and BF2. I sometimes reload my OS quite a bit to test stuff with and if I continue to do this I will probably wear it out quite fast. I do enjoy the no noise and the faster boot up speeds, but I don't know if it was worth the money. Am I missing something here? Should I keep it or just return it?
Click to expand...

I too went from a 300GB Veloci to an SSD. I certainly noticed an increase in performance, but coming from the VR I was probably a bit less blown away than people using laptop drives and large capacity 3.5" drives with slower access times.

Apps launched quickly with the VR...now they launch instantly. That's the biggest benefit from my perspective, though the lack of noise and faster boots are nice too. I noticed you didn't mention how fast programs launch in your post, but that should be really noticeable. However, Windows 7 performs so well due to features like Superfetch that the difference is masked a little bit (i.e. normal hard drives launch apps quicker than they did in XP since the OS optimizes program use by learning your habits). I believe using an SSD with XP would yield even greater gains vs. a traditional HDD since it wasn't as smart in that regard and the blazing speeds of SSDs would be even more obvious. Too bad it's so dated that it's not really worth using on a modern rig.
 
I don't get the point of this?

1. If Win 7 needs manual tweaks one time for a SSD... take the 10 min and do them.
2. On keeping the SSD, it matters very little to me (and I'm guessing anyone else on here) if you keep the drive or sell/ return it. If you were using a 2GB Quantum Bigfoot 5.25" drive circa 1996ish, it wouldn't make my systems run any slower. Point is, it is a personal decision. You have experienced both so there is little point of us even weighing in on what we have experienced since you are most familiar with your use cases.
 
InvisiBill said:
If you can spare the time and drive, try cloning your SSD's install to a HDD. Anand said that when he first tested out an SSD, it didn't really seem any faster. However, once he sent it back and put his HDD back in, it seemed broken. He didn't notice the increase until it was taken away. Switching back to HDD might bring to light the speed increase of the SSD.
Click to expand...

I had to RMA my Intel and reinstalled Windows on my old HDD for the week it was gone. Uhhhg, talk about a week from hell after getting used to an SSD. You really do notice it going back!

I'll never use anything but an SSD for my OS drive again. (Short of a similar situation as above.)
 
pjkenned said:
I don't get the point of this?

1. If Win 7 needs manual tweaks one time for a SSD... take the 10 min and do them.
2. On keeping the SSD, it matters very little to me (and I'm guessing anyone else on here) if you keep the drive or sell/ return it. If you were using a 2GB Quantum Bigfoot 5.25" drive circa 1996ish, it wouldn't make my systems run any slower. Point is, it is a personal decision. You have experienced both so there is little point of us even weighing in on what we have experienced since you are most familiar with your use cases.
Click to expand...

It doesn't need manual tweaks, it detects it from the get go if you do a fresh install on the SSD and he said he did that, so it should be good.
 
...

This is ALL you need to do, for 90% of users.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2069761 said:
Step 1: Enable AHCI in BIOS.

Step 2: Install Windows 7.

Step 3: ...

Step 4: Profit!
Click to expand...

Windows 7 will handle turning things off automatically. It may still show up as "enabled" (i.e. defrag, superfetch), but it is NOT running on your SSD, only your HDD. Again, it will turn things off automatically.

If you want, you can shrink the page file and turn off hibernate to save some disk space. Up to you.
 
You might also wish to install intel's new rapid storage tech driver with windows 7 via flash drive while partitioning etc..
 
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