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SSD Slow Windows Start

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  • Windows
  • SSD
  • Storage
Last response: in Storage
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September 11, 2013 10:26:35 PM

Hello everyone,

I just bought an ADATA XPG SX900 128 GB SSD Drive a couple weeks ago. I'm using it as my boot drive with Windows 8 Pro 64bits. I have configured all my libraries like Documents, Images and movies to be stored on a Seagate 1Tb drive (also almost new), as well all my apps and program data is in that drive so my SSD is free for just Windows and drivers. I fresh installed Windows, no migration was done, no back up was installed. The first 5 days my SDD flew gorgeously. My boot time was like 8 - 10 seconds, and turn-off time was like 3 - 5 seconds. However as the days went by the boot and turn-off times started to last longer and longer. Now is up to 30 seconds the minimum at start. I ran a bunch of tests on the SSD like Crystal Disk Mark and others and the disk was working good. I even defrag the SSD and that helped for a few boots but then it started to last longer again to start Windows. At last I disconnected all the storage-only drives (Seagate and WD) and just booted the SSD after the defrag and the boot times returned to 10+ seconds. So what's interfering between my SSD and the other drives if the other two drives are just for storage? They are not even full. Hope you can help. Thank you in advance.

My system specs are:

Motherboard: Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3
Processor: AMD FX 8150 8-core 4.0Ghz
Memory: Kingston Hyper-X 8GB @1600Mhz
Video: EVGA GTX 660 Superclocked 2GB
PSU: Cooler Master Silent Pro 1000W
Cooling: Corsair H100i
Case: Cooler Master Haf-X
Drives:
ADATA XPG SX900 128GB SSD
Seagate 1Tb
WD Green 1Tb

More about : ssd slow windows start

a b G Storage
September 11, 2013 10:31:37 PM

NEVER DEFRAG SSDS

probably waiting on apps to load from hdd on boot.

AGAIN NEVER DEFRAG YOUR SSD
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a b G Storage
September 11, 2013 10:39:02 PM

Its times that you check adata website for issues I have the OCZ 120 The samsung 840 and the KINgston v 300 never as of yet ram into the probd u r having.. I s the adata almost full was it config correct have you tryed a complete format and reinstall of your os?
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Related resources
September 11, 2013 10:39:45 PM

aatje92 said:
NEVER DEFRAG SSDS

probably waiting on apps to load from hdd on boot.

AGAIN NEVER DEFRAG YOUR SSD


Thanks aatje92,

Why SSD's shouldn't be defrag?
And why Wndows should wait to load apps at start, the boot time I'm talking about is between the Blue windows logo and my log in screen, it shouldn't be loading anything from the storage drives because there's nothing about the system or windows on that drives just apps and games. Also I have very few applications at start after I log in. Dolby audio, setup, Nvidia control panel, Synapse 2.0 and Norton 360. All of them installed on the SSD drive not on the storage drives.
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a b G Storage
September 11, 2013 10:41:59 PM

NEVER defrag a SSD, if you have auto frag enabled turn it OFF. Go into task manager>>start up>> & disable anything you feel is useless on start up.
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Best solution

a b G Storage
September 11, 2013 10:45:07 PM

Solid State Drives can access any location on the drive in the same time. This is one of the main advantages over hard drives. This also means that there is no need to defragment a Solid State Drive ever. These drives have actually been designed to write data evenly in all sectors of the drive which the industry is calling wear leveling. Each sector of a Solid State Drive has a limited number of writes before it cannot be overwritten anymore. (this is a theoretical limit which cannot be reached in work environments)

If you did defragment your Solid State Disk you can rest assured that you did not harm it in any way. It is just that this process is not needed and that defragmentation causes lots of write processes which means that the drive will reach its write limits sooner.

No need for defragmentation is therefor another advantage of Solid State Drives.
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September 11, 2013 10:47:38 PM

johnnyb105 said:
Its times that you check adata website for issues I have the OCZ 120 The samsung 840 and the KINgston v 300 never as of yet ram into the probd u r having.. I s the adata almost full was it config correct have you tryed a complete format and reinstall of your os?


Thans johnnyb105,
well I'm asking this because I'm trying to avoid reinstalling windows because is a pain in the assdue to the fact that all apps and games are on the other storage drives. Also I mentioned that It was a fresh installation of windows just 2 or 3 weeks ago. The ADATA alone works fine I've tested it with Crystal Disk Mark. I really want to avoid fresh installation again. It's my last resort.
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September 11, 2013 10:53:14 PM

ur6beersaway said:
NEVER defrag a SSD, if you have auto frag enabled turn it OFF. Go into task manager>>start up>> & disable anything you feel is useless on start up.


Thanks ur6beersaway,
I won't defrag again. Auto defrag it's off never turned it on. I've already did the task manager-start up thing. Like I said only a few programs are on start-up. No change. And this is the boot time not the start-up time. From the blue windows logo to my log in screen it's 30+ seconds. If I disconnect all the other drives and just boot from the SSD the boot time is 8 - 10 seconds, maybe less.
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a b G Storage
September 11, 2013 10:53:33 PM

Unless you do a fresh install how will you know if there is a issue with your drive or not it may be the time to contact adata for help or maybe RMA
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September 11, 2013 10:56:18 PM

johnnyb105 said:
Unless you do a fresh install how will you know if there is a issue with your drive or not it may be the time to contact adata for help or maybe RMA


I thought of that but why the ADATA SSD drive alone works perfectly. Why should they take it in RMA if the SSD works fine alone. My question is why the other mass storage Drives are affecting my boot time. that also disregard a windows issue.
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a b G Storage
September 11, 2013 11:12:53 PM

Do you have trim enabled? (running W8 with AHCI enabled in bios)
Also did you try a fresh install? (if you didnt have AHCI enabled, please reinstall)
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September 11, 2013 11:19:04 PM

There is nothing wrong with your setup or your drives.

During Windows startup, the OS will read the file-systems of all partitions in all drives. Therefore, storage HDDs increase Windows startup time as they fills up.

If you format your two storage HDDs, you will notice vast improvement in boot time because the file-systems are empty. The effect is similar to removing the two HDDs from your setup.
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September 11, 2013 11:27:08 PM

ur6beersaway said:
Do you have trim enabled? (running W8 with AHCI enabled in bios)
Also did you try a fresh install? (if you didnt have AHCI enabled, please reinstall)


Well I used the command "fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify" and it came up as 0 (zero), that means TRIM is enabled. What else can I do before try a new fresh reinstall?
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September 11, 2013 11:41:01 PM

hsyuts said:
There is nothing wrong with your setup or your drives.

During Windows startup, the OS will read the file-systems of all partitions in all drives. Therefore, storage HDDs increase Windows startup time as they fills up.

If you format your two storage HDDs, you will notice vast improvement in boot time because the file-systems are empty. The effect is similar to removing the two HDDs from your setup.


Thanks hsyuts,
Is there something I can do besides format my 1Tb each hard drives? All my life is on those drives. One of them is partitioned in 3. games, photos, documents, back ups, intallation setups, movies, series, music, etc. I don't have a 2TB+ drive where to back all up and format them.

Is there any other solution? Like bypassing the reading of all file-systems of all partitions in all storage drives. And start the reading after I log in to windows? I know 30 seconds of booting time is not much but that's one of the reasons I bought my SSD among another benefits. Maybe I'm overreacting? I don't know, I'm just a little disappointed of the performance.
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a b G Storage
September 12, 2013 12:33:38 AM

tonkpills said:
ur6beersaway said:
Test it~http://www.hdtune.com/


http://sdrv.ms/17Yhsr0


The health test :p 

also you can get hdtune 2.55 that is freeware and fully functional, i think you have the trial version now?
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September 12, 2013 7:12:50 AM

aatje92 said:
tonkpills said:
ur6beersaway said:
Test it~http://www.hdtune.com/


http://sdrv.ms/17Yhsr0


The health test :p 

also you can get hdtune 2.55 that is freeware and fully functional, i think you have the trial version now?


This is the health tab of the ADATA SSD from HD Tune Pro. And no, is not trial version.

http://sdrv.ms/14IL8vm
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a b G Storage
September 12, 2013 8:53:53 AM

You have SATA 6Gb/s6 x SATA 6Gb/s on the Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3
your test says 300 max that's 3Gb/s

Are you using a 6Gb sata cable to your sata port from the ssd?

PS: the FREE one never pay for anything like that.
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September 12, 2013 9:43:20 AM

ur6beersaway said:
You have SATA 6Gb/s6 x SATA 6Gb/s on the Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3
your test says 300 max that's 3Gb/s

Are you using a 6Gb sata cable to your sata port from the ssd?

PS: the FREE one never pay for anything like that.


Well the STA cable says "6Gb/s" on the little head that connects to the SSD so I assumed that it is 6Gb/s. It came with the motherboard tho. Do I need to buy a new one? How do I know it will work?

I just realized that the cable says on the side "...DERONXIN-T 6Gbps/3Gbps". What does that mean? All cables say the same thing and on both ends they say "6Gb/s" on the little heads. How do I know is the cable? How do I use all 6Gb/s?
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a b G Storage
September 12, 2013 11:57:30 AM

6Gb/s cables should have came with the board. If it says 6gb it can run/handle 6gb.
Trying to figure out why its not using 6gb speed. After all it is SATA III.

I guess this is a marketing gimmick:The XPG (Xtreme Performance Gear) SX900 solid state drive uses new optimized firmware to utilize greater storage capacity of the NAND Flash components. With superior NAND Flash technology, the XPG SX900 SSD reaches new levels of stability and performance with expanded capacities. Utilizing the SandForce 2281 controller, the SX900 512 GB SSD boasts a 7% increase over common SSD's in the market today. A milestone in ADATA's history of NAND Flash product brought to you. With maximum sequential read and write speeds of 550/530 MB per second and maximum random 4K write speeds as high as 85,000 IOPS, the ADATA XPG SX900 SSD is poised to take its place as a market and performance leader!
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a c 253 G Storage
September 12, 2013 12:36:53 PM

This is a long shot, but do you have "Indexing" turned on for your storage drives? Might want to try turning it off.

Yogi
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September 12, 2013 4:48:19 PM

ur6beersaway said:
6Gb/s cables should have came with the board. If it says 6gb it can run/handle 6gb.
Trying to figure out why its not using 6gb speed. After all it is SATA III.

I guess this is a marketing gimmick:The XPG (Xtreme Performance Gear) SX900 solid state drive uses new optimized firmware to utilize greater storage capacity of the NAND Flash components. With superior NAND Flash technology, the XPG SX900 SSD reaches new levels of stability and performance with expanded capacities. Utilizing the SandForce 2281 controller, the SX900 512 GB SSD boasts a 7% increase over common SSD's in the market today. A milestone in ADATA's history of NAND Flash product brought to you. With maximum sequential read and write speeds of 550/530 MB per second and maximum random 4K write speeds as high as 85,000 IOPS, the ADATA XPG SX900 SSD is poised to take its place as a market and performance leader!


I knew all that from a NCIX article about the XPG SX900, that's why I bought it actually. I tried another cable also says 6Gbps/3Gbps on the side and it's the same speed (only 3Gb/s). What should I do? Firmware of the SSD is up to date I've checked with ADATA's web page. BIOS is also up to date, I upgraded the BIOS myself.

The funny thing and frustrating at the same time is that at the beginning when the drive was fresh it worked no matter if the storage drives were or were not connected. No matter the apps or drivers I installed, It just worked as it should.
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September 12, 2013 5:01:27 PM

Y0GI said:
This is a long shot, but do you have "Indexing" turned on for your storage drives? Might want to try turning it off.

Yogi


Thanks yogi,
Well all storage drive were indexed, I turned it off and it didn't help :( 

Any other suggestions? Other than format the SSD and reinstall everything?

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September 12, 2013 9:56:16 PM

ur6beersaway said:
Do you have hiberfil.sys turned off? windows-8 needs it.

http://www.nextofwindows.com/hiberfil-sys-in-windows-8-...


hiberfil.sys it's turned on. :/ 

And bad news (for me). I just disconnected all storage drives again juts to re-test and the boot time still 30 seconds or more. Now we can left the storage drives out of the equation.
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a b G Storage
September 12, 2013 10:06:49 PM

Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 Need to know the rev.# on your board as there are a few SATA driver upgrades out & a updated BIOS. for windows 8 /64.http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=...

The board sets the speed.

There is always windows 8.1 preview upgrade beta (now) & Windows 8.1 final (free) coming out OCT.17 as a last resort as improvements were made.
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September 13, 2013 6:17:26 PM

ur6beersaway said:
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 Need to know the rev.# on your board as there are a few SATA driver upgrades out & a updated BIOS. for windows 8 /64.http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=...

The board sets the speed.

There is always windows 8.1 preview upgrade beta (now) & Windows 8.1 final (free) coming out OCT.17 as a last resort as improvements were made.


Well I just updated the BIOS from F6 to F10a. No changes. About the SATA/RAID driver I don't now which one I should install. My rev is 1.1. But there are different options. I intalled the one that says "Marvell 9172 AHCI/RAID driver" that's an windows .exe. nothing changed. The others say "AMD SATA RAID Driver (Preinstall driver, press F6 during Windows* setup to read from floppy)". But my windows is already installed so how the F I will install the driver? The sped still at 3Gbps and now the SSD alone without the other storage drives is still 30+ seconds. I don't know what else to do.
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a b G Storage
September 13, 2013 7:34:35 PM





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http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/298712-32-slow-window...
So I seem to have fixed the problem. After clean installing windows I tested the boot times, they were lightning fast. I proceeded to install the drivers from the mobo disc and BAM, problem found, boot times were pitiful. I uninstalled each driver one by one then rebooting to see which was the problem. The ASMEDIA sata drivers were to blame, as soon as I removed them boot times were lightning fast again. I plugged in all my other hard discs and they only slightly effected the boot times, still way faster than before. I am still in the process of repopulating the drive so I will post back with any problems if there are any.

sata drivers worked here, check for firmware upgrade to ssd./
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September 13, 2013 8:58:26 PM

ur6beersaway said:




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http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/298712-32-slow-window...
So I seem to have fixed the problem. After clean installing windows I tested the boot times, they were lightning fast. I proceeded to install the drivers from the mobo disc and BAM, problem found, boot times were pitiful. I uninstalled each driver one by one then rebooting to see which was the problem. The ASMEDIA sata drivers were to blame, as soon as I removed them boot times were lightning fast again. I plugged in all my other hard discs and they only slightly effected the boot times, still way faster than before. I am still in the process of repopulating the drive so I will post back with any problems if there are any.

sata drivers worked here, check for firmware upgrade to ssd./


The SSD firmware is up to date. Any Idea on how to update the Motherboard's SATA drivers? I seached google for it and all info is very confusing. I'm about to fresh install windows again. I really want to avoid this because I don't want to go through all the installation process just to end up with the same problem.
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September 14, 2013 4:02:20 AM

UPDATE:

I fresh installed Windows.
I did an Acronis back up first. Then I reinstalled Windows. After reinstalling guess what, 1 - 3 seconds boot times no storage drives were connected though. Then I connected the storage drives and the boot time just went up to 3 - 6 seconds. That's great I thought, but no drivers or back up were installed yet.

At last I recover the back up from Acronis. Every little thing on my system is the same after the back up was restored, it wasn't a clone drive back up. Just a regular backup. But my boot time is 3 - 5 seconds with all back up restored and all storage drives connected!!! So the problem is somehow solved but I don't know how the re installation helped, since the back up just put everything back including drivers. If it was a bad windows installation why at first Windows worked well for a week or so? What affected the boot time along the way?

The interesting thing is that the SSD writing speed still at 3Gb/s and not at 6Gb/s, which I haven solved and I don't know how to, however now we know the writing speed, SSD firmware, BIOS or anything else was the problem. I will leave this open for a week to see if the boot times change along the way. Also I'll remain open to suggestions about how to solve the SSD writing speed issue.

Thanks to all of you for your help! Have a great weekend!
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a b G Storage
September 14, 2013 7:02:20 AM

Let's check~ Device manager>>Ide/ata controller (click on the tiny left arrow to open the tree)>>Marvell>>click properties>>driver.

This will display the driver installed. if it is the 1.2.0.1027 your current. Do nothing.
You can try update driver
It should ask : check online or browse computer.
Try online see if it updates ,if no joy,
Browse computer to the marvell driver you got from gigbyte. Select.
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September 14, 2013 10:05:47 AM

ur6beersaway said:
Let's check~ Device manager>>Ide/ata controller (click on the tiny left arrow to open the tree)>>Marvell>>click properties>>driver.

This will display the driver installed. if it is the 1.2.0.1027 your current. Do nothing.
You can try update driver
It should ask : check online or browse computer.
Try online see if it updates ,if no joy,
Browse computer to the marvell driver you got from gigbyte. Select.


Under device manager>> IDE/ATA controller, there's no "Marvell" at the tree. Just "ATA Chanel 0" and "ATA chanel 1" (three times each. http://sdrv.ms/183BiRK
However my SSD should be at the first ATA controller 0, so I right-click on it and click on "Software driver update". Select "Automatically search for updates" and it comes up with "This device has the best driver" or something like that. Sorry my windows is in spanish and I don't know the exact "Windows terms", I'm just translating them literally as I see them.
When I search 990FXA-UD3 rev. 1.1 drivers and software web page and select Windows 8 64 bits I only see:

"Marvell 9172 AHCI/RAID driver"
"AMD SATA RAID Driver (Preinstall driver, press F6 during Windows* setup to read from floppy)"
"AMD SATA AHCI Driver (Preinstall driver, press F6 during Windows* setup to read from floppy)"

I downloaded Marvell 9172 and tried to install it manually however it says that there no driver when I select one of the files on the Marvell folder.
I'm lost at this point.
Any help is highly appreciated. Thank you in advance.
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a b G Storage
September 14, 2013 2:09:13 PM

Your English is just fine.
"This device has the best driver" if you ~ DM>>ata 0>> "properties" , then "driver" at the top, it will give the driver information that device is using . I wonder what it is. win-8 has all "generic" drivers that work. But maybe not a 6Gb/s controller driver.
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September 15, 2013 8:03:55 AM

ur6beersaway said:
Your English is just fine.
"This device has the best driver" if you ~ DM>>ata 0>> "properties" , then "driver" at the top, it will give the driver information that device is using . I wonder what it is. win-8 has all "generic" drivers that work. But maybe not a 6Gb/s controller driver.


Yes, as you said, on ATA Chanel 0 the driver it's a Microsoft generic driver. Here is the screenshot: http://sdrv.ms/14XqQZM
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a b G Storage
September 15, 2013 12:34:41 PM

It figures, because miro$oft scan is very happy with that one, as their latest. You have to install/replace that one with the marvell one to enable 6Gb/s. Do you have the original motherboard install disk? You might be able to install just the sata controller driver only, and not the rest of the crap. Assuming that ATA 0 is the SSD.
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September 15, 2013 3:29:53 PM

ur6beersaway said:
It figures, because miro$oft scan is very happy with that one, as their latest. You have to install/replace that one with the marvell one to enable 6Gb/s. Do you have the original motherboard install disk? You might be able to install just the sata controller driver only, and not the rest of the crap. Assuming that ATA 0 is the SSD.


Oddly enough I don't use/have a CD/DVD drive. I have the CD drivers installation CD but I don't have access to it. I contacted Gigabyte to know which driver should I use and how to install it from the Gigabyte support page but I haven't received a reply from them.
Here are a bunch of them but I don't know which one is the one I need to install and how. The only one with an .exe is "Marvell 9172 AHCI/RAID driver" that is 43.13MB whch I already installed, but no changes in speed so far. The other ones just have the inf and sys files which Windows doesn't recognize as drivers when I try to install them in "Device Manager":
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=...

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a b G Storage
September 15, 2013 3:59:08 PM

OK, Thank you, let us know what they say, as others would like to enjoy the 6Gb/s speed they paid for especially with SSD. After working with you I ran ATTO to check mine & topped out @ 580mb/s on the larger test packages, good enough, but you don't know until you look.


http://www.attotech.com/disk-benchmark/
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September 15, 2013 6:28:56 PM

UPDATE:

Here are the results from both tests, ATTO and Samsung Magician:
http://sdrv.ms/17C64SR
http://sdrv.ms/17C6d8M

No reply from Gigabyte since Friday morning though. So if you have any suggestions I am open to hear them.

Thanks a lot you guys. I'll keep you informed and I'll keep searching for the drivers updates.
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a c 204 G Storage
September 15, 2013 6:30:42 PM

Did you optimize the OS with magician.
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a b G Storage
September 15, 2013 7:07:48 PM

Select maximum performance with Samsung utility(+^1). IMHO you will still need the marvell controller driver installed. You are at a very good half speed.
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a c 204 G Storage
September 15, 2013 7:10:10 PM

+1 ^
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September 15, 2013 8:51:28 PM

SR-71 Blackbird said:
Did you optimize the OS with magician.


Unfortunately the OS Optimization under "System Management" in Magician is not available. It's like grayed out. Maybe it's because my SSD is an Aata SX900 and not a Samsung drive. I actually get a notification window that says: "Magician was unable to find a Samsung SSD connected to your system. Magician features may not work correctly."
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a b G Storage
September 15, 2013 9:27:09 PM

No worries, If you ever come across a dvd drive you can install the sata controller driver off the mobo disk. Wait for gigabyte's tech service to respond.
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October 1, 2013 8:03:37 AM

Hello everyone,

I would like to thank everyone that helped me. well I finally contacted Gigabyte customer service and they told me that windows' drivers for SATA are "better" that the ones on the Gigabyte installation CD that came with the MoBo. I still experiencing 3Gbps speeds and the other test they told me to do is to test the SSD on another PC with 6Gbps SATA 3. Just to disregard a SSD issue. I haven't had the chance to do that so this is the update I have at the moment. Since I reinstalled Windows my boot times are 3 to 5 seconds and 2 to 4 seconds turn-off. That's pretty cool. However I've noticed that if there's any software update nbo matter if its a windws one o another software when the software update asks you to Restart the boot time comes back to 30+ seconds. Always when I restart. So I prefer to turn off than restart, it is faster. Also I've noticed when I plugged a 1Tb My book external WD drive the boot time also went up to 30+ seconds. So I don't really know what's going on.
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a b G Storage
October 1, 2013 6:08:00 PM

In 18 days Windows 8.1 (final) comes out from micro$oft. The upgrade is free. Maybe that will improve things. Hoping for the best & Thank you.
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