::Solid state drive/pain??::

[rlubocki]

I'm re-building my PC, and this will give me a opportunity to take it to another level by installing solid state drive that will be the host to XP.
I got psyched, but then I started discovering that solid state drives need to be really tweaked in XP environment to get the the performance that everyone is raving about. Is this the truth, or a myth?? This really turned me off, as I was looking forward to the new HD technology,

Any thoughts/advise?
Feel free to post some links

 

[buwish]

I know that W7 comes with the technology that optimizes an SSD (the name of it escapes me right now). However, check out this link and see what you think.

http://www.ghacks.net/2009/01/10/optimize-windows-for-solid-state-drives-usage/

 

[rlubocki]

Thank you for the link.
Perhaps other people can post their experiences? I will try W7. Toms hardware seems deserted, not alot of traffic. I guess all the GEEKS are busy installing Windows 7 and wasting hours playing with the new OS. Eventually they will come back to tomshardaware to share their beefs and questions. Its like a freakin water hole for all the nerds to gather and stream what they learned!!

 

[daship]

XP is dead bro, time to hop on to Windows 7. Windows 7 is optimized for SSD, XP needs tweaked to hell and back.

 

[sub mesa]

Most of the "optimizations" i read on that URL are fake; it has nothing to do with an SSD.

The optimizations for SSD are:
1) create partitions PROPERLY (Vista / Win7 do this; XP does NOT)
2) support the TRIM command (Win7 only; plus compatible SSD)
3) disable defragmentation service

The real I/O optimizations are heavily tuned for HDDs; which can seek very badly and alot of work is put in limiting the need for seeking. This has an adverse effect on Solid State Drives as they don't have any problems with seeking and the optimizations actually decrease performance alot because the SSD just doesn't get enough commands/instructions for it to work at full capacity. NCQ or Native Command Queueing can help here, although again this technique was used to limit seek speeds on HDDs, but is now being used to supply the SSD with some advance notice of I/O requests, so it can return the requested data instantly when requested.

Even though XP is very old and alot of reasons exist to stop using it, its not true that SSDs will perform poorly on XP. You don't have TRIM support, but you can fix that by just making a partition smaller than the capacity of the SSD, leaving some 10-20GB of space unused. It will be used by the SSD though, to accelerate small writes (so called 2-phase writes).

 

[rlubocki]

Sub, some really great advice! Perhaps I will go one step farther and install the new Win 7, with ssd. With so many vendors, and everyone claiming their is the best, its always difficult to match the hardware. What the heck I will ssd a try and see for myself . Like you mentioned, certain boosters aimed for regular drives will slow down ssd. Thank you for your time. You like win 7? all drivers worked?

 

[sub mesa]

I'm actually a unix guy, and don't run Windows on my main workstations anymore, including my game PCs. But i'd say Windows 7 is a good successor to the very popular Windows XP, which is becoming outdated technically since its from 2001...

However, Windows 7 is technically very similar to Vista, and they have alot in common. Think of Windows 7 as a better version of Vista. And certainly the TRIM support would be nice.

As for SSDs, try to get the Intel X25-M G2 80GB, its a really great drive and unsurpassed in performance and features by other vendors, simply because they have no access to the advanced controller Intel uses for their SSDs, and the controller is the most important factor in SSD performance; not the flash memory itself.

The Vertex / Indilinx are good second choices though, but please avoid any SSD with JMicron controller, like the OCZ Apex and OCZ Core series. Though JMicron is releasing a new SSD controller, still have to see if they learned anything. =)

 

[rlubocki]

Sub, terrific advice, I have some reading to do. Intel SSD are VERY expensive, I probably would be better off with a 10,000rpm drive. I know all about XP, and Vista never impressed me, although I use it at work. Hopefully 7 will take off like XP and gets better with time. Vista for me got worse in time and found alot of bugs, made me switch back to Xp where it feels like home..