Buying a new SSD help.

[wasabi91]

I decided to go ahead and purchase a Crucial m4 128GB SSD. I heard there were some steps to get it going efficiently some of which im not very familiar with. Im relatively new to the SSD game so i could use some help with some of steps.

1. I read you might need to update firmware.
2. Launching in AHCI.
3. Making sure TRIM is enabled. Which i know Windows 7 has it but how do i know if its enabled after OS install?
4. If i transfer over my WoW data will my addons already be with it or will i have to drag curse over as well and reinstall them to wow?
5. Is there a good thread of webpage for optimizing space on a SSD for un useful windows OS stuff?

 

[coper210]

Are you doing a clean install of windows or just cloning the drive?

 

[wasabi91]

Clean install on the SSD. Just keeping the games on my Caviar Green 1.5

 

[raytseng]

1) if you buy a new m4, and it's not a dusty unit that's been sitting on the shelf, chances are it will already have new firmware, if not you can run crucial's firmware utility on it and you will be set.


2) you do not need to worry yourself with all the supposed SSD "tweaks".
If you are using windows 7, it will automatically disable and set things properly.
If you do extra investigation into all those supposed tweaks to optimize for SSD, you will find out from people who scientifically benchmarked and tested it or checked with Microsofties that they are myths or have no real practical effect or Windows already took care of it for you (even if it's enabled, it's really disabled). There are some stickies at the top of this forum if you really are interested to make you feel warm and fuzzy.


3) WoW I dunno, maybe you need to ask on WoW forums how to move your settings over to a new install.

 

[blazorthon]

Some of the SSD optimization tricks actually do make a difference, but for the most part, not a significant difference. For example, on SSDs such as the M4 that don't rely on SandForce controller's compression, you could enable NTFS compression for a boost in performance with compressible data, but it's not a huge boost. It might also increase write amplification, but I've never seen that checked on non-SandForce SSDs.

Also, you'll probably need to reinstall your WoW add-ons.

 

[blazorthon]

Also, for AHCI, that isn't something that Windows does automatically. It is usually an option that you must enable in the BIOS if you want your SSDs to last. This setting might be set to IDE-emulation mode, but I think that it must be set to AHCI in order for TRIM to work properly.

 

[wasabi91]

Yea i looked and AHCI is already enabled under my bios. So assuming thats on TRIM should be working and i don't need to configure it? What i meant by tweaks is people reccomend to delete certain things from the windows 7 OS that remove space, i think they said turn off hibernation mode.

 

[oste0130]

I just bought my first SSD and used this guide. It worked perfectly!

http://www.overclock.net/t/1156654/seans-windows-7-install-optimization-guide-for-ssds-hdds

1. Yes update Firmware before you install Win7 since your firmware update may be a destructive flash

2. Its in your BIOS usually under advanced>SATA

3.Check to see if the TRIM command is being issued: TRIM basically keeps your SSD running in top shape by optimizing Garbage Collection. You shouldn't have to do this step, but it is always something I do just to be sure. More info on TRIM, Garbage Collection, and SSDs here: (link)
1.Open the Start Menu, type CMD
2.Right click the icon and Run as Administrator
3.Type fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify
DisableDeleteNotify = 1 (Windows TRIM commands are disabled)
DisableDeleteNotify = 0 (Windows TRIM commands are enabled)

4. No idea - havent played WoW in 3 yrs

5. See my original link

 

[blazorthon]

Yea i looked and AHCI is already enabled under my bios. So assuming thats on TRIM should be working and i don't need to configure it? What i meant by tweaks is people reccomend to delete certain things from the windows 7 OS that remove space, i think they said turn off hibernation mode.

Deleting stuff that you don't need nor want, disabling unnecessary services, and more are other things that you can do and I'd go as far as recommending it (and even more if you care enough to put some effort into squeezing every last drop of performance and such that you can), but it doesn't always make a worth-while difference. Maybe if you did a ton of actually proven tricks, you'd start to notice a speed-up and your SSD would last considerably longer. How much you'd have to do is not something that I'd even begin to guess at. I do a lot of such stuff anyway, but mostly just to keep my RAM usage down for my VMs because there is a very noticeable difference between being RAM-starved and having more than a few dozen free MB of RAM.

Doing stuff such as disabling hibernation can help, but if you can simply move the hibernation file to your HDD, then it's just fine there, unless you don't use hibernation at all in which case it's just wasting storage capacity.

Also, remember to never defragment your SSD. That's a great thing to do for hard disk drives, but never do it on an SSD. It hurts rather than helps when done on an SSD. Windows 7 should automatically not run the auto-defrags that it runs on hard drives, so that's not an issue.

You could remove parts of the Windows OS that you don't use, but that's very unlikely to make a difference unless you do it before you put Windows on the SSD. This would mean that you do a clean install on a hard drive and set it up how you like before using a partition copying program to copy the partition to your SSD. It wouldn't hurt to clear up a little space in this way, but it probably wouldn't help much unless you're really starved on that drive for storage capacity. Again, I'd recommend doing it anyway, just don't expect it to make a noticeable difference in anything unless you're running out of capacity on your SSD.