Is SSD just plug and play?

[Ransome]

Hello everyone.
Going to start up my new build soon, my main and only drive is SSD Crucial M4 series. 256Gb.
I need to know, do I need to make any tweaks or adjustments? or is the SSD simple plug and play (which I hope they are, I hate tweaking)?

According to a video from Curcial themselves, its just set it in place, plug power and Sata, and viola!
thx.

 

[crisan_tiberiu]

it is not P&P

 

[Ransome]

Thx awesome

 

[crisan_tiberiu]

theese are some tweaks for your SSD:
- disable system restore
- disable auto defrag (dont defrag manualy aswell)
- disable prefetch and superfetch
- enable AHCI in BIOS before you install the OS.
- get an HDD as backup ...really, the risk its there
thats about it. Everything above you can google and found the answer easy
GL and hf with your SSD

 

[Ransome]

Wait a sec!

1)And why not using system restore? I can set it on say 5% of current space, and then it won't fill up much.
2)Why not defarg manually?
I always defrab my Hdd on regular basis, since it gets high fragmations after installing games, updates and programs.
3) how do I do that?

 

[Dereck47]

Wait a sec!

1)And why not using system restore? I can set it on say 5% of current space, and then it won't fill up much.

Yes, that's a good idea.

2)Why not defarg manually?
I always defrab my Hdd on regular basis, since it gets high fragmations after installing games, updates and programs.

There are no moving parts in a SSD and accessing data on it takes the same amount of time no matter where it’s located.

Say for example you have a SSD with 8 NAND chips in it.
You defrag the SSD so a block of data is on NAND chip 1, page 1, page 2, page 3, page 4 (in that order).

It will take the same amount of time to read if the same block of data were on split on NAND chip 3 page 16, NAND chip 8 page 2, NAND chip 1 page 31, NAND chip 6 page 10.

So defragging a SSD just adds unnecessary writes to the drive.

 

[bpeter289]

Sorry to hijack your thread Ransome, but I have some additional questions as well.

So in addition to limited system restore at 5%, disabling defragment, and disabling both the prefetch and superfetch, is there anything else I need to know/do with a SSD? (Intel 520 Series on a laptop, to be specific)

 

[Dereck47]

Just an FYI, if you have Windows 7 and run WEI it automatically disables defrag on all SSDs attached to your system.

 

[crisan_tiberiu]

SSDs are rated to "live" longer if you dont use them as much. Disableing System Restore you reduce the "write" cicles your SSD needs to do and basically you increase its life . Now, if you consider that you can live with that its OK but i strongly suggest to get a Backup HDD. I fyour SSD dies...its dead alright... you cant save anything from it. a HDD usualy gives signs when its about to die (bad sectors bla bla) and you can recover your data in most cases...but with an SSD ..its preety risky imo. A back-up HDD its better then having system restore activated...

 

[raytseng]

if you have a m4, check and update the firmware (available on crucial's website) before you setup your computer too much.

Stuff about superfetch is a myth. Even if it's "enabled" it's really disabled.

All those tweaks, you don't really "need" to worry about. Windows does most of them automatically. Just get comfortable with your SSD, it for a bit, then go tweak. later All those "tweaks" can be postponed till later and nothing gets hurt if you leave things as default for the short term.

For space reasons, and on a new build, you probably should reclaim space by:

-limit page file to something reasonable like 1024mb minmax), unless you didn't buy enough RAM.

-disable hibernate (unless you REALLY need it). You can still use sleep, just close or save all your open docs before you hit sleep in case power does go out.

-limit system restore (already mentioned)

These are the big items. Everything else are minor tweaks that most people probably think make sense but never ran a benchmark to see if it practically makes a difference.



As far as backup; what you should do is not store"Data" on your SSD. most use it just for OS/Apps. So then you don't need to then do backup on your SSD drive. If it's destroyed, it is not a disaster.

Yes, the paranoid/prudent will backup their OS drive as an image when they have it setup and tweaked, but that is more an issue of convenience to restore. IF your OS/Apps drive goes kaput, it is not the end of the world to redo Windows and reinstall your Apps.

Unless you practice doing backup/restore of images, you probably will be safer doing a fresh install onto a new harddrive rather then trying to restore an image.

 

[bpeter289]

I read several articles listed in the Tweaks/Optimization under the Useful SSD Articles.
(http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/270102-32-useful-articles-part)

Everything seems pretty straight forward, except for these:

Ensuring that my computer is running in AHCI mode.

1. How can I verify whether the laptop is running either in AHCI mode?

2. If AHCI isn't running, then the steps below are what I need to take (and I don't have to reinstall the OS - clean wipe)?

Exit all Windows-based programs.
Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.
If you receive the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue.
Locate and then click one of the following registry subkeys:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\IastorV
In the right pane, right-click Start in the Name column, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.
On the File menu, click Exit to close Registry Editor.
Restart

TRIM

1. Verifying TRIM seems straight forward, but none of the articles seem to mention how to enable TRIM if it is disabled.
Can someone elaborate on this?

Thanks in advance.