New SSD drive

Humboldt · Post by **Humboldt** » Wed Dec 04, 2013 12:34 am

Bought a 128 GB SSD, should be delivered to my work tomorrow.

Running Windows 7 Home Premium, currently on a 1 TB hdd.

Am I correct that my options are to:
1) Pull all the storage data off my hdd to get it down to under 128 GB and clone it
2) same, but take an image
3) Clean install?

Will take a lot longer but am tempted to go with the clean install.
Any issues I should know of installing from the same Win7 disc that my current system is running?
Once the SSD is running the original hdd will be data only, probably pull everything off it onto a spare external, reformat it, and have it as the main data drive.

Thanks

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Wed Dec 04, 2013 6:25 am

Clone it if you want to save time. Using the free Acronis software from Seagate or WD...whichever your original drive is.
Or many brands of SSD makers have their own free cloning software.
128 gigs is tight....so yeah you'll want to pull all your data from it. Depending on what programs you have on there...possibly uninstall some.

Clone Windows over, or reinstall...whichever your choice is.
If you clone it...simply go to your system properties, Windows Experience...and re-run the assessment tool (link in lower right). Vista/Win7/Win7 will detect that it is now installed on an SSD drive, it will properly set its TRIM, and disable auto defrag. With Windows XP you had to go do that manually. No longer need to do that after XP.

Once it's on the new drive, attach your original source drive. it will no become drive D or E or whatever.
Now move your Libraries over to that. This will make the new spot for your Docs, Pics, Music, Downloads...thus freeing up space on the system drive.
Also add that drive to your virtual memory (pagefile.sys) so that it's system managed on both drives. if drive space gets tight you can disable the pagefile on your C drive. despite whatever errors Windows might try to scare you with.

Humboldt · Post by **Humboldt** » Wed Dec 04, 2013 1:17 pm

Thanks, will probably have some more questions for you later

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Wed Dec 04, 2013 5:15 pm

do not defrag a SSD and make sure trim is enabled.

i leave superfetch on as well, enjoy your new drive, which one did ya get ?

http://blog.tune-up.com/tips-and-tricks ... -your-ssd/

Far-N-Wide · Post by **Far-N-Wide** » Thu Dec 05, 2013 6:22 pm

Consider getting a 2nd identical SSD and going with a Raid 0. trust me, you will thank me.

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Thu Dec 05, 2013 6:49 pm

if it is a samsung drive, run the Samsung Magician software, RAPID, it uses system memory to cache thing or something, really improved my benchmarks scores.
single drive here.......

Post by **Philip** » Thu Dec 05, 2013 10:09 pm

You may want to run some of the tweaks suggested here as well: http://www.speedguide.net/articles/ssd- ... weaks-3319

Humboldt · Post by **Humboldt** » Fri Dec 06, 2013 12:07 am

Mark wrote:do not defrag a SSD and make sure trim is enabled.

i leave superfetch on as well, enjoy your new drive, which one did ya get ?

http://blog.tune-up.com/tips-and-tricks ... -your-ssd/

Hey Mark

Got this http://www.rakuten.com/prod/sandisk-128 ... adid=18007 for $64.99

Humboldt · Post by **Humboldt** » Fri Dec 06, 2013 12:07 am

Philip wrote:You may want to run some of the tweaks suggested here as well: http://www.speedguide.net/articles/ssd- ... weaks-3319

Will check it out, thanks Philip

morbidpete · Post by **morbidpete** » Fri Dec 06, 2013 4:08 am

Far-N-Wide wrote:Consider getting a 2nd identical SSD and going with a Raid 0. trust me, you will thank me.

Running that myself. Bios post takes longer then it does for windows to load. (Stupid raid bios and motherboard bios)

morbidpete · Post by **morbidpete** » Fri Dec 06, 2013 4:09 am

Mark wrote:do not defrag a SSD and make sure trim is enabled.

i leave superfetch on as well, enjoy your new drive, which one did ya get ?

http://blog.tune-up.com/tips-and-tricks ... -your-ssd/

Even with Trim, I still leave 10% unpartitioned to give it some wiggle room for even wear

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Fri Dec 06, 2013 6:47 am

Far-N-Wide wrote:Consider getting a 2nd identical SSD and going with a Raid 0. trust me, you will thank me.

Ooooff....you're a brave man trusting RAID 0 on a computer...with the incredibly..insanely..high failure rates I see on SSDs (unless they're Intel or Crucial....Samsungs seem decent)

Post by **Philip** » Fri Dec 06, 2013 7:08 am

Generally I buy Intel/Crucial/Samsung as well.. However, I bit the bullet and bought a 256Gb Corsair Neutron on Black Friday, it replaced an Intel 160Gb as an OS drive. I've heard good things about their controller quality and general reliability, but only time will tell. They come with 5 year warranty. What do you think of those Cat ?

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Fri Dec 06, 2013 11:16 am

Philip wrote:Generally I buy Intel/Crucial/Samsung as well.. However, I bit the bullet and bought a 256Gb Corsair Neutron on Black Friday, it replaced an Intel 160Gb as an OS drive. I've heard good things about their controller quality and general reliability, but only time will tell. They come with 5 year warranty. What do you think of those Cat ?

Time will tell...I believe that's their first line that they actually made themselves. Prior SSD drives from Corsair were just rebranded Samsungs. I actually don't see them come through our clients. The SSD's we see are in firewall appliances (usually running various flavors of *nix), and in ultra books with healthcare clients. I see wicked high failure rates on the *nix appliances...I actually now refuse to order them with SSDs...I insist on getting spindles. I swear the failure rate of SSDs in those was >50%. With the ultra books...most of what I saw were Samsung SSD's in the huge fleets of Dell Latitude e4200 units out there..they did fairly well, probably around 5% failure rates.

You wanna ditch that Intel ship it up here.

I just got a new laptop for myself..came in yesterday, Thinkpad T431s that our wholesaler was having a firesale on...~1100 laptop for under 700 bucks.

I got a few spare SSDs on our shelf..but I am NOT putting one in. Got a fast single platter 6 gig sata Hitachi spindle in her with the large format platter..she freaking flies. Believe that particular model is the fastest 2.5" spindle drive out on the market.

Post by **Philip** » Fri Dec 06, 2013 12:48 pm

Nah, the Intel already got repurposed last night to my HTPC for faster boots

As far as SSDs for firewalls/appliances - First, they should be using enterprise quality SLC drives. Second, I don't think anyone cares enough to tweak the *nix OS to reduce writes for SSDs, linux does a ton of on-disk logging by default. I have one linux box with the OS on an old SSD (low power NAS rig running Fedora), but I put all the logs in shared memory and a couple of other simple tricks to considerably reduce background disk writes.

Oh, and I'd still slap a SSD on that laptop! Even with a fast 2.5" hdd... Modern SSDs would run cirlcles around it in term of power consumption/speed/shock resistance with comparable reliability. I wouldn't do anything crazy like RAID 0, but SSDs do have their uses and laptops are a very good match imho

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Fri Dec 06, 2013 1:11 pm

Philip wrote: As far as SSDs for firewalls/appliances - First, they should be using enterprise quality SLC drives.

I fully agree with you there...surprisingly we aren't seeing that. If they crash on a client and we rebuild them, we are putting WD RE or Seagate ES drives back in.

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Fri Dec 06, 2013 5:11 pm

YeOldeStonecat wrote:Ooooff....you're a brave man trusting RAID 0 on a computer...with the incredibly..insanely..high failure rates I see on SSDs (unless they're Intel or Crucial....Samsungs seem decent)

i ran my 2 older corsair 128GB drives for about 2 years on raid-0 no trouble, of course i did have weekly images from true image just in case things went poooof LOL

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Fri Dec 06, 2013 7:11 pm

Mark wrote:i ran my 2 older corsair 128GB drives for about 2 years on raid-0 no trouble, of course i did have weekly images from true image just in case things went poooof LOL

You're a lucky guy.
I've run RAID 0 myself with spindle drives in the past. Just on gaming rig...so no loss if it went tango uniform.
But with SSDs I see sheer volumes of failures. Doing just about 20 years of SMB support, our client list is huge. I'm not basing this on just seeing several failures.

morbidpete · Post by **morbidpete** » Fri Dec 06, 2013 7:22 pm

YeOldeStonecat wrote:You're a lucky guy.
I've run RAID 0 myself with spindle drives in the past. Just on gaming rig...so no loss if it went tango uniform.
But with SSDs I see sheer volumes of failures. Doing just about 20 years of SMB support, our client list is huge. I'm not basing this on just seeing several failures.

I personally am aware of the risk but I have everything using folder redirection so I don't really have to worry about anything.

nightowl · Post by **nightowl** » Wed Dec 11, 2013 3:28 pm

YeOldeStonecat wrote:You're a lucky guy.
I've run RAID 0 myself with spindle drives in the past. Just on gaming rig...so no loss if it went tango uniform.
But with SSDs I see sheer volumes of failures. Doing just about 20 years of SMB support, our client list is huge. I'm not basing this on just seeing several failures.

Been running two intel 330 120 gig SSD's in raid 0 now without a hitch on my rig......get sequential r/w of 900 megabits

. to save the life of the SSD's I modified the registry to use a segate 2 terabyte drive that i use for my program files and user profiles.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Wed Dec 11, 2013 3:55 pm

nightowl wrote:Been running two intel 330 120 gig SSD's in raid 0 now without a hitch on my rig......get sequential r/w of 900 megabits . to save the life of the SSD's I modified the registry to use a segate 2 terabyte drive that i use for my program files and user profiles.

Yeah Intel SSDs (as I mentioned up above) are one of the two brands I'd trust in my own rig.
I've run RAID 0 myself with other drive types...successfully. But with other brands, Kingston, A-Data, Transcend, etc...I see wicked high failure rates with our clients. We had 2x more get RMA'd in the past 2 weeks. They got replaced with enterprise spindle drives, and those RMA'd we got back...will sit on the shelf and collect dust. Already paid for...so I could go snag 'em and use them for free. But I won't.

Post by **Philip** » Wed Dec 11, 2013 4:55 pm

I'd at least use them as swap partitions/ram drives/pagefile/temp files/etc. (something disposable that can benefit from the speed) ! Beats using them as door stops

nightowl · Post by **nightowl** » Thu Dec 12, 2013 4:27 pm

YeOldeStonecat wrote:Yeah Intel SSDs (as I mentioned up above) are one of the two brands I'd trust in my own rig.
I've run RAID 0 myself with other drive types...successfully. But with other brands, Kingston, A-Data, Transcend, etc...I see wicked high failure rates with our clients. We had 2x more get RMA'd in the past 2 weeks. They got replaced with enterprise spindle drives, and those RMA'd we got back...will sit on the shelf and collect dust. Already paid for...so I could go snag 'em and use them for free. But I won't.

which model of ADATA where they? got a couple of clients/co-workers that have the ADATA SX900 128GB so far without any issues.......

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Fri Dec 13, 2013 9:09 am

nightowl wrote:which model of ADATA where they? got a couple of clients/co-workers that have the ADATA SX900 128GB so far without any issues.......

I just looked at the units they shipped us back, SP600 models....they're all black.
The units that failed...I recall them being red housings...unsure of the model.

johnjim · Post by **johnjim** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 10:45 pm

The best is to be backed up, and then download a software used to transfer data.