Useful SSD Articles - Part 2

Don't use the guide for changing default folder locations, I use this all the time for multi hdd/partitions.

1. Once setup and at the desktop, don't bother doing any customisation, but start up Computer Management via Control Panel\System and Security\Administrative Tools.

2. Local Users And Groups\Users, select Administrator and enable the account.

3. Reboot.

4. Logon as Administrator, no password, go into normal User Account management and delete the account created during setup and any and all files.

5. Startup Regedit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

6. Change the ProfilesDirectory from %SystemDrive%\Users to for example D:\Users.

7. Close down regedit and reboot.

8. Logon as Administrator and create a user account with admin privileges.

9. Logoff and logon using new account and let system create profile, which is now on your D: drive which of course now the default location for all your personal files.

10. Start up Computer Management via Control Panel\System and Security\Administrative Tools.

11. Local Users And Groups\Users, select Administrator and disable the account. Leaving this enabled is a big security risk !!!

Viola.

Things like automatic drive defragmentation with Vista does nothing for SSDs except to slow them down.

Properly optimized, even low cost 2007 generation SSDs test out as equivalent to a 7200 rpm consumer grade drive, and typical SSDs made in 2008 or later tend to outperform mechanical hard drives.

The tests done here have done nothing to "tweak" the OS to remove design hindrances to SSD performance, and thus, have no validity or technical merit.

Currently, TRIM is still not supported by RAID between two SSD. It is supported with 1 - SSD (non-RAID) & 2 - HDD's in RAID. There is talk that Intel is working on a updated RST to give TRIM support in RAID. Until than, you would have to rely on the firmware's Garbage Collection to do the job.

Here is an article on this subject on failure rates by PCWorld, which shows they are very close to the same rate as mechanical drives. http://www.pcworld.com/businesscen [...] _says.html

The article references this French site which breaks the numbers down more... http://www.hardware.fr/articles/81 [...] sants.html

Simply one work - Vow & thank q

This Tip : " Solid State Drive (SSD) Tweaks for Windows 7" has answered my question i posted a week ago on this form -

My SSD OCZ Vertex 2 - windows rating (WEI) was dropped from 7.4 to 5.9. all of sudden my disk tranfer rate was 5.9, i mean WTF - i din know what happened. tried to check everthing from scrath and its not working - following some tips there and i re ran my test and is back to 7.4 again ---

Thanks u TOM - ur the best

I just got my first SSD coming from an HDD and it's amazing for booting up. That alone makes it worth it, even if you get a small one.


here's my review with some demos on loadtimes for my sata II ocz vertex plus which is 190mb write (6x faster than average HDD ) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeyQCSSXnXU

Nice article, thank for posting knowledgeable information and overview.

Nice guides.

My SSD is getting sorted tonight.

Thanks

http://ssd.mooo.com

the SSD and the HDD are not even related (except the i/o port (SATA III and AHCI/IDE)

one is rotating memory. (imagine the head moving from track 0 to track max to access the swap file , slowly.....100 times more so.)

the SSD is a EEPROM FLASH memory , made up of 960gig , Floating gate, EEPROM Flash transistors. (120GB SSD) the gates are charged or uncharged.
reading the gates on Flash transistors has always been fast, but discharging them ,, in the early days , causes damage, the first EEPROM only lasted 100 writes and died.

Windows prior to Vista and W7 do not protect the SSD at all. so dont run XP. (sure it runs, but dont run RIGHT !)
But W7 still thrashes the HDD, or things like Antivirus, and csrss.exe(w7) ,etc.

i use this prog to see this effect easy. free. (im sure there are better progs(apps)...)

http://www.itsth.com/en/produkte/W [...] p?fromwmcd

another great monitor program is famous, security task manager , that shows all processes, not blind like windows, task manager does. (i have a full license)

The OS uses the HDD for many reasons , and some are to over come the horrible slowness of HDD . It is slow... (im on SSD as i type, and FF loads FAST !)
Many of the killer processes are not even windows caused, AV/skype/FreeDNS tracker/Firefox / COMODO ,etc....
Be sure to stop all processes you added to the system to see what windows really does by its lonesome.... do not assume.... (run msconfig)

The What needs to be done in W7, (IMHO) is have an agent that allows me to set up a ram disk in memory that lets windows thrash away there.
I have that now, for the swap page (pagefile.sys) see my sig. url for links to that free software .
Put the internet cache there, and lots of other things, that are not needing permanent storage on SSD. (lots of ways to tune there are, do not give up)

The windows OS , knows the HDD is slow and has , fast load drivers setup and other things (caches) to overcome HDD latencies. (gross it is)
Using a SSD , many of those Ideas, are not valid, and in fact harmful to a SSD. 1,000,000 hits, is the spec. so avoid that. ( do you leave PC on when at sleep?)

I am sure that soon, there will be vast improvement in this area, W8? and will have a wizard to let you decide. ( i can only hope, MS are listening? hah)
Life or convenience? (eg: do you want to store history permanently here... or do you want max SSD life. it asks....)

See the 18 steps for tuning on my page (i just have a link to the best page , not mine, on tuning....)
my page is to cover , how to install SSD, the hard way. (adding easy way soon, besides, boot , install, take nap, run)
a fresh install is easy, childs play if you mobo is not an antique and if it is , i have solution for that . (there are only 2 solutions)

I was a system integrator. and certified ET, and am retired now. If you have questions, ask. I worked Intel for 6 years, testing , yes, memories.
cheers

Thanks for the feedback Les...

I just added your new story on "Garbage Collection and TRIM in SSDs Explained – An SSD Primer" today, which would be very useful for readers.

hey guys, are these guides still appropriate? especially this one: Solid State Drive (SSD) Tweaks for Windows 7


i know these had been written a few years ago, not sure if it still applied.


thanks