HDDs vs SSDs

Installed the SSD yesterday. It's looking good although I made some initial mistakes. Ive always had my HDs on SATA ports 0 and 2. The SSD was plugged into port 3.

A WinXP image was restored to the SSD. I'm using BIBM as the boot manager. Boot time of WinXP from the SSD was double the old boot time. This was related to a 90 second delay in the POST.

I re-ordered the SATA cables and put the SSD on port 0 and the 90 second delay has gone. Everything works fine. I now have restored WinXP and Win7 images to the SSD and I can later compare their performance with the originals on the old HDs.

So at present, 2 OS on HD0 (the SSD) and 30 OS on HD1.

 

Dear Brian,

Excellent news, keep us posted.

Best regards,

 

Bought my very first SSD 3 weeks ago for my laptop. A 256GB Crucial M4 drive. I'm not techie enough to know all the subtleties between brands, controllers, firmwares, etc. I just bought the drive that was on special, upgraded it to the latest firmware then restore my machine with Macrium Reflect on the new SSD.

The laptop is screaaaaaaming fast now! Boot up in 15 seconds or less. Then all softwares are extremely responsive. Fast to start and fast to respond. I totally do not regret the purchase. I can bring my laptop to a meeting and have everything up in seconds instead of waiting for a bootup. It sure makes a huge difference.

At 256GB, it has plenty of room to hold the main data. I have VMWare virtual machines, but they're on external SATA drives.

 

Marc,

What is your start point? Power on?

My desktop takes 15 seconds before the Dell splash screen disappears. POST and OS loading still to follow.

 

I have a bootup password so I measure the time from when I enter that password.

 

What is your time from Power ON? Mine is 56 seconds for WinXP. It was almost double that before. I'll measure the load time from my boot manager.

 

I have a 128GB Crucial M4, and it is genuine 128GB rather than 120GB. I paid $125 for it about 2 months ago on sale. Today, it is $90 on sale at Buy.com

Blazing fast!

 

That'd be hard to measure because of my required intervention to enter the bootup password. I have QuickBoot enabled (it is a Dell Precision laptop) so at the most I estimate 10 seconds before the password prompt comes up.

After that it is very fast to get to the Windows 7 domain logon screen (another password to enter). Then it is again very fast to load the desktop and all the tools I have on auto-start.

I'd say I don't have to wait more than 30 seconds total, but it's hard to get an accurate number.

 

Got the 256GB for $180 at NCIX (no mail in rebate crap). The prices have come down very nicely and I thought it was a good time to make the jump.

And don't worry... I don't have RollbackRX on it.

 

From my boot manager (BIBM), WinXP takes 35 seconds to fully load and Win7 takes 30 seconds. Considerably longer than your laptop but my Dell is over 5 years old. I'm not complaining.

 

The boot time between different brands of SSDs is very minor and insignificant. The system rating for my Intel 520 showed 6.7 in the gaming laptop, but when I moved it to a lower spec laptop it showed 6.4 only.

Best regards,

 

My laptop came with AHCI disabled. When I enabled it, it made a big difference. Right now, I didn't do any strong stopwatch measurement. It's all about estimation and how it feels to me.

Quite honestly, the difference is so dramatic from the stock HDD that I am happy regardless if I'm missing 5 or 10 seconds.

 

LOL!

Best regards,

 

@ Brian,

You need to install the Intel Toolbox and go with its recommendations.

@ Brian and MarcP,

Both of you need to install the latest Intel RSTL driver.

Best regards,

 

Tree,

Not from what I've seen so far. I imaged my SSD Win7 and my HD Win7 using IFW with standard compression. The target was another internal HD. Imaging times were the same. Within a few seconds.

 

alladin, yes I've done that.

What's that?

 

@ Brian and MarcP,

Both of you need to install the latest Intel RSTL driver.

Link: http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/highlights/chpsts/imsm/

Best regards,

 

Thanks for the link. I have an older copy of those drivers and never thought of updating them. I'll check them out.

 

Hopefully, you have enabled the ACHI in your BIOS. If you did, then you have a choice to use achi.sys or iaStor.sys (Intel RSTL) driver. The majority of tech personnel prefers the Intel RSTL.

Best regards,

 

You are welcome!

On my Lenovo desktop, they have their own version of Intel RSTL and it is faster than the stock one.

Best regards,

 

aladdin,

Intel drivers installed. My BIOS does use AHCI.

 

Excellent!

Enjoy your new acquisition and toy!

Best regards,

 

It's only a third full. I'll have to clone a few more OS from HD1 to the SSD but that doesn't need to be done today.

 

Basically, your SSD is 120GB (111GB Formatted). You need to leave about 1/3 to 1/4 empty for TRIM (garbage collection) and Windows to work properly.

Best regards,

 

Do you mean a 1/4 in each partition or 1/4 of the drive. Let's say I have a 30 GB partition and 80 GB of unallocated space. Where does the 1/4 apply?