Questions about Image for Windows

According to the Appendix A, Rapid Start and Rapid Response are supported in "HDD + SSD" configurations, not only in "HDD + mSATA".

So, I suppose these technologies can be configured in a SSD, to obtain the same or similar benefits [and possibly similar problems, as we are seeing] of the HDD+mSATA cache configuration.

 

IFW...is it freeware..?

 

Robin,

I've no intention of using it. I just saw this about the OS having to be on a HD.

 

On second thoughts, possibly not. If a SSD is used, the benefits are already there. Rapid Start seems to be a faster hibernation, but the "normal" hibernation from a SSD should be faster than from a hard disk.

The advantage of a SSD cache (mSATA) is that it provides a level of performance similar to that of a SSD, but with a lower cost. The downside is that there are problems also, as this thread shows.

 

Cruise,

Do you have a Ctrl-I menu at boot time? Maybe this is where you can reset your drive.

 

Dear Robin,

One of the thing most people do is to turn off the hibernation on SSDs. With SSDs starting and shutting down so quickly, allocating 8GB to 16GB for hibernation is wastage of precious storage space.

Best regards,

 

Both my wife and my son have hybrid drives on their computers. 8GB SSDs on front end, and 500GB regular laptop hard drive. The drives are Seagate and they are about 2 years old, and are performing beautifully. No mSATA.

Similar to mSATA but no headaches of mSATA.

Best regards,

 

128GB SSDs in a hard drive enclosure are selling for about $80 retail. I wonder how much these be without a hard drive enclosure (plugin) and supplied to manufacturers. The future of laptops should be 128GB plugin SSD drive with operating system on it and a regular hard drive in the drive bay. mSATA already seems to be outdated.

Best regards,

 

There is another factor: size. I suppose that´s why they put mSATA in expensive ultrabooks.

But there are also desktops with mSATA (one example is the Dell 8500). In these cases probably the cost is more important.

 

The size of plugin SSD is very, very small. Within a year a so, almost most of the laptops will have SSD 128GB plugged in on the motherboard, as the prices are coming down very fast.

My Apple iPAD has 64GB. Very, very thin iPad. My gaming laptop ASUS ROG (Republic of Gaming) came with two drive bays. It has one SSD and one regular hard drive.

Best regards,

 

32GB is too small for Windows 7 to fit. However, with 64GB one can have Windows 7 and then some space for TRIM. With 128GB it is perfect.

Best regards,

 

This suggestion made sense to me, so I did that yesterday (with both DS and IFW). Each backup completed and verified successfully. I next tried to restore the DS backup by using its self-starting DOS restore (from within Windows). The restore ran and seemed to complete successfuly but (ominously) leaving me with a black screen and sure enough upon booting my laptop Windows would not start! So I then inserted my IFD CD and restored the IFW backup - amazingly it worked! - Windows started up and the system was operational!

At this point I'm quite confused and can't explain any of this - I'm just reporting what happened.

 

Cruise,

I can't explain that either. Did DS restore your partition structure?

Did you see my message #130?

 

Brian, I 'told' DS to do a partition structure restore using DS' right-click method, but I have no way of knowing whether or not DS 'obeyed'. I sure wish your user-friendly DS DOS Restore CD would have worked because I don't trust starting the DS restore from within Windows and I trust even less my ability to use the official DS DOS Boot CD!!!

Sorry, somehow I missed post #130, I'll try that next time I boot and let you know. Got to run off now...

Cruise

 

Yes, difficult to know unless you restore the partition structure from last week.

 

As I couldn't get the DS restore to bootup, there was no way of telling...

Cruise

 

Cruise,

Did you have a chance to check if your laptop shows the Intel RAID setup screen on boot-up? The screen where you press Ctrl-I to modify settings?

My new board has that screen, but it's a desktop board.

 

MudCrab, I tried that while booting (twice) and 'no cigar'.

Cruise

 

This was the expected result. It is clear that this HP computer is pre-configured to limit the configuration options available to the user. They rely on the also customized installation medium to solve problems like the one that occurred to Cruise.

 

Cruise,

Have you tried repeatedly pressing Ctrl-I when booting (from the first BIOS screen until the Windows starting screen)? Just curious if it's there and just not displayed.

When looking at the accelerator options in Windows, which mode is it using (Enhanced or Maximized)? In the screenshot you posted previously it was Maximized. Do you know if that was also the mode used before? That means the writes are also cached -- if they don't get written to the hard drive for some reason that would cause corruption.

On my system the BIOS screen has options to control the cache. It also shows if it's in sync. IFD and BIBM show only the hard drive. IFL shows both the SSD and the hard drive. IFW in TBWinPE didn't show any drives until I loaded the driver and then it showed only the hard drive.

 

Ctrl-I doesn't work here! As soon as I start or restart the laptop I am given the option to hit Esc to bring up a Start Menu (one of the menu choices is the press f10 to enter the BIOS). Ctrl-I doesn't do anything at this point either and when I enter the BIOS there isn't anything related to the mSSD.

It is Maximized and as I never attempted to change/manage the Intel RST I suspect it's always been in that mode. Based on your explanation I'd bet that the Maximized Mode's write-caching could be messing-up the HD-mSSD sync when creating hot-images! I would think that setting SRT to Enhanced Mode would be a safer way to operate (especially to ensure reliable image backups) - would you not agree?

 

Yes, I would tend to agree. However, in my testing so far I've not had reliable results. I did mess around with the setup (it's currently running Enhanced) and it's already corrupted itself to the point I had to start over.

Basically, it was working (I had restarted Windows many times, moved the Windows partition, restored the Windows partition, booted into various things, etc.), then it wanted to run chkdsk when Windows started. After that, it went downhill fast. chkdsk found many errors and tried to fix them, Windows was broken where parts wouldn't work correctly, chkdsk would then not even finish, but just hung. I even tried disabling the cache from Windows using the Intel program and that failed (within seconds, Explorer crashed, Task Manager crashed, and trying to restart Windows resulted in a BSOD). From that point Windows wouldn't even start back up successfully.

I currently have it reset to run some more tests later. I really don't have any good idea what started the problems since it was booting into Windows okay up to that point. In any case, I don't see what I did that would have caused the "Enhanced" cache to have problems and I didn't do anything that would have caused any problems on a "normal" system.

 

MudCrab,

That sure sounds buggy to me! Did those events impact your ability to restore an IFW backup?

Cruise

 

So far, I would pick to use a regular SSD over an SRT setup. I don't think it's worth the risk.

There was no problem doing the restores. However, I couldn't really test anything because the backup was created after the corruption had already started.

 

MudCrab,

If you turn Acceleration off can you see the mSATA card as a separate partition in Disk Management?