Windows 7 on Samsung Solid State Hard Drive

[fatboydel]

Just bought a Novatech Barebone Bundle - Intel Core i5 750 - 4GB DDR3 1600Mhz - Intel P55 Motherboard - Antec Nine Hundred II Case & 650w PSU & a pair of Sapphire 5770 to use crossfire.

In addition I have purchased a Samsung PB22-J 64GB 2.5" SATA-II MLC Solid State Hard Drive and would like to install Windows 7 to this. Not having built a PC for a long time will the SSHD be recognised at boot up or do I need to load drivers etc?

The disk was supplied without any drivers, so I am assuming the system will recognise it.

Can anyone confirm this for me?:confused:

[GIBBO]

Hi there

It should recognise the drive without issue.

If you do have issues look for an option in your motherboard BIOS in regards to IDE/SATA controller and change it from SATA mode to Legacy if you have any trouble with Windows 7 seeing the drive on first boot from CD to install Windows.

Once you have formatted the HDD and windows has copied pre-installation files over when it resets make sure you change this back to SATA mode in the BIOS before Windows installs and sets everything up. :)

[fatboydel]

Does that mean I have to catch it as it re-boots during the windows install?

[GIBBO]

Does that mean I have to catch it as it re-boots during the windows install?

Hi there

Yes, but before you going doing any of the above dont change anything as chances are it may just work without you needing to do any of the above. :)

[Mike]

Don't forget to turn defragmentation off as windows 7 does not do this automatically to my knowledge (and believe me, you'll want to turn it off to stop it aging your solid state drive):

Click START
Type dfrgui.exe and press ENTER
Click Configure Schedule...
*Untick* Run on a schedule (recommended)
Click OK and then Close

BTW the drive should install fine without any special steps needing to be taken (as Gibbo says) as long as it is in IDE or AHCI mode. It's only with RAID that Windows 7 needs help. The fact that you are running a solid state drive will not make a jot of difference :)

[GIBBO]

Don't forget to turn defragmentation off as windows 7 does not do this automatically to my knowledge (and believe me, you'll want to turn it off to stop if aging your solid state drive):

Click START
Type dfrgui.exe and press ENTER
Click Configure Schedule...
*Untick* Run on a schedule (recommended)
Click OK and then Close

Hi there

Just checked and yep you are right you need to do as you said above.

[Mike]

LOL you caught me halfway through editing my post :D

[LuckyNV]

Forgot about auto-defrag, I'm running 2 sammy SSDs (the older SLC deal sometime ago on NT) with Intel controller in RAID 0, I went to the dfrgui.exe and it looks like Win7 has already disabled defragging for the SSD RAID 0 set, my other drives show defrag being run before, and I my SSDs do not show up in the schedule list.

The drives do not support TRIM to my knowledge, so is this a new thing with Win7 or is it the RAID 0?

edit - ok according to this article Win7 will automatically disable auto defrag on detection of an SSD
http://apcmag.com/windows_7_gets_ssdfriendly.htm
other things like Win7 improving the Write speeds looks to be true according to the ATTO benchmark I ran

another good read
http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx
they state pagefile should be on SSDs

[Mike]

Windows 7 64bit Ultimate Retail didn't unselect defrag for me automatically - I had to disable it myself. Even if it might decide to do it it is best to double check - better safe than sorry imo.

[LuckyNV]

according to the article Win7 tests the drives and disables defrag for that drive if it achieves a certain performance level



Will disk defragmentation be disabled by default on SSDs?
Yes. The automatic scheduling of defragmentation will exclude partitions on devices that declare themselves as SSDs. Additionally, if the system disk has random read performance characteristics above the threshold of 8 MB/sec, then it too will be excluded. The threshold was determined by internal analysis.
The random read threshold test was added to the final product to address the fact that few SSDs on the market today properly identify themselves as SSDs. 8 MB/sec is a relatively conservative rate. While none of our tested HDDs could approach 8 MB/sec, all of our tested SSDs exceeded that threshold. SSD performance ranged between 11 MB/sec and 130 MB/sec. Of the 182 HDDs tested, only 6 configurations managed to exceed 2 MB/sec on our random read test. The other 176 ranged between 0.8 MB/sec and 1.6 MB/sec.


No specific details but my SSD random reads for 4k file size is over 20MB/sec which is why defrag was auto disabled, I would check that your SSD is performing properly, I use CrystaldiskMark
http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskMark/index-e.html

[Mike]

It's probably down to my RAID card then (I have only got one x16 slot and that's in use so have to use a x1 one).

I wonder if Microsoft have made a recent change? 'cause we got visited by Microsoft some months back and I asked one of their tech guys this exact question. The fellow advised that OEM preinstallations would detect the presence of SSDs, but on-the-spot OEM / retail installations would not.

[LuckyNV]

you should give my 2nd link a good read, its an MSDN Win7 blog entry all about SSDs and Win7 :)