SSD's, Can someone clear things up for me?

[Platinum]

The web seems to be a mess of different / conflicting information, so thought I would ask the knowledgeable people here at Hexus

So little background of the issues I have had so far.

First SSD I bought I think was a corsair F180, could be a F160 though, cant see that there is any difference on there site?

So installed Windows 7, patched up ect and assumed all would be well, after all Windows 7 should detect a SSD right?, Seems this was not the case, after a month or so of use I found that Windows was still defragging the drive on a weekly basis as per the schedule it sets up on install.
So fail I think, turn that off and check trim status, that's disabled as well, turn that on and think all is well.
After installing the latest Intel storage driver its now recodnised as a SSD and Defrag wont load, not even for my mechanical drives, is this normal?
Installed crystalmarks SDD check and it says 68% health?, has Microsoft fubared my drive?

Then yesterday I got my C300 64gb drive for use in my lan pc, Installed Vista (yes I know but I have a legit licence), installed SP2 and all updates and check defrag and surprise surprise its enabled, I disable it and close, then check again and its enabled again, a few attempts and it stays disabled.
Problem now is, the way I used to check trim on W7 doenst work on Vista (fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify), anyone know how to check on Vista?

So other than the couple of questions above I wanted to know if there was a checklist for installing Windows 7 / Vista on a SSD? I guess a lot of people will just install and assume all is well and end up with a screwed / slow drive in a year or so?

Do you still get performance degradation with Trim enabled?

Should superfetch be disabled?

Also people say the swap file should be turned off, is this right?

Cheers people

[Splash]

Vista doesn't have TRIM support.

[Platinum]

Really? I thought it was added?

[Terbinator]

Vista doesn't have TRIM support.

This^.

[Platinum]

Hmm it seems the C300 may have built in trim so that may not be a issue, Google is failing me though, still its just a media / lan box so wont be getting hammered much anyhow.
Any thoughts on the other questions?

[listy]

Hmm it seems the C300 may have built in trim so that may not be a issue, Google is failing me though, still its just a media / lan box so wont be getting hammered much anyhow.
Any thoughts on the other questions?

format c: sorry had to (this was a gameon thing)

[kalniel]

So installed Windows 7, patched up ect and assumed all would be well, after all Windows 7 should detect a SSD right?, Seems this was not the case, after a month or so of use I found that Windows was still defragging the drive on a weekly basis as per the schedule it sets up on install.
So fail I think, turn that off and check trim status, that's disabled as well, turn that on and think all is well.
After installing the latest Intel storage driver its now recodnised as a SSD and Defrag wont load, not even for my mechanical drives, is this normal?
Installed crystalmarks SDD check and it says 68% health?, has Microsoft fubared my drive?

I have a corsair F120. I installed it and Win 7 detected it properly and enabled trim, and disabled defrag OF THE SSD - all my mechanical drives were set to defrag normally still. So no problems at all here. Something's wrong in your case - could be your own fiddling, or maybe the drive isn't correctly advertising it's capabilities to Windows. Check with Corsair support - you might need a firmware upgrade.

Then yesterday I got my C300 64gb drive for use in my lan pc, Installed Vista (yes I know but I have a legit licence), installed SP2 and all updates and check defrag and surprise surprise its enabled, I disable it and close, then check again and its enabled again, a few attempts and it stays disabled.
Problem now is, the way I used to check trim on W7 doenst work on Vista (fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify), anyone know how to check on Vista?

So other than the couple of questions above I wanted to know if there was a checklist for installing Windows 7 / Vista on a SSD? I guess a lot of people will just install and assume all is well and end up with a screwed / slow drive in a year or so?

As mentioned, Vista doesn't support SSDs anything like as nicely as Win 7 does. Yours is the first time I've ever heard of any problems - 99% of the time win 7 will take care of it all.

Do you still get performance degradation with Trim enabled?

Depends how good the drive's trim is, it's sometimes a performance compromise.

Should superfetch be disabled?

Doesn't matter, but win 7 will turn it off automatically.

Also people say the swap file should be turned off, is this right?

No.

Hmm it seems the C300 may have built in trim

No, it doesn't. It has garbage collection which goes some way to restoring performance if you can do some big sequential operations (copy then delete a huge video file for example), but that's nothing like as effective as Trim.

More info on win7 and SSDs:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2...rives-and.aspx

[Platinum]

Wierd, tempted to do a reinstall and try again as Superfetch was enabled when I checked last night, windows 7 did nothing once it detected I had a SSD.
Perhaps its because the SSD is on a older firmware?

[kalniel]

Wierd, tempted to do a reinstall and try again as Superfetch was enabled when I checked last night, windows 7 did nothing once it detected I had a SSD.
Perhaps its because the SSD is on a older firmware?

According to the blog I linked (in edit) some older drives have problems with certain operations so it's enabled for them. Definitely check the firmware, as it might boost performance and allow windows to disable superfetch. But it's not a biggie either way. (Just checked and it's on manual but not started for me).

[GoNz0]

check the controllers in ahci or raid mode and not IDE or it may not detect it as SSD.

i wouldn't worry about superfetch, seems to happen to me as well iirc.

[jim]

I have a corsair F120. I installed it and Win 7 detected it properly and enabled trim, and disabled defrag OF THE SSD - all my mechanical drives were set to defrag normally still

How do you tell which drives are defragging and which aren't?

[kalniel]

How do you tell which drives are defragging and which aren't?

Go to the defrag tool. Mine says 'Never run' for the SSD last run date, while my mechanical drives have the last run date listed.

Going to the scheduler and select disks also shows that I can't select the SSD partition, I can only select mechanical drive petitions.

[jim]

Ah, thanks for that. My mechanical drive hasn't been defragged for some reason, so that's running. Same situation as you on the SSD, thankfully

[phurbs]

check the controllers in ahci or raid mode and not IDE or it may not detect it as SSD.

i wouldn't worry about superfetch, seems to happen to me as well iirc.

Can you expain how one would do this? I have just got an SSD and I beleive it is running on IDE mode . .

[jim]

It's done via the BIOS, check whether your SATA ports are set to RAID/AHCI or legacy IDE emulation. If it's set up wrong, the only real way to sort it out is to reconfigure for AHCI then reinstall Windows.

[mrt9888]

You won't need to reinstall Windows, theres a guide on this forum or you could google how to set windows to ahci.