A little help here please!

[idata]

Hi, I've just got a nice little X25-V SSD drive and reinstalled windows 7 on it this morning. Its only now that I realise that maybe I should have read a bit more before installing the OS. I was expecting Windows 7 to be up to the task.

- I didnt activate AHCI on my BIOS before installing windows 7,

- My drive got a older version B firmware,

- Now when I try to install Intel Matrix Storage controllers, It give me a "your computer does not meet the required specifications..." message.

I noticed that Superfetch and prefetching are ON in regedit. (I've turned them off)

I dont know if TRIM is working at all.

What would be the next steps for me to do? reinstall Windows 7 I guess... But can someone point me the importants stuff to do before and after the installation?

Thanks in advance

EDIT: My board is MSI p55m-gd45.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/17789

[idata]

First off...check into that firmware upgrade and then re-install Win 7.

You can read from The SSD Review below which will assist with optimizations for the SSD but be aware, Windows does not always shut the stuff off that it is supposed to so you may have to do it yourself.

Les

http://www.thessdreview.blogspot.com The SSD Review

[idata]

The Matrix Storage refuses to install when you're in IDE mode. You should at least be running in AHCI mode. The Matrix will install under AHCI but it will be rather useless because it's intended for RAID. Using the Matrix disk drivers alone in AHCI mode give you little, if any, advantage over the standard Microsoft-supplied drivers. Only when you're running RAID will the Matrix show its full power.

Matrix is an excellent and extremely fast set of drivers but as said it was intended for RAID, and then only for real RAID arrays with at least two drives. Using a single, non-RAID member drive is possible but you cannot activate the full power of the Matrix Write Cache.

Unless you do the AHCI registry hack (Google it up), the simple way is to first set your BIOS to AHCI and then reinstall Windows.

Confusing, I'm sure. If you just want quick start: (1) set your BIOS to AHCI, (2) install Windows 7 and (3) install the Matrix drivers. Done.

[idata]

Thanks both of you for the fast answers. Ok, I did install the latest driver with no real change in speed whatsoever and did the AHCI hack in the registry. That gave me a slight boost in speed. However I get an annoying warning while starting the computer that no drives was found.

Now what bother me is the strange behavior of my drive in HD Tune, check here to see what I mean;

Before and after AHCI and driver update, Its the same. Why dont I have a constant speed??

Also do you think windows is well aligned on the partition? Windows 7 ultimate created another 100mb partition on the disk...

I can live with the Registry hack slight delay while booting the computer but if you feel I could get more stable speed by reinstalling windows, I would like to know.

Thanks!

[vt5]

Hi Bobsley12, if you haven't gone far with your win7 installation, suggest to reinstall with AHCI in BIOS and install rapid storage technology driver 9.6 (http://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=eng&ProductFamily=Chipsets&ProductLine=Chipse...)

you can also install SSD toolbox (http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=18455&lang=eng) to check if there's anything wrong with your SSD.