Any experience with boot times Windows 7 x64 with Intel SSD X25-M G2?

[idata]

Hello,

I would like to have some insight about the boot times from windows 7 when Postville 80Gb SSD is used.

I have installed Win 7 x64 on the postville G2 and I am a bit surprised with the boot times I get. From Forums and reviews about Postville SSD, I have read that the boot time would be around 20 sec. I get 50-60 sec from the time I push the on button and the time I get an 'up and running cursor'. Is this normal. Below you will find my crystal disk mark data, which I think are in line with I have read from this community.

I run it in IDE mode and there are very few software installed. I have deactivated auto defrag and indexing, windows search service and swap file. I have successfully installed the 02HD firmware version.

Could you please help me on this,

Thanks a lot

Hypra

[idata]

Thanks a lot for all your input. As I understand all of you, I will try the following:

1. Go to AHCI mode

2. Get Crystalmark 3.0B to get more insight

3. Get more insight about boot times after MB startup

However, I still have 2 questions.

1. Go to AHCI mode with Intel Chipset Drivers. Could you please give me some info on how to enable iaStor.sys and iaStorV.sys drivers. Does someone have some link to share to help me on this?

2. Some of you think I have other problems. Do you have any idea or in which direction I could search on?

Anyway, thanks a lot for this already very helpful ideas.

[idata]

If you already installed W7 then you have to use the registry tweak that tfield98 mentioned above to switch to AHCI. After the registry change you can change the SATA setting in your BIOS to AHCI. Out of personal experience I can tell you that W7 will crash after startup if you forget the registry tweak. Here's the Microsoft link:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

Also you don't need the Intel drivers. I never touched the standard windows 7 drivers and am happily running in AHCI mode. Just search the forum there are a few guides on how to switch to AHCI. But doing the registry change and then switching to AHCI in BIOS is basicly it.

Last but not least:power-on time consists of BIOS loading and Windows loading. If your BIOS takes 30 seconds until it begins loading Windows the fastest drive will not help you a lot. Often the BIOS has options to make BIOS loading faster. For me it helped to disable onboard IDE (which was run by an additional Marvel? chip) and other stuff I did not use, it all shaves a few seconds of the power-on time.

[idata]

I have now switched to AHCI mode. I have done the regedit twxeaks on mhaci.sys but also on IastorV.sys entries.

Below my benchmark results:

---------------------------------------------------------------

CrystalDiskMark 3.0 x64 Beta2 (C) 2007-2009 hiyohiyo Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/---------------------------------------------------------------

Sequential Read : 261.002 MB/s

Sequential Write : 84.352 MB/s Random Read 512KB : 198.799 MB/s Random Write 512KB : 86.875 MB/s Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 21.577 MB/s [ 5267.7 IOPS] Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 47.490 MB/s [ 11594.2 IOPS] Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 159.010 MB/s [ 38820.8 IOPS] Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 83.663 MB/s [ 20425.6 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [C: Used 25.5% (18.9/74.4 GB)]

Date : 2009/12/11 20:01:46 OS : Windows 7 Home Premium Edition [6.1 Build 7600] (x64)

I have also fine-tuned my Bios to help him start faster. Now I get 35 seconds from on-button to win7 up and running.

Two comments though:

1. I have write speeds which I think are a bit on the low side compared to results published in this discussion

2. While starting up Win7, I get a black screen (not BSOD) for about 5-10 seconds after the Microsoft 'progress bar' just before the logon/welcome screen. Did you also observe such a behaviour and if yes, do you know why?

Thanks a lot again for your contributions

[idata]

35 second including the bios is pretty good... usually people count the time from the end of the bios... (and most stop the time as soon as the background pop even if the cpu is actually still thinking and they wouldn't have control on the pc yet).

if i include my bios i probably more around the 40 sec since even if i set up the fastest bios i can (fast bios in bios setup) it still take time i would say between 15-20 sec and the windows 20-25 so more or less 17.5bios+22.5 usually 40 sec

and yes i have 3/4 second of black screen after the window7 symbol leave before to see the background of my OS btw u can check on youtube there is tons of people that make video of w7 startup with SSD... don't count on me of doing something that useless but I check them out and the result are pretty much similar to what we are experimenting

[idata]

I have write speeds which I think are a bit on the low side compared to results published in this discussion

Your write speeds appear spot on to me for an X25-M G2 80GB. Are you sure you're comparing to other 80GB's? The 160GB's have faster write speeds. If anything, maybe your random write 4kb speed is a tad slower than other 80GB's, but not by that much.

Edit: actually looking through the thread again, your 4kb write speed isn't so bad either!