How do I check to confirm that my 320 Series 160Gb SSD is truly optimized after installation?

[CBaro]

I have read FAQ... viewed the 3 videos on SSD and im still unsure about if my recently installed Intel 320 Series 160GB is optimized to work smoothly and with top reading and writing speeds.

I am running Windows 7 Home 64-bit. I understand that TRIM sets itself automatically, and also that Win 7 disables automatic defragging(not good for SSDs)

1. Is the Windows 7 the best driver for Intel 320? OR ...

2. does Intel recommend to install the Intel driver?

2.1 If so how do I install the Intel one?

The highest read-write speeds achieved are:

Seq Read:250.1 Mb/s Write 171.2 Mb/s

512 K 129.7 172.0

4 K 19.85 38.87

4 K QD32 21.05 56.87

I would like opinions about the read-write numbers above. How do they fare against other 320 users in here.

I would appreciate specific instructions to better optimize the 320 should it need further tinkering with.

Thank you

[idata]

Is your 320 your Windows (OS) drive, or not?

Did you install Windows on the PC or SSD with the SATA mode set to AHCI in the BIOS?

What kind of PC do you have? What CPU and mother board, or PC manufacture?

Do you use the Intel SSD Toolbox software?

Regarding Window 7 as "the best driver", if you did not install a SATA controller driver yourself, you'll have a Windows driver installed automatically, but which one depends on the SATA mode I mentioned above. The Intel driver can be installed only if you have an Intel CPU and Chipset mother board.

Your test results look good, but you didn't mention which benchmark that is.

Windows does not always recognize a SSD, and may not turn off defrag. Easily checked, unset the scheduled defrag if necessary.

All this information is needed before your question can be answered to any degree.

[CBaro]

Hi parsec, thank you for responding

I will try to report as bes I can what is my current situation:

I am not too knowledgeable so i try to read a lot, ask many questions and do things on my own sometimes very roughly dealt with and sometimes I base my actions on trying to act as safely as I can.

My setup is not to "by the books", you may even find it absurd.

So here it is

I purchased from Dell Computers in January 2010 a boxed machine with the following specs:

Dell Studio 540 Desktop. with Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive with Windows 7 Home 64bit pre-installed

It comes with Intel Duo Quad Core Q9550 non hyperthreaded cores.2.83Mhz with 2x2 GB PC2 Dual 6400 Ram 240 pins Dual Channel. nVidia 240GTS video card.The motherboard is a no-name Dell one which obviously supports Intel Chipset

I customized it with a Hauppage WinTV 1250 single TV tuner Card.

Given the use i give this PC mostly... Chat Online, Web surfing, TV watching and saving shows i added External HDD inside a SansDigital 4bay External Enclosure. It came with a eSata card which I personally installed to one of the ports at the back of the PC tower.

it is a High Point Rocket Raid 622. For storage purposes I populated the 4 bays with..

- 1 SAMSUNG Spinpoint F4EG HD155UI 1.5TB 5400 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5"- 1 WD FASS 2001 2TB Caviar Black Sata III.6.0Mb/s 7200 RPM 64 MB Cache 3.5"

- 1 WD1002FAEX 1TB Caviar Black Sata 6.0Gb/s 7200 RPM 64MB Cache 3.5"

- 1 Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.C HDS721010CLA332 1TB Sata 3Gb/s 7200 RPM 32MB buffer 3.5"

- 1 WD20EARS Caviar Green 2TB SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive 7200 RPM 64MB Cache 3.5"

Recently I removed the original WD 500GB Caviar Blue drive and replaced it with the Hitachi 1TB. as Disk 0

The 500GB is now out of the loop, when I purchased the Intel Series 320, which went as Disk 1 in the totem pole inside the PC (which by the way allows just for 2 disks...in my case the Intel 320 SSD + the Hitachi 1TB)

Now my system to make sure that if any disk dies. I have installed the Win 7 64bit on 4 different drives..

The original pre-installed on the

a. 500GB WD Blue

b. the Hitachi Deskstar

c. the WD 1TB FAEX

and finally on the

d. SSD Intel 320

Regarding your question: I did install the OS on the SSD on the defaulted BIOS. So I wouldnt know what to respond to you in terms of iis it installed with the SATA mode set to AHCI in the BIOS OR NOT.... How could I check about that?

The figures i reported were at the beginning when I first installed the SSD and they came from CrystalDiskMark readings. Right now the reading shows in the same order:

Set for readings of 1000MB

Read and Write in Mb/s starting with Sequential are

190.6 147.6

94.11 125.1

12.23 26.82

18.62 39.92

Hope this will now suffice for you to offer some good advice to answer my concerns about Read and Write SSD speeds and fully customize SSD to operate at its very best ;eve;.

.

Thank you very much

[idata]

You don't need to apologize to me or anyone else about your PC, if it works for you that is all that matters.

Only two SATA ports on the Dell board? I can see why you added the external drive enclosure.

You can check if your board will run in AHCI mode in the BIOS. I don't know Dell's BIOS style at all, so you'll need to find it. It might be under "Onboard Devices", "Storage", anything that has "SATA" in it, who knows. Whatever it is, it likely is set to IDE now, and was when you installed Windows. All in one PCs like your Dell tend to have restricted BIOS settings, so you may not have this option. It's not a disaster if you don't. If you find this and you do have the AHCI option, DO NOT just change to it! If you do and then boot, the PC will blue screen. More about that later, depending on what you find in your BIOS.

If you are not using the Intel SSD Toolbox now, download it for free here: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=18455&ProdId=3338&lang=eng&OSVersion=... http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=18455&ProdId=3338&lang=eng&OSVersion=...

Please read the installation guide, although it should install easily. Using it will allow you to optimize your PC for a SSD, and also run the manual TRIM tool (SSD Optimizer) to improve your SSDs performance. You can tune your PC for a SSD much easier with it than anything else, but it can't do a couple things. Using an Intel SSD without this program is not essential, but I wouldn't consider not using it.

As long as your 320 is NOT in the external enclosure, you'll be able to work with it much easier. How much free space do you have on it? Have you ever run a Windows Disk Cleanup on it?

Since all your OS copies on the other drives were installed in IDE mode, we might not bother changing to AHCI mode, since you'd either need to remember to change back to IDE if you use one of them, or change each OS copy for use in AHCI mode. The latter is not that hard really, but we'll see.