New to Intel X25-M Gen 2 SSD, some questions

[idata]

Hi,

getting my Intel X25-M Gen 2 SSD in 2 days. I have windows 7 currently installed on a normal HD and I was wondering if I can use a partition copy program like Acronis to copy it over to the new SSD without any issues?

Also browsing though here it looks like Windows 7 does not do a lot of the things its supposed to do when an SSD is used as the system drive (disable prefetch, trim etc). Is this really the case?

Anything else I should know or configure? I have a core 2 due with a Intel 975X/Intel ICH7R motherboard Asus P5W DH Deluxe  

[idata]

I can't speak to your plan to copy partitions. Personally, I would install fresh on the new SSD when it comes, but you're certainly free to try the move.

For me, Win7 doesn't disable defrag altogether, but it clearly blacklists/ignores the SSD and just defrags my spinning disks. I disabled superfetch right after installing, so I don't know if Win7 would have properly disabled it for the SSD.

I happen to have the same motherboard as you and have been using Win7 64-bit, so I can offer you information that got TRIM working for me.

First of all, go into the P5W DH Deluxe BIOS and make a note of any important custom settings, then update your motherboard firmware to 3001 (or at least make sure it's reasonably recent, say 2801 or above). Re-apply your settings if necesary (mine were saved going from 2901 to 3001).

Next, download the latest Intel G2 firmware and put it on a CD or USB bootable key. In the BIOS again, set the onboard SATA controller to normal mode (can't remember exactly what it's called, but it's not RAID and not AHCI). Ensure the system is set to boot first from CD or USB key, and flash your SSD firmware to the latest.

Install (or copy?) Windows 7 onto the SSD.

After completing the full install, reboot and set the SATA controller for AHCI mode in the BIOS.

Now go into Control Panel --> Device Manager and "View --> Devices by Connection", then search for the SSD. For me, the motherboard's SATA controller kept coming up as an Intel ...blah blah blah... something or other controller. If you go into the controller's properties and view driver details, you'll notice that the controller does not list msahci.sys but lists instead intelide.sys (or something like that) as one of the loaded drivers. You can also confirm with the "AS SSD" benchmark program (do a Google search).

At this point, trim was NOT working for me. I know this because I ran the system like this for about 10 days and noticed that when I ran the "AS SSD" benchmark program, I would get varying degrees of performance, but it was clearly slowing down a bit every few days as I installed apps and used the computer.

The way I found to get TRIM working was to go into Device Manager and manually force Windows to load the driver for the "Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller" (only do this for the SATA controller itself). Windows complained, but I am here to tell you that the ICH7R SATA controller on our motherboard is compatible with the standard AHCI SATA driver. Once I made this change and rebooted, I noted that the msahci.sys was loaded and my Intel 160GB G2 has been pegged in AS SSD at 250MB/s sequential reads and 100MB/s writes ever since.

[idata]

Hi Gordo,

thank you for the detailed post, looks like quite a few steps but I will do them. However one question I do have how exactly do I do this:

gordo wrote:

The way I found to get TRIM working was to go into Device Manager and manually force Windows to load the driver for the "Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller" (only do this for the SATA controller itself). Windows complained, but I am here to tell you that the ICH7R SATA controller on our motherboard is compatible with the standard AHCI SATA driver. Once I made this change and rebooted, I noted that the msahci.sys was loaded and my Intel 160GB G2 has been pegged in AS SSD at 250MB/s sequential reads and 100MB/s writes ever since.

How do I force a driver update or how do I force that particular drive to load?

[idata]

Device Manager -- right click on the SATA controller --> Update driver software --> browse my computer... --> Let me pick... --> uncheck "show compaitble hardware" --> Find Standard AHCI... --> Next

and follow the prompts.

[idata]

Hi,

did a fresh install of Win7 64 bit and I also enabled the AHCI mode in my bios prior to installing windows.

Everything works great and I use the right msahci drivers but Win7 did not configure itself for SSD usage, defrag and superfetch where still on etc.

Will see if trim works by monitoring performance the next 3 weeks... if not I can live with the Intel SSD toolbox

Love the speed of the SSD