SSD: Poor Boot Times and Low WEI

[idata]

I just got an Intel X-25V and I installed Windows 7 Ultimate on it. It's currently taking up about 8GB. I've hardly installed any software other than the drivers and firefox.

When I ran that Windows performance test, my score came out to be 5.9, which is due to the SSD. I don't remember the numbers exactly, but I'll try to remember them:

• RAM random access memory - 7.5

• CPU central processing unit - 7.5

• Hard disk - 5.9

• General graphics performance on the desktop 7.4

• 3D graphics capability - 7.4

I haven't run any benchmarks. I have done everything on this page except for RAMDisk. I tried that, but it caused too many problems so I installed it. Even though, I got the info from OCZ forum, it still applies to SSDs:

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?63273-*-Windows-7-Ultimate-Tweaks-amp-Utiliti...*

So, I:

installed the latest firmware

bios and OS set to AHCI

SSD is connected through SATA Port 1

and lots of other tweaks that are found on the page above

I used this software to determine my restart/boot time:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/720-restart-time.html

When I used it, the result was 48 seconds. That number represents the restart time, which includes shutting down and starting up. It took my computer 7 seconds to shutdown, which means it took about 41 seconds, give or take, to boot up. I read about other people who said that it only takes their computer 12 seconds to boot up. Others have said about 17, and a few even said 6 seconds. One of the main purposes for me getting the SSD was so that I'd be able to boot up my computer within 15 seconds, like everyone else with SSDs.

As for the WEI, I thought that was low because the Intel's SSD X-25V had low read and write speeds. But others with the same SSD have reported getting scores around 7.7 and 7.8.

Someone mentioned changing the driver to RST (post # 9 and # 10 on this page):

http://communities.intel.com/thread/11286?tstart=0

So, do you people have any suggestions as to how I can improve my SSD to be like yours, faster, speedier, more impressive, and hopefully, so I can get my money's worth. So far, I fee like I got a "slightly" faster hard drive.

This is my current setup:

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate CPU: Intel Core i7 860 MB: MSI P55 GD80 RAM: Gskill 4 GB

PSU: Corsair 650TX

Case: Antec Sonata Elite

Video: XFX 5770 Sound: integrated HD: Samsung F2 500GB (storage) Samsung F3 1 TB (storage) Intel SSD X-25V (OS installed on SSD)

Update: This one applies to Windows Vista, but he says that when he disabled his 7200 RPM drives and only used his SSD, that cut his boot time by 10 seconds. Does the same apply to Windows 7?

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vistaperformance/thread/ea530723-c3fe-4817-9de1-68c...

Update 2: Well, by upgrading the RST driver, I managed to increase the WEI of the hard drive (SSD) from 5.9 to 7.7. Now my WEI score is 7.4. But I'm still not satisfied with the boot time.

[idata]

Windows 7 should automatically align the drive correctly on a fresh installation. If the OP's storage WEI is now 7.7 the SSD is performing correctly. The boot time must be to do with services, drivers or hardware.

Here are some tips to reduce boot time:

Disable any hardware in the bios that is not being used.

Unplug any USB drives not being used

Run "msconfig"

Start Up Tab

Disable services that are not required.

Boot Tab

Select the "Boot" tab. >Advanced Boot>Boot Advanced Options> Select the number of processors you have. (i.e. quad = 4) Select "Maximum Memory"

Select No GUI boot (you will lose the boot splash screen but Windows will boot faster).

You could also try out WinBootInfo, which will show you how long drivers etc take to load

http://www.clockmod.com/index.php?/products/view/winbootinfo_1.0/ http://www.clockmod.com/index.php?/products/view/winbootinfo_1.0/

[idata]

I've never tweaked the Win 7 Boot Options, so I tried it.

In Boot->Advanced options, I checked Number of processors, and set the value to 4. I have a Core i7-930, Hyper-Threading enabled.

After rebooting, I noticed instead of my usual 8 "cores", 4 real, 4 Hyper-Thread, I had 4 "cores" total. Whether or not I had 2 real and 2 HT, or 4 real and 0 HT, I am not sure, but I do know I had 4 total, instead of 8 as I usually have.

I could swear when I initially set the Number of processors, it only gave me a maximum value of 4, and when I went back in again to uncheck Number of processors (since I thought it was not working right), I noticed I could choose a maximum value of 8. Regardless, setting it to 4 gave me the results I described above, and setting it to 8 gave me 8 after rebooting, so that seems to be the correct value for a quad-core processor with HT.

I don't know if this is an idiosyncrasy of my mother board, or simply what Win 7 is intended to do. So just keep an eye on this if you set it, to insure you get the overall results you want. I would say that I did not notice a decrease in boot time after setting this option appropriately, but I use an SSD for the OS, and it boots quickly now.

[RGiff]

You can also try going into MSCONFG and turnoff any un-nessary start-up programs , or go into services and set programs from auto to auto-delay. That will improve the start up time.

[RGiff]

REDUX , I check two different OS installs with windows 7 64 bit and Both were off by 6-8% on the partitions , search on a post by James Walker and read the Link about Paragon software , this can correct the alignment even after the OS is installed . I did some benchmarks with this and using ATTO my SSD went from 235 read 105 write after alignment , it went up to 266 read and 115 write. It Does make a difference.

[idata]

As with all tweaks your mileage may vary.

When Win 7 boots on my system I can record around 53MB of read transfers. The read transfers consist almost exclusively of very small random reads.

An Intel SSD can read random 4k files at around 20MBs at queue depth 1 with incredibly low access times. Compare random access times for HDD and it's easy to see why SSD's (should) boot much faster.

The chart below shows the read transfer sizes I can monitor when I boot up. In total there were 2,772 read transfers. Less than 200 bytes = 920 read transfers. More than 200 bytes, but less than 400 bytes = 233 read transfers etc. Only 16 read transfers were above 1MB and the maximum was around 11MB.

Once Windows has "loaded" to the desktop multiple small read transfers continue for some time (at least on my PC anyway). This is due to program, user and Windows files being loaded. I haven't looked in to this too much yet but I suspect that real time AV plays a big part in this. Despite this however an SSD is responsive more or less immediately after the desktop first appears. With HDD it takes a while before the things become responsive.