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]

Hi Robert, I'm confused by what you say. A drive is either aligned or it is not aligned. Intel drives report the correct geometry to the OS and both Vista and Windows 7 will automatically set up the correct alignment from there.

I have not experienced misalignment on any of the countless OS installs I have done with Win 7 using Intel SSD's. I guess it could happen if you image a misaligned HDD on to a SSD, but on a fresh installation?

With regards to ATTO I would not trust it one bit for SSD performance. ATTO was developed for HHD not SSD. I know it is promoted by a certain SSD company, but that is because it uses 100% compressible data, which significantly inflates results).

I only trust AS SSD Benchmark for a quick way to check performance. (It also tells you if the drive is aligned).

[idata]

redux, very interesting, your chart of the "read data transfers". I've never seen this type of data before. While this thread has been sidetracked a bit anyway...

So would it be correct to say that when Win 7 boots, the amount actually read from the OS installation files to get a desktop running is around 53MB, with other files being read afterwards as you mentioned? Or is that an oversimplification?

Of course the entire OS does not need to be read in order to be basically functional, and there are likely plenty (many?) of files that few people ever use.

An interesting statistic IMO, seems small to me although I'm not questioning it, I have no data to indicate otherwise. As we know, so much more is going on during a boot besides simply reading data, but if all that is being read during a boot is, say, 60MB (the 53MB basic + others), then standard HDDs are not doing a very good job at all, as they crank away for ~30+ seconds during booting a PC.

People (and manufactures, or should I say marketing) seem so focused on sequential read and write specs, which does not happen much during booting a PC. If it did, most any good HDD should be done with my 60MB in a second or less, which is obviously not what is happening.

[idata]

Robert did you run each benchmark multiple times? A single run may not be good enough.

According to Intel, their controllers do not require alignment. I was a bit surprised at this and hope to get more information.

[idata]

The problem for HDD is access times when it comes to small random reads. HDD is ~ 8ms. SSD is 0.01ms. That is an order of magnitude difference. Most of the boot load is small random reads so there is a huge access time penalty with HDD.

Sequential speeds are not much use for most OS tasks. Even game loading, which uses a lot of sequential reads appears to be bottlenecked outside of the storage system. The fastest sequential read speed I have seen loading a game is ~ 90MB/s.

[RGiff]

In a word YES. I ran three before running the paragone alignment tool and run one every day since. with consistant results. I even did the same testing on another computer I have that has a RAID 1 set-up with reg HDs, And got similar results. Windows does not do such a great job of aligning the partitions. Go to Paragone's web site and read about the product It used to be free but now it's $10.00. Not alot of $$$ for a real good tool.