SSD Frequently Asked Questions!

[RAM GUY]

Q: What settings, if any, do I need to adjust in my system BIOS for optimal SSD performance?
A: Enabling AHCI in your system BIOS is the only setting we recommend adjusting for optimal SSD performance.

Q: Are Corsair SSD drives compatible with SATA I?
A: All Corsair SSD drives are compatible with both SATA I and SATA II.

Q: Will I get the full benefit of having a Corsair SSD drive installed on my machine if it only supports SATA I?
A: The SATA I spec is slower than most Corsair SSD drives. You would get the best performance from a Corsair SSD drive from a system with SATA II.

Q: Do I need to tweak my operating system to get my Corsair SSD drive to run at optimal performance?
A: No settings within your operating system need to be adjusted for a Corsair SSD drive to run at optimal performance.

Q: What about services or programs in my operating system such as indexing, pre-fetching, write-caching, defrag etc?
A: Corsair SSDs require no maintenance programs or operating system tweaks

Q: What programs can Corsair recommend to test the performance of my Corsair SSD?
A: ATTO, CrystalDiskMark, HDTune, SiSoft Sandra are all very good benchmarks of your SSD performance.

Q: Are there any platforms that may have issues with SSD drives?
A: There are no known issues with Corsair SSDs and any SATA I or SATA II compatible platforms. We are constantly testing compatibility with legacy, current and new platforms to ensure compatibility.

Installation Issues XP 32
When Windows XP installation setup does not recognize the storage controller.
This is usually caused when the system is setup either wiht RAID or AHCI mode enabled.
Standard IDE will not have this issue.

Solutions:
1. Switch the storage mode to IDE mode in bios. On most laptops the storage mode is either set to IDE or AHCI with no option to switch.

2. In cases where the user cannot switch to IDE mode or does not prefer to, the user will need to either have a slipstream XP CD with the correct storage controller drivers or load the drivers with a floppy during installation (Press F8 while XP installation is loading drivers)




Installation Issues Vista 32/64
The common causes are either:

1. Not formatted to NTFS.
2. Damaged MBR.
3. Was previously part of a RAID configuration setup.

Solutions:

1. Delete drive and partition with Vista installation CD.
2. In some cases Vista installation CD will not be able to partition the drive. Some filing systems will lock the boot sector and Vista installation CD will not be able to override it. In this case user will need to either use a third party DOS partitioning software or format the drive in a system that already has XP/Vista installed by using Disk Management (located in Control Panel/ Computer Management; Admin Rights is required).