S128 came pre-partitioned?

i just bought a Corsair SSD 128G.

it came pre-partititioned and ntfs-formatted (122GB), with a 6GB empty (raw) partition (which kinda surprised me, b/c i thought it had been used already).

i ran the diskpart utility (on the Vista setup DVD) to CLEAN the drive (wipe-out the partition table), reclaiming the other 6GB.

i then installed Vista x64 on a single 128GB ntfs partition.

Vista seems to be running ok so far, but i'm wondering... why did the drive come pre-partitioned for 122GB, instead of 128GB? was i supposed to leave the empty 6GB partition intact for some reason?

for best performance, does this drive need to be partition aligned OR is it ok to do what i've done, ie, wipe-out all partitions and install the OS on a single 128GB partition?

and regarding Vista's dynamic performance tuning (defrag, superfetch, prefetch, indexing, etc)... should ALL of that stuff be disabled on the SSD? if so, a how-to guide would be appreciated. in fact, this kind of information should be *included* with the drive.

i have to say, i was expecting the SSD to simply be a drop-in replacement... and not have to tweak the drive (partition alignment) and then disable a bunch of Windows services!

anyway... i'd like to hear from someone at Corsair about this.

thanks

system specs: ThinkPad T61p, 4GB RAM, Vista x64

i assume the moderator MOVED my original post to this new thread... ok fine.

anyway, YES indeed, the S128 that i bought from Newegg arrived PRE-PARTITIONED and FORMATTED for NTFS. there was a 120GB NTFS partition and 6GB of empty space (unused), which is what prompted me to re-partition the drive.

i thought it was ODD that the drive was already partitioned, but the plain white box in which the drive was packaged was also factory sealed with Corsair stickers on both ends, soo... should i be concerned? is this not a new drive?

anyway, as i say, i wiped the drive by running DISKPART, then the CLEAN command, and re-partitioned/formatted as a single 128GB NTFS partition.

it works, although i haven't had a chance to performance test it. we are evaluating this drive, before we decide IF we will go ahead and purchase more for our other thinkpads.

back to my original question though... should the S128 be partition-aligned for best performance, yes or no? if yes, what is the procedure involved?? is there a Corsair FAQ that covers this topic?

thanks / f

Just use the default format in the Windows install should do the trick and Windows XP will normally reserver 1-2% of the total space is why it did not use all of the drive.

thanks for the follow-up ram guy, but if you re-READ my original post, you'll notice that it said that i installed VISTA x64 (not XP).

and, as i also said, the S128 arrived from Newegg already PARTITIONED and FORMATTED, which is why i had to use the diskpart utility on the Vista setup DVD to clean the drive, then re-partition and format as a single 128GB ntfs partition.

anyway, the drive seems to be working ok with Vista, but the throughput is not stellar or anything... it's OK, somewhat more responsive than the Seagate Momentus 7200RPM that it replaced.

i'm still wondering about SSD partition-alignment vs performance, b/c there's so much talk about it on the net. does this apply to the S128 or not?

and what services (in Vista) should be disabled, for best performance and drive reliability (lifespan)?

can someone from Corsair make an official statement regarding this, please??

thanks

ps - like i said, we are evaluating this drive, but need to know exactly how to configure the drive & system for best performace, before we go ahead with an order for more S128 SSDs for the rest of our ThinkPads (or not).

the corsair S128 does not even max out UDMA 100 for the most part (90MB/s read, 70MB/s Write), Burst speed may do, benchmarks do seem to show speeds up to 130MB/s but i think thats where Empty data is (crystaldiskmark reports the speeds i am getting advertised as per S128 spec)

vista and higher does the alignment properly as far as i know

disable superfetch, prefetchers and auto defrag, on SSDs as the access times are so low that these are not needed and make less wear on the SSD, make sure that each laptop has 2gb of ram if vista is to be used so page file is not used alot, its for when the system runs out of ram so make sure thay got 2gb installed

the data rate of the ssd not much faster then an desktop HDD but it more then makes up for it in access times that are norm less then 1ms (laptop hdds are around 14-30ms depending on what they are doing) going from an Laptop HDD to an SSD you think you got an new laptop, most latops are slower data rate of 60-40MB/s, i am using this in my gaming pc right now and it is far faster then my WD black HDD (the HDD has faster data rate but HDD cant do random access well and SSDs basicly have no seek time as well so programs open right away even from desktop)

the corsair S128 does not even max out UDMA 100 for the most part (90MB/s read, 70MB/s Write), Burst speed may do, benchmarks do seem to show speeds up to 130MB/s but i think thats where Empty data is (crystaldiskmark reports the speeds i am getting advertised as per S128 spec)

Just use the default format from the O.S... there is no need to worry about this with our SSD's, some of the other SSD's had that issue but not our's.

ok so, no special treatment, just use the S128 as one would a standard HDD... that's good to know.

but what about disabling certain services in vista, that were designed & optimized for use with traditional hard drives (indexing, pre-fetching, paging, write caching, defrag, etc)? what does Corsair recommend?

there's a lot of (conflicting) info on the net about how-to optimize your system for use with an SSD, but the consensus seems to be that write-intensive disk I/O is BAD for SSDs, due to the finite number of write operations (over the life of the SSD's memory cells).

realistically-speaking, and all things being equal... will the S128 survive at least as long as a standard HDD? performance aside, reliability/lifespan is the most important consideration, imo.

unlike, the SSD drives i can not speak off, that have you doing some way over the top setups to lower the Writes to the SSD not needed really just makes it complicated for the end user

with corsair (or any SSD with cache on it) on vista just Disable, superfetch defrag and prefetchers, just use the SSD like norm then

with windows 7 Defrag and prefechers should be disabled, (even thought it says it does it does not) mite be when there is an HDD as an second drive in the pc (Superfetch is On but not active {filling the cache up is not happening} but you do nto need that with an SSD thay have fast access times)