piston79 Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 Hi! About a year ago my HDD starts dying and a friend of mine gave me an advice to buy an SSD. I got the one from my profile. Sadly, the man didn't noticed I am an Win XP user, and that SSD-s are not fitted well to this OS. So, I found those tweaks to save my SSD: http://www.OCZtechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?43460-Making-XP-pro-SSD-friendly After that I used the tfc.exe tool for cleaning my temporaries and it rarely clears more than 40 MB after all day work. I thought my SSD is fine... Than recently my computer started to boot up really slow and I used the toolbox: Then used the ATTO (works really slow), and the results were...: I tried to start a TRIM function from SSD Toolbox, but it doesn't... In fact it doesn't do anything and after closing the SSD Toolbox I must reinstal it to make it starting again... Is it time to throw the towel and throw that SSD in garbage? P.S. I found that AHCI is needed for using the SSD properly. My MB hasn't such option: https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5K_SE/#specifications Found on i-net another BIOS, but if I allowed the AHCI, the OS never starts.. I tried this one (first post): http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?444831-HOWTO-enable-AHCI-mode-after-installing-Windows/page18 but I am not allowed to load the driver... I am really exhausted... What could I do with my SSD? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
piston79 Posted January 3, 2014 Author Share Posted January 3, 2014 SMART from SSD Toolbox Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yellowbeard Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 The best solution at this point is to update the firmware on your SSD if it is not using the most recent firmware. There are links in the SSD Update section. Then, do a secure erase and then a clean installation of the operating system. This should restore your performance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
piston79 Posted January 3, 2014 Author Share Posted January 3, 2014 The best solution at this point is to update the firmware on your SSD if it is not using the most recent firmware. There are links in the SSD Update section. Then, do a secure erase and then a clean installation of the operating system. This should restore your performance. If not, then what? Is it worth to use it as IDE device at all? Why not possible to TRIM it on current installation? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yellowbeard Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 Try this first then we'll go from there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
piston79 Posted January 3, 2014 Author Share Posted January 3, 2014 I've updated the firmware to 5.07. Tested with ATTO - http://www.mediafire.com/view/v0axp43n52dckuu/scrn-52c73c35.png It also sends the TRIM to the SDD (this doesn't worked before)... About reinstalling the OS - I must do it from the very beginning or making an image/clone of the SSD? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yellowbeard Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 The best solution at this point is to update the firmware on your SSD if it is not using the most recent firmware. There are links in the SSD Update section. Then, do a secure erase and then a clean installation of the operating system. This should restore your performance. As noted, clean installation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
piston79 Posted January 3, 2014 Author Share Posted January 3, 2014 OK, I got it... As I will leave my desktop computer for the weekend, I wont do this right now (maybe in sunday I'll manage to do it), so it is timeout for now. If I got it correctly, I should find a tool which "secure erase" the SSD, then formatting it and do an OS installation as on HDD drive. If there is something special that must be done, please, let me know.... Thank you for your time and patience! See you soon! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bogdan_kr Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 If not, then what? Is it worth to use it as IDE device at all? Why not possible to TRIM it on current installation? In my opinion it is worth to use it in IDE mode if you don't have more modern system. On of my systems has even older ICH7 based motherboard and I love the way it works with SSD drive, really. The same limitations, no AHCI, XP without TRIM support :): As far as I am aware of 5.0.1 and 5.0.2 firmware revisions were bugged with non working TRIM and the bug was introduced in base code produced by LSI SandForce. So my guess is that is why it didn't work before for you. But since you get back your good ATTO results do you really feel clean installation is necessary? What is your experience, does your system get back to the former performance or still there is something wrong with the speeds? From the SMART point of view it seems that the drive is healthy and you have written 1,4 GB only. As for the clean installation the really important thing is to keep in mind you have to have partitions aligned properly. You can check partitions alignment with AS SSD Benchmark tool, there is no need to run the benchmarks and the information about proper partition alignment is displayed in the upper left part of the window with green OK or red BAD. I believe you can perform secure erase with "Secure Wipe" built-in into Corsair SSD Toolbox. Remember to backup your important data prior doing so ;): Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
piston79 Posted January 4, 2014 Author Share Posted January 4, 2014 Hi bogdan... I didn't tested the SSD when bought (in fact didn't understand what is SSD at all), so cannot say that the system works as at the begining... I just can tell that after filmware update ATTO shows me that my SSD is 2.5 times faster than my second drive - HDD Seagate. Of course I would like not to reinstal, as I need to tweak the OS again and all other stuff too, but as Yellow beard find it necessary, I gotta do it... The ironic is that I cannot understand what to expect with my system as a peak performace... P.S. pciide-BAD 31K - BAD - this is wrote in AS SSD... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bogdan_kr Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 My guess is that right now you are back on track with your previous performance but since the partition alignment is not proper it would be the best idea to reinstall OS. Improper alignment is indicated by "31K - BAD" information, the XP tweaks guide you mentioned in your first post is missing probably the most important thing - proper partition alignment. Modern systems like Vista/W7/W8 by default can align partitions properly for SSDs but XP doesn't know how to do it and we have to help it a little bit. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/113967-ssd-alignment.html It should be possible to realign the partition(s) without data loss but I would prefer (or suggest to you) clean installation too. With proper partition alignment you should have better performance especially for write speeds but I think overall system performance would be better too. If you would like to try to realign partitions you should backup your important data prior doing so - some examples how to do it http://www.overclock.net/t/1226963/how-to-properly-re-align-your-ssd-hdd-partitions If you would like to proceed with clean installation (you should backup the data of course :biggrin:) the best way would be to erase all partitions and create new one - you can find many descriptions how to do it (you can use information from the fist link above). Probably the easiest way would be to use any Windows 7/8 installation disk (preview/trial edition) the only thing you do with that disk is to start the installation, clear former partitions from the disk, create the new one with W7/8 installation disk and format it. Then you are done with W7 disk and you can proceed with XP installation from the disc you have license key to. Also you should note that Windows XP will go out of support on April 8, 2014 and that means that after that date we will not receive any system updates from Microsoft no more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
piston79 Posted January 4, 2014 Author Share Posted January 4, 2014 Hi, bogdan! I risked and did an alignment. ATTO sais that comparing to the moment before alignement the write speed is better than before (up to 250 MB). See the bencmark from my 4-th post. As I have this MB: https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5K_SEEPU/#specifications - with only SATA 3Gb/S, and I was not able to activate AHCI on it and if my SSD should work on ~ 550 MB/S on SATA 6 Gb/s and AHCI, it looks to me that this is the best I could achieve so far. I hope that yellowbeard has some observation about my kind of SSD working under such circumstances(XP;IDE;SATA II), and is still there a gap between my device performance and similar one... As I am not feeling confident with such exotic stuff as aligning, flashing bios etc. and I would do an reinstall only as a matter of last resort... Windows 7 is a no-go too, as I have only 2 Gb RAM, and I cannot afford to spent money for new machine soon.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bogdan_kr Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 I know the pain ;): I will have to stay with XP on one of my systems for sure. I believe your ATTO is okay now and since you have adjusted the alignment I would probably say that you could postpone possible reinstallation to the moment more convenient for you ;): Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toasted Posted January 5, 2014 Share Posted January 5, 2014 Yes, the ATTO results are fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
piston79 Posted March 19, 2014 Author Share Posted March 19, 2014 How about power protected write cache on SSD, should it be on or off (OS is Windows XP)? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toasted Posted March 20, 2014 Share Posted March 20, 2014 Leaving it on is fine. Haven't heard of any disadvantages leaving it on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
piston79 Posted September 2, 2014 Author Share Posted September 2, 2014 Hi! I had a problem with my second drive (HDD) and do some chkdsk check/fix on it... Decided to use chkdsk read only on my SSD. Does I need to run with /F option? Does it worn my SSD too much? CHKDSK results: https://www.mediafire.com/?by005tj8gurls0e Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
piston79 Posted October 26, 2014 Author Share Posted October 26, 2014 Decided to use chkdsk read only on my SSD. Does I need to run with /F option? Does it worn my SSD too much? CHKDSK results: https://www.mediafire.com/?by005tj8gurls0e Guys? Do i need to create a new topic? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bogdan_kr Posted October 29, 2014 Share Posted October 29, 2014 As far as I know in most cases chkdsk creates the report based on the file system. It should verify and fix logical errors in file tables, indexes and journals - that is why it shouldn't worn SSD too much. Regular chkdsk writes about 15MB when I run it on my 512GB drive (47% used space). In case of any errors recorded I would run it with /f option regardless of any possible worn it might generate. You could probably backup your data before taking this action, just in case you have no regular backup habit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
piston79 Posted October 29, 2014 Author Share Posted October 29, 2014 Thanks Bogdan... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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