SSD with win7

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Sat Apr 12, 2014 6:39 pm

I' building a new system and using a 250G SSD as my boot drive. After installing win7 with all the updates, I checked the defrag app in win7 and shows it's 5%. I thought win7 would disable defrag on SSD? I went into the scheduler and turned it off. I rather to it manually since I also have a 1TB hard drive.

I also ran the tweak SSD utility that Evil recommended and made those changes.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sat Apr 12, 2014 7:22 pm

Win7 normally detects an SSD and excludes it from the defrag scheduler, but I always double check. You don't want to disable the defrag scheduler entirely if you have, or will ever have, a second spinning drive. You can disable individual drives in the defrag scheduler.

You don't want to ever defrag an SSD - it's needless wear and it doesn't do anything for an SSD.

Yeah, TweakSSD is a great util - it will REALLY tweak you system to optimize for the SSD.

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Sat Apr 12, 2014 7:27 pm

OK thanks. What about TRIM? I've been reading on the net and I do have ACHI enabled in the BIOS, so does that mean TRIM is enabled?

I also noticed on my laptop with Win8.1, defrag is disabled by default. It seems that win8 is better suited for a SSD by default.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sun Apr 13, 2014 9:33 am

TRIM is automatic on Win7 & 8. And yes you want ACHI enabled. Not sure if it's required for TRIM (I think trim is taken care of at the OS level not the drive controller) but you'll get better performance with ACHI.

Yes, Win8 is built from the ground up to be optimized for SSD performance.

My Core i5 laptop with a Samsung 840 SSD took 34 seconds to boot in Windows 7. After I installed Win8 on that laptop, it booted in 11 seconds.

I really do like the underlying engine in WIn8 - it's very fast with an optimized memory model and better use of multi-cores. It's also very light on resources so it runs very well on old or low-end hardware.

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Sun Apr 13, 2014 12:21 pm

I agree with your assessment on win8. I was tempted to install win8 instead, but I still had a license from a family pack that I bought 4 years ago. I have win8.1 on an older Dell laptop (built in 2006) using 32 bit as the CPU won't work with x64. It boots to the desktop in 10 seconds. Runs supper fast like it's a brand new laptop.

What a hassle moving over all your stuff to a new build. My old XP build, going back to December 2007, still works to this day, so you can imagine the number of applications installed. I'm still using the same 2 hard drives from back then: a 75 gig Raptor, and a 500 gig Seagate. These both were purchased brand new; however, at the 5 year mark, every Christmas time, I would run SpinRite on them using option #4.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sun Apr 13, 2014 2:21 pm

I bought five Win8 licenses when Microsoft was selling them for $15 each a couple years ago if you provided a Win7 COA you were upgrading from. If you remember, the website had a bug on it and if you finagled it right you could get a license without providing a Win7 COA at all.

I've used two of those licenses and I'm saving the last three for when I REALLY need them.

I wish I had bought more of them though. I've got friends and family with still decent Quad Core Q6600 PCs running XP (some of them with Vista COAs - bleh) and Win8 would run great on them

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Sun Apr 13, 2014 5:55 pm

I'm really surprised that MS would sell win8 at a cost higher than win7, considering that most do not like the OS. Yeah I wish I would have bought some back then - oh well.

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Sun Apr 27, 2014 7:49 pm

Well I finally finished my new build with windows 7. Just finished playing a few games of TF2, and what a difference it makes running games with 8 gigs of ram.

I have a 250 gig SSD as my boot, and a 1 TB SATA drive for all the other stuff. This time I did not partition the 1 TB drive, but this time I used FOLDER NAME instead of partitions.

For video, I have a Geforce GTX 660. I'm using a Q6600 CPU on an old Asus P5KE motherboard that I bought probably back in 2008 or 2009 as a backup to my old one running XP. It's been sitting in the closet for all this time.

I get a rating of 7.1:
processor: 7.1
memory: 7.1
graphics: 7.9
gaming: 7.9
hard disk: 7.8