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Groups > comp.sys.laptops > #2141
| From | Paul <nospam@needed.com> |
|---|---|
| Newsgroups | comp.sys.laptops, alt.sys.pc-clone.dell, alt.windows7.general |
| Subject | Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop |
| Date | 2013-12-10 00:21 -0500 |
| Organization | A noiseless patient Spider |
| Message-ID | <l868d9$vra$1@dont-email.me> (permalink) |
| References | <l864k2$h5l$1@dont-email.me> |
Cross-posted to 3 groups.
ps56k wrote:
> A friend has a Dell M1210 laptop running XP - works great.
> He wants to expand his disk space,
> and bought a SSD to replace the normal spinning disk.
> Both are SATA.
>
> However, in browsing around,
> he has read several articles about probs with XP and SSD.
>
> What kind of problems might there be ?
>
> What about Win7 and using the same SSD (SATA) device ?
>
You can use an SSD, no matter what. It won't complain.
You won't hear whining.
The SSD has a preferred alignment. Flash is divided internally,
into structures which are larger than the cluster size of
your file system.
On WinXP, the partition alignment is based on fake
CHS dimensions, causing lots of stuff done by the
WinXP Disk Management, to be divisible by 63 sectors.
This doesn't align very well with the binary power_of_two
sizes involved in flash internal memory blocks.
On Vista/Win7/Win8, you might find things aligned on
one megabyte boundaries. A little more wasteful. But for many
file system operations, only one flash structure gets
updated instead of two. That means you "wear out" the
SSD, slightly slower.
If you use a less than optimal alignment, it just
means a few more write cycles to the SSD drive. And
since many SSD drives fail before they actually
wear out from too many writes, it's unclear that this
really matters.
There's an example here, of a company offering tools
to WinXP users.
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=20849
AcronisAlignTool_2_0.exe
Tools like that are "brand aware". Intel pays Acronis a fee.
Acronis makes the tool do a check that an Intel SSD is being
aligned. You check your SSD manufacturer site, to see if
they bought a utility like that for you. I don't know if
any of those tools, are completely free of a "brand check".
On WinXP, you would place a single partition, then have it
aligned to a preferred power_of_two boundary. Doing so will
cause some ancient tools (like Partition Magic) to complain.
But the SSD will receive fewer (fractional) writes that way.
On Windows 7, all of this is taken care of, for you.
Many of the backup/restore tools, have some awareness of
the new alignment, and can even make changes during restoration,
to align things. Some tools will take a "63 sector" backup,
and re-align it to 1MB for you.
*******
It's a shame that OCZTechnology has folded, because they had
some fine tutorials on the care and feeding of SSD drives.
And I suppose when their web site shuts down, we'll lose those.
(They'll be harder to search for.) The thing is, SSDs have
their own mythology, and there are all sorts of little
polishing things you can do (like turn off the "file accessed"
feature of the file system). Note that not all the ideas you
see in articles like this, are a good idea. You have to use
a bit of common sense when reading this.
http://www.thessdreview.com/ssd-guides/optimization-guides/the-ssd-optimization-guide-2/1/
They didn't even do the "disable time stamps" one. This is
an excerpt from the OCZ page.
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?43460-Making-XP-pro-SSD-friendly
"Disable timestamp for last access to a file to speed up Windows
Another frequently seen recommendation is to disable the
setting that keeps track of the last time a file was accessed.
Removing the necessity for the system to keep reading and writing
this information may speed up Windows Explorer.
The command is:
fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 1
Note that some backup programs may need this information.
If you wish to restore the timestamp, the command is:
fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 0
"
Now, a question would be, what OSes still do that. AFAIK, it's an NTFS
feature, so all of them should do it. But it's always possible
some OS could have a policy of turning it off for SSDs.
Part of the fun of buying an SSD, is doing all that research :-)
Paul
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SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop "ps56k" <pschuman_no5pam_m3@interserv.com> - 2013-12-09 22:17 -0600
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop Todd <Todd@invalid.invalid> - 2013-12-09 20:31 -0800
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop Paul <nospam@needed.com> - 2013-12-10 00:21 -0500
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop Computer Nerd Kev <not@telling.you.invalid> - 2013-12-10 09:15 +0000
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop WayPoint <somewhere@over-the-rainbow.oz> - 2013-12-10 16:24 +1000
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop Wildman <best_lay@yahoo.com> - 2013-12-11 21:36 +0000
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop WayPoint <somewhere@over-the-rainbow.oz> - 2013-12-12 08:54 +1000
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop dg1261 <dgREMOVE-THIS1261@cs.com> - 2013-12-10 08:53 +0000
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop "ps56k" <pschuman_no5pam_m3@interserv.com> - 2013-12-11 21:18 -0600
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop Todd <Todd@invalid.invalid> - 2013-12-11 20:47 -0800
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop Ken Blake <kblake@kb.invalid> - 2013-12-12 10:48 -0700
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop Gene E. Bloch <blochxxxx@someplace.invalid> - 2013-12-13 10:24 -0800
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop "J. P. Gilliver (John)" <G6JPG@soft255.demon.co.uk> - 2013-12-13 23:10 +0000
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop Todd <Todd@invalid.invalid> - 2013-12-13 22:39 -0800
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop Ron Hardin <rhhardin@mindspring.com> - 2013-12-15 08:24 -0500
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop "J. P. Gilliver (John)" <G6JPG@soft255.demon.co.uk> - 2013-12-15 23:03 +0000
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop Ron Hardin <rhhardin@mindspring.com> - 2013-12-15 21:00 -0500
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop "(PeteCresswell)" <x@y.Invalid> - 2013-12-16 09:15 -0500
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop "(PeteCresswell)" <x@y.Invalid> - 2013-12-16 09:33 -0500
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop Paul <nospam@needed.com> - 2013-12-16 11:26 -0500
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop Gene E. Bloch <blochxxxx@someplace.invalid> - 2013-12-16 12:23 -0800
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop "J. P. Gilliver (John)" <G6JPG@soft255.demon.co.uk> - 2013-12-16 22:30 +0000
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop Gene E. Bloch <blochxxxx@someplace.invalid> - 2013-12-16 16:44 -0800
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop Ken Blake <kblake@kb.invalid> - 2013-12-16 16:55 -0700
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop Charlie Hoffpauir <invalid@invalid.com> - 2013-12-16 10:11 -0600
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop mike <ham789@netzero.net> - 2013-12-16 13:20 -0800
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop "J. P. Gilliver (John)" <G6JPG@soft255.demon.co.uk> - 2013-12-16 22:33 +0000
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop BillW50 <BillW50@aol.kom> - 2013-12-29 15:21 -0600
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop Charlie Hoffpauir <invalid@invalid.com> - 2013-12-29 15:32 -0600
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop BillW50 <BillW50@aol.kom> - 2013-12-29 16:19 -0600
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop BillW50 <BillW50@aol.kom> - 2013-12-29 15:41 -0600
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop "J. P. Gilliver (John)" <G6JPG@soft255.demon.co.uk> - 2013-12-30 07:51 +0000
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop BillW50 <BillW50@aol.kom> - 2013-12-30 04:02 -0600
Re: SSD - is it ok to use in XP laptop Bob_Villa <pheeh.zero@gmail.com> - 2013-12-15 05:56 -0800
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