SSD Setup - OCZ Vertex 120GB

[24inchgamer]

Hi Guys,
Just picked up a OCZ Vertex 120GB.
I am going to be installing Win 7 64bit and I'm running a Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R board.

I just wondered if there are any specific setup / format procedures when I install this.

It's going to be part of a completely new build, running as my OS drive.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Grantofhell]

Ahh, yes. I just did the same recently from 7(32).

Here's a linky:

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...ks-Utilities-*&p=442158&viewfull=1#post442158

I wouldn't bother disabling a lot of Aero features as that is normally pendant on the amount of RAM you have (which I assume is 6GB, since your board is x58) and your graphics card (at least GT200/HD4K I am assuming). So performance gain will be negligible. I also wouldn't bother with the RAMDisk. It's more work than it is worth and causes very slow boot and shutdown as it has to reformat the RAM each time.
Definitely turn off defragging and turn on TRIM (CMD ---> fsutil set behavior disabledeletenotify 0)
Don't forget to set your PageFile to your actual hard drive! (If you don't use a RAM disk for it) You can, however, set your FireFox cache to RAM with ease. ---> explained in the guide link above.
One of the things not mentioned in this particular guide is "TONY TRIM". Tony is a employee of OCZ who came up with a standard drive performance refresher (other than GC and TRIM on 7).

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...-A-simple-guide-for-speeding-up-EOL-OCZ-SSD-s.

Check the FW on your drive and, if applicable, use TONY TRIM.

There are a number of things you can do to get max performance, but these are really the big things to keep your drive running longer.

 

[24inchgamer]

Thanks Grant, appreciate the reply.
I will actually be running 12GB of Corsair Dominator DDR3 if that makes any difference.
Also my graphics cards are 2 X Gigabyte GTX 460 1GB OC Edition in SLI.

Could you please explain this to me a little further:
"Don't forget to set your PageFile to your actual hard drive! (If you don't use a RAM disk for it)"
Should I turn the page file off? or tell it to use my secondary 150GB Raptor drive?

Also the board im using is a gigabyte ga-x58a-ud3r rev 2 and I just read the following about it in a review:

"Our one area of concern comes with the storage ports: the Gigabyte SATA2 ports are much slower (183MB/sec) than the Southbridge or Marvell 9128 powered ports, which can read at a much faster 245/246MB/sec respectively. As such, it's imperative that you switch your drives to the appropriate controller as soon as Windows is installed."

Do you know how I would go about this for the SSD? Do this mean physically swap them over?

Thanks again

 

[Grantofhell]

I'm not well knowledged on that particular board. Please post a link to your source so I can get a better understanding. But it does sound like you can just move the drive to a different controller. As to why it can't install on faster one...? AHCI versus IDE or vice-versa would be my guess. Again, if I can get a link, I'll look in to it.

As far as the page file is concerned, I did this:

Go to one of your platter drives (regular hard drive) and create a folder called "PageFile - Let Be" (no quotes)(you can name it anything but make sure you can remember what it is) Within that folder, create a folder called "TEMP" and one called "TMP" (both no quotes).
Then, Start > (right click) Computer > Properties > (left toolpane) > advanced system settings > (tab) advanced > Environment Variables.

In here, you will see a box at the top that says "User Variables for [Your name]"
Select TEMP and click edit. Then re-assign its location to your new TEMP folder in your HDD.
Do the same for TMP.

Once both are set, hit OK.

Proceed back to the Advanced Tab in System Properties and hit "Settings" under the "Performance box"
Then move to the "Advanced Tab" and click on "virtual memory" click change. Select your SSD and all other drives that are not the one you set up your TEMP and TMP on. And have them set with "no paging file".
Then select your drive WITH the TEMP and TMP folder and set that as 6000-8000. Then hit "set". Then OK.

All done. As a precaution, I would set the root folder for TEMP and TMP as hidden so you don't accidentally modify or delete it.

 

[24inchgamer]

Thanks for the reply grantofhell,
Sorry I think that as from review of the first board whereas mine is a rev 2.
See here:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/motherboards/2010/08/19/gigabyte-ga-x58a-ud3r-rev-2-review/1

Thanks for the pagefile advice. Just out of curiosity what is the purpose of it and why do it on a regular drive as opposed to the ssd? (just so I know out of interest)

Thanks again

 

[Grantofhell]

SSD's use NAND flash (MLC --> Multi-Layer Cell (there are also SLC)) chips that are quite susceptible to burning out quickly. Each cell can only support so many writes before it becomes a dead cell.

In NT-based versions of Windows (such as Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7), the file used for paging is named pagefile.sys. The default location of the page file is in the root directory of the partition where Windows is installed. Windows can be configured to use free space on any available drives for pagefiles. It is required, however, for the boot partition (i.e. the drive containing the Windows directory) to have a pagefile on it if the system is configured to write either kernel or full memory dumps after a crash. Windows uses the paging file as temporary storage for the memory dump. When the system is rebooted, Windows copies the memory dump from the pagefile to a separate file and frees the space that was used in the pagefile.

It is required for basic functionally. But due to the nature of the PF, it has many writes per session. Because of these many writes, it's often a much better idea for the sake of the drive's (SSD) longevity to set the PF to a physical HDD or use a RAMDisk for it ---> Which reads from the HDD at boot and writes to it at shutdown. I prefer not to use RAMDisks as they make startup and shutdown painfully long.

If necessary on the rev.2, use the JMB36(#) SATA controller. They are (two) SATAII ports that are for non-RAID use. They support AHCI, IDE, NCQ, and several other features that can make your drive performance even better. I'd take advantage of it.