Calling all SSD experts!!! I installed my Crucial M4, now what do I do?

So I installed my 128GB Crucial M4 yesterday, initiated AHCI mode and even updated to the latest firmware, but I'm not overly impressed yet and it only raised my Windows Experience Index from 5.9 to 6.7.

My questions are:

1) What tweaks from HERE [ocztechnologyforum.com] or other tweaks not mentioned should I definitely implement?

2) I'm thinking of doing a fresh install of Windows 7 Ultimate (64 bit) or actually a factory reset of my desktop because I cloned my OS and programs (e.g., Office 2010 etc.) and it used up around 100GB of the drive. I know the OS takes up space, but my installed programs didn't seem to take up more than 4GB. Does everyone agree and think that might make a difference?

3) Is there a way to test the speed of the SSD?

4) Any other suggestions?

BTW the only benefits I really noticed is start up time (but I rarely turn my desktop off) and Word and some other programs open up a bit quicker. What am I missing?

Thanks in advance! Reps will be provided.

is that just the drive WEI or overall. My WEI for my 3 M4s is 7.8 on 2 systems and 7.7 on this one. A fresh install is the way to go because if you install Win7 to an SSD it enables many of tweaks listed in that page.

I move my pagefile to a spinner as I have a a lot of programs installed on regular hard drives, I also leave pre-fetch and super-fetch enable, again because I have a ton of programs on spinners.

http://crystalmark.info/software/...dex-e.html crystal is a popular bench and AS SSD http://alex-is.de/PHP/fusion/down...nload_id=9

Your controller is 6g right?

Quote from jstillusion : is that just the drive WEI or overall. My WEI for my 3 M4s is 7.8 on 2 systems and 7.7 on this one. A fresh install is the way to go because if you install Win7 to an SSD it enables many of tweaks listed in that page. I move my pagefile to a spinner as I have a a lot of programs installed on regular hard drives, I also leave pre-fetch and super-fetch enable, again because I have a ton of programs on spinners. http://crystalmark.info/software/...dex-e.html crystal is a popular bench and AS SSD http://alex-is.de/PHP/fusion/down...nload_id=9 Your controller is 6g right?

Thanks. Repped.

That is the WEI overall and for the M4 because the hard drive had the lowest score before too.

Thanks for the other info. I assume by spinners you would mean my 2TB internal HDD, right?

BTW I tried to download AS SSD a couple times yesterday, but none of the files unzipped correctly.

My controller is definitely 6GB. FYI I have an XPS 8300 with a second generation i7 with 12GB of RAM.

This is on a dell optiplex 990 with i7 and 256g M4(similar to an xps, but the 'work' version)

WEI for the drive is 7.8 or 7.9, depends how it feels that day, today it was a 7.9.

My drive is packed to the gills which sometimes impacts performance a bit, these are a bit lower than when I did them directly after a clean install but still pretty good.

Yeah spinner as in drive with a spindle that spins

as far as the tweaks, I'll go down the list of the ones they list on that site for the windows 7 SSD tweaks. I don't like some of the general ones they listed for win7 performance, so I'll skip that since this is SSD specifically.

Enable write caching - YES - on regular hard drives this is dangerous, if you have a power outage and no UPS, the the stuff that is still in cache will be lost if you lose power. With an SSD the drive is all cache and enabling it is a performance increase.

Disable indexing - Up to you, there is a small perfromance gain, but I like when I type something in the start bar it finds it whether it's a file, email, whatever.

Disable defrag - windows 7 will disable it on the SSD if you do a clean install, otherwise DISABLE IT NOW, defrag is very bad for SSDs.

Disable Superfetch and Pre-fetch - If you're only running an SSD disable it, but if you have programs that run from regular hard drives as well, you will see a benefit leaving them on.

Disable page file - You have enough ram(I run 32 on my work computer), so you can disable it, the problem is that if you ever run too many programs or too many tabs in chorme bad things can happen, I move it to a regular hard drive, and keep it a system managed size.

disable system restore - I break things on a regular basis, disabling saves space, but at the cost of not having restore. I leave it on.

disable hibernate - I never turn off my work computer, and my home comptuers boot so fast I see no point in hibernate so I disable it.

Enable trim - if you do a clean install of windows 7 it will be enable automatically, if not make sure it is enabled, this is crucial to the overall performance and longevity of the drive.

Quote from jstillusion : Yeah spinner as in drive with a spindle that spins as far as the tweaks, I'll go down the list of the ones they list on that site for the windows 7 SSD tweaks. I don't like some of the general ones they listed for win7 performance, so I'll skip that since this is SSD specifically. Enable write caching - YES - on regular hard drives this is dangerous, if you have a power outage and no UPS, the the stuff that is still in cache will be lost if you lose power. With an SSD the drive is all cache and enabling it is a performance increase. Disable indexing - Up to you, there is a small perfromance gain, but I like when I type something in the start bar it finds it whether it's a file, email, whatever. Disable defrag - windows 7 will disable it on the SSD if you do a clean install, otherwise DISABLE IT NOW, defrag is very bad for SSDs. Disable Superfetch and Pre-fetch - If you're only running an SSD disable it, but if you have programs that run from regular hard drives as well, you will see a benefit leaving them on. Disable page file - You have enough ram(I run 32 on my work computer), so you can disable it, the problem is that if you ever run too many programs or too many tabs in chorme bad things can happen, I move it to a regular hard drive, and keep it a system managed size. disable system restore - I break things on a regular basis, disabling saves space, but at the cost of not having restore. I leave it on. disable hibernate - I never turn off my work computer, and my home comptuers boot so fast I see no point in hibernate so I disable it. Enable trim - if you do a clean install of windows 7 it will be enable automatically, if not make sure it is enabled, this is crucial to the overall performance and longevity of the drive.

Thanks so much. I greatly appreciate it. I'll try those things when I get home tonight.

Quote from jstillusion : Yeah spinner as in drive with a spindle that spins as far as the tweaks, I'll go down the list of the ones they list on that site for the windows 7 SSD tweaks. I don't like some of the general ones they listed for win7 performance, so I'll skip that since this is SSD specifically. Enable write caching - YES - on regular hard drives this is dangerous, if you have a power outage and no UPS, the the stuff that is still in cache will be lost if you lose power. With an SSD the drive is all cache and enabling it is a performance increase. Disable indexing - Up to you, there is a small perfromance gain, but I like when I type something in the start bar it finds it whether it's a file, email, whatever. Disable defrag - windows 7 will disable it on the SSD if you do a clean install, otherwise DISABLE IT NOW, defrag is very bad for SSDs. Disable Superfetch and Pre-fetch - If you're only running an SSD disable it, but if you have programs that run from regular hard drives as well, you will see a benefit leaving them on. Disable page file - You have enough ram(I run 32 on my work computer), so you can disable it, the problem is that if you ever run too many programs or too many tabs in chorme bad things can happen, I move it to a regular hard drive, and keep it a system managed size. disable system restore - I break things on a regular basis, disabling saves space, but at the cost of not having restore. I leave it on. disable hibernate - I never turn off my work computer, and my home comptuers boot so fast I see no point in hibernate so I disable it. Enable trim - if you do a clean install of windows 7 it will be enable automatically, if not make sure it is enabled, this is crucial to the overall performance and longevity of the drive.

I too am looking to get an SSD for my desktop so I have some questions

I know they say games installed on an SSD load a lot quicker but does it effect actual gameplay or only the initial start-up of the game? this will determine what size I get (if I install games onto the SSD or onto a spare spinning drive in the system).

you mention bad things happening if you disable page file and not having enough ram. is 8gb enough to disable this? what about 16gb? on that note, I've heard a few times that having tons of ram can actually slow down a computer (above 8gb). not sure if this is a valid claim or how much it slows it down but that is one reason why i've never put in more than 8gb.

does disabling system restore give you more space or just increase performance? I don't really see a purpose of me needing system restore since most of my stuff is saved on backup hard drives. the only things I would put on the SSD are the OS, maintenance programs (ccleaner, antispyware, malware bytes, norton, megui to encode videos) which is all easy to re-install. would installing megui on my ssd help with the encoding speed even?

this is the SSD optimization guide [thessdreview.com] that I've had saved in my bookmarks. I'll have to go through both of them to see which suggestions are the same

you did update to the 0309 firmware to prevent the 5200hr bug right?

http://www.overclock.net/t/115665...-hdds/0_50

take a look there for some tweeks, obviously don't do them all.

[QUOTE=RUsum1;47067374]

Quote from RUsum1 : I know they say games installed on an SSD load a lot quicker but does it effect actual gameplay or only the initial start-up of the game? this will determine what size I get (if I install games onto the SSD or onto a spare spinning drive in the system).

For the most part, no effect or very little, but in theory, if the game required getting data constantly from the hard drive, then yes, it would be faster with the SSD at getting said info, but if the game can play properly on your equipment with a spindle type hard drive, then you would have gained nothing.

Quote from RUsum1 : you mention bad things happening if you disable page file and not having enough ram. is 8gb enough to disable this? what about 16gb? on that note, I've heard a few times that having tons of ram can actually slow down a computer (above 8gb). not sure if this is a valid claim or how much it slows it down but that is one reason why i've never put in more than 8gb.

Haven't heard that claim, but putting that aside, the best way to have the speed of "No Pagefile" is to go to custom size, starting at 16 megs and matching the ram quantity for the max.
It will stay at 16 and Windows will not use any pagefile, but if the need arises, it can force it to use pagefile.
Periodically, you go back and check to see if the low limit is still at 16, and if not, do it over.

Quote from RUsum1 : does disabling system restore give you more space or just increase performance? I don't really see a purpose of me needing system restore since most of my stuff is saved on backup hard drives. the only things I would put on the SSD are the OS, maintenance programs (ccleaner, antispyware, malware bytes, norton, megui to encode videos) which is all easy to re-install. would installing megui on my ssd help with the encoding speed even?

I put ALL my programs on the SSD.
I want speed and I use programs all the time.
Data is different. It would cost a fortune to have terabytes of data on SSD's. so that's a no brainer.
As for the system restore, I have never known it to cause any noticeable or measurable load, but if you feel you don't need it, then why not disable it. In my case, I like to have it. If something glitchy happens, or malware sneaks in, etc, it can be really really handy to have a restore point to go to to resolve the problem.

Quote from RUsum1 : I've heard a few times that having tons of ram can actually slow down a computer (above 8gb). not sure if this is a valid claim or how much it slows it down but that is one reason why i've never put in more than 8gb.

It all depends on what your system can support... All the components can determine how much ram it can support regardless of what the system sees.

Here is someone who had a similar problem and someone was able to resolve the issue updating BIOS: LINKY
[tomshardware.com]

Quote from IPT : you did update to the 0309 firmware to prevent the 5200hr bug right? http://www.overclock.net/t/115665...-hdds/0_50 take a look there for some tweeks, obviously don't do them all.

My home ones I have, I've been too lazy at work :p

Quote from IPT : you did update to the 0309 firmware to prevent the 5200hr bug right? http://www.overclock.net/t/115665...-hdds/0_50 take a look there for some tweeks, obviously don't do them all.

Thanks. Repped. FYI I did update to the 0309 firmware. I thought I mentioned that in the OP.

Quote from Joe Davola : BTW the only benefits I really noticed is start up time (but I rarely turn my desktop off) and Word and some other programs open up a bit quicker. What am I missing?

That's it, that's the entire benefit! Anything that requires accessing your hard drive will be sped up in theory. For the casual user boot times and quicker application loads are the main advantage. When you add up all the time you wait around for these types of things it's a huge time savings. Also you're forgetting that windows is likely hitting that VM partition as well, so you may not even be cognizant of when it's working. As I've said many times already, it is still the single best performance upgrade I've ever installed in any computer to date.

Quote from brbubba : That's it, that's the entire benefit! Anything that requires accessing your hard drive will be sped up in theory. For the casual user boot times and quicker application loads are the main advantage. When you add up all the time you wait around for these types of things it's a huge time savings. Also you're forgetting that windows is likely hitting that VM partition as well, so you may not even be cognizant of when it's working. As I've said many times already, it is still the single best performance upgrade I've ever installed in any computer to date.

Thanks. Repped. I guess my "problem" is that I never really turn off or reboot my computer unless there are Windows Updates or I go away. It's just a shame that Windows Ultimate is so huge and I can't put a couple of of Steam games on it (which I rarely play).

Quote from jstillusion : This is on a dell optiplex 990 with i7 and 256g M4(similar to an xps, but the 'work' version) WEI for the drive is 7.8 or 7.9, depends how it feels that day, today it was a 7.9. My drive is packed to the gills which sometimes impacts performance a bit, these are a bit lower than when I did them directly after a clean install but still pretty good.

BTW I did some of the tweaks and optimizations and my WEI score for the drive was 7.9 and my scores were similar to yours. Thanks again!