SSD newbie. Do I need to know anything to use an SSD for a data drive?

[Wayne Larmon]

For example, I'm seeing read speeds of between 530 and 540MB/Second using an older Samsung 830 SSD connected to a SATA III port (although write speeds are not as fast).

So, if your tests are "topping out" at less than 300MB/Second using the performance benchmarks in Samsung Magician, it sounds like you're probably using a SATA II versus SATA III port with your new Samsung 256GB 840 EVO drive (as SATA II is limited to 300MB/Second maximum, meaning that you'll usually see benchmarks in the upper 200s with one, which is what you appear to be benchmarking now at around 285MB/Second max read speed).

So, I'd check your motherboard manual and make sure you're using a SATA III (versus one of the SATA II Ports), and also check BIOS settings, etc. as mentioned in my last post.

My previous post said

2. After doing this, opened my main desktop machine and swapped the 3 TB drive for the 2 TB drive Woke it up and reset drive letters and re-established shares, etc. Then powered down and connected the SSD to a SATA II port. (Emphasis added.)

I gave the reasons why I connected it to a SATA II port. When it was connected to the SATA II port, Magician measured

Read Write

285 MB/s sequential 270 MB/s sequential
52303 IOPS 50118 IOPS.

These numbers were from my previous post. Since then I connected the SSD to a Marvell SATA III port. Magician now measures

Read Write

371 MB/s sequential 260 MB/s sequential
28339 IOPS 24922 IOPS.

I checked to see that the BIOS was in AHCI mode. Magician agrees:



This panel of Magician apparently can't determine that my OS is running on a HDD and not on an SSD.

I had used Windows Disk Manager to create and format the partition the first thing.

So I seemed to have gained a bit of sequential write speed and lost about 50% of my IOPS speed (and some of the sequential write speed) when I connected the SSD to the Marvel SATA III port.

Is there anything left to try except for updating drivers and/or reinstalling Windows from scratch?

Wayne

 

[Jim Cockfield]

...

So I seemed to have gained a bit of sequential write speed and lost about 50% of my IOPS speed (and some of the sequential write speed) when I connected the SSD to the Marvel SATA III port.

Is there anything left to try except for updating drivers and/or reinstalling Windows from scratch?

Wayne

Same advise that I gave earlier in this post:

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/52975770

Try to find the port that works best with your SSD, perhaps trying one of the Marvell SATA III ports, pointing out that I see an AHCI driver available from Asus with download links for it.

Then, if you don't see the improvement desired, consider moving some of your drives around and use one of the Intel SATA III ports, installing the latest Intel chipset drivers for it; since most SSDs work great on Intel SATA III ports.

See the post I just quoted above for my comments, links to drivers, etc. about that kind of thing. ;-)

It sounds like you did move it to a Marvell SATA III port and saw good jump in speed, except for a lower IOPS benchmark. But, I'd try to find a better driver and see if that makes any difference before considering other alternatives.

Look.. there's nothing wrong with the speed you're seeing now using a Marvell Port (dramatically faster than you'd see with a physical hard disk drive, and I wouldn't worry about the decrease in IOPS for consumer use, as it's not like you're running a database server with a high queue depth and tons of concurrent requests to the drive). So, you may want to consider that connection to be "good enough" for how you're using the SSD.

But, if you want to take advantage of the max performance your new SSD is capable of, I'd see if driver updates for the Marvell chipset make a difference; and if not, consider moving the SSD to one of your Intel SATA III ports and make sure to install the latest drivers for it, as pointed out in my earlier post (and you'll see links to that kind of thing in my previous post I linked to above).

--
JimC
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[Jim Cockfield]

IOW, now that you have it on a SATA III port, the speeds are more in line with what you can get from a faster SSD. But, they're still not as fast as your drive is capable of.

In real world use, I doubt you're going to see much difference in performance using a faster port and/or drivers.

But, if you want to "squeeze" the max performance possible from it, I'd try newer drivers for the Marvell chipset as a first step; and if that doesn't improve the speed so that you're up to greater than 500MB/Second on the read side with better IOPS benchmarks, I'd just move it to one of the Intel SATA III Ports instead and install the latest Intel Chipset drivers for it.

Your physical hard drives are not going to benefit from SATA III port speed anyway. So, if it were my machine, I'd just rearrange the drives so that the SSD is on the fastest port available (which is likely to be one of your Intel SATA III ports)

--
JimC
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[Wayne Larmon]

Your physical hard drives are not going to benefit from SATA III port speed anyway. So, if it were my machine, I'd just rearrange the drives so that the SSD is on the fastest port available (which is likely to be one of your Intel SATA III ports)

My three Magician speed tests:

Intel SATA II (Samsung 250 GB SSD)
285 MB/s sequential 270 MB/s sequential
52303 IOPS 50118 IOPS

Marvell SATA III (Samsung 250 GB SSD)
371 MB/s sequential 260 MB/s sequential
28339 IOPS 24922 IOPS

Intel SATA III (Samsung 250 GB SSD)
555 MB/s sequential 536 MB/s sequential
95223 IOPS 76739 IOPS

I swapped my WD 2 TB Black drive that used to be on the Intel III port to the Marvel III port. It slowed down a bit. And is still slower than my WD Green drives. All timings from Samsung Magician.

C: Intel SATA III (WD 500 GB Blue)
125 130
487 540

D: Intel SATA III (WD 2 TB Black) (Original configuration)
98 104
385 491

D: Marvell SATA III (WD 2 TB Black) (Final configuration)
77 98
409 488

E: Intel SATA II (WD 3 TB Green)
130 134
687 732

G: Intel SATA II (WD 2 TB Green)
82 74
283 380

Drive E: is the 3 TB WD Green HD I just put in. It now marketed as "Mainstream" on the box. But the drive label is WD Green, like it has been for years. I got from Best Buy a few days ago. It doesn't matter much that the other drives are slower because they are mostly archival. Any new work will be done on the new 3 TB WD Green (Mainstream) drive.

Anyway, your advice panned out: Try different ports until I find the fastest one.

Now that the drive is working I might try a copy of the Paragon Hard Disk Manager 14 Suite to clone my C: drive to the SSD. With the most important part for me right now is that it can clone (not just make a drive image) from drive to drive. And it adjusts as needed when going from HD to SSD. The free version of Paragon Backup that I have been using to make drive images doesn't do this.

But this will wait until Monday in case I have any activation issues. I usually deactivate all my Adobe products before doing any kind of C: copying, but the last time I went to the deactivate menu, it looked different. The only option now to wipe the serial number and re-enter the serial number to reactivate.



There used to be two options: One that wiped the serial number and a second that left the serial number in place.

Thanks.

Wayne

 

[Jim Cockfield]

I have no experience with that Paragon product.

But, I'd probably do a few things prior to trying to use it for cloning.

For example, I'd to go Computer, "right click" on your c: drive, select Properties, and use disk cleanup to get rid of anything extra on it (temp files, etc.).

Then, I'd disable hibernate and virtual memory (your pagefile) to save more space (as sometimes those files are flagged as unmovable and take up too much room and can interfere with partition resizing operatings).

Here's an article about removing pagefile.sys:

http://windows7themes.net/how-to-delete-pagefile-sys-in-windows-7.html

Here's one about hiberfil.sys:

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/it...-by-disabling-windows-hibernate-function/1493

You can enable virtual memory again later (and you may even want to use a custom setting for it, versus the Windows defaults in order to save space on your boot drive used by pagefile.sys). Samsung's Magician software can also help you set those kind of things via the profiles you'll find under it's Operating System Optimization choices.

Personally, I'd leave hibernate disabled though (it's going to eat up as much room on your drive as you have RAM, and it's usually just as fast to perform a clean boot versus using hibernate anyway, so I personally leave that feature disabled to save space).

Then, I'd defragment your drive (click on Computer, then right click on your c: drive, select Properties, and you'll find a defrag option under the Tools tab).

Then, go into Windows Disk Management and resize your c: partition smaller. Here's an article on doing that:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/gg309169.aspx

That way (above steps), you've already gotten rid of files taking extra space that may be flagged as unmovable, and you're already made sure the disk is in better shape from the defrag procedure; and you'd be shrinking the size of your Windows installation ahead of time, so that your disk cloning software doesn't have to worry about that kind of thing.

--
JimC
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[Jim Cockfield]

BTW, Samsung has a free Data Migration Tool you can use to clone from a hard drive to a Samsung SSD.

You'll see it in the downloads available for your Samsung 840 EVO model

Loading…

www.samsung.com

I've never tried it, so I don't know how well it would work. But, you may want to give it a try, since it's specifically designed to clone from a hard drive to a Samsung SSD (what you want to do), and is likely to make sure the partition alignment is optimized, etc.

But, I'd still do the steps outlined in my last post before using any cloning software, in the order I mentioned them (use disk cleanup, then get rid of your hibernate.sys and pagefile.sys, then defrag the drive, then shrink your Windows installation ahead of time).

That way, your cloning software doesn't need to worry about problems with unmovable files (your pagefile and hibernate files), extra files taking up space (temp files, log files, etc that you can get rid of using disk cleanup), and so you'd have a defragmented file system to start out with, and a partition you've already resized smaller).

Another product you may want to look at is the free Macrium Reflect. I haven't used it. But, a number of forum members here have spoken highly about it:

Macrium Reflect | Free 30-Day Trial

Macrium Reflect - Incredibly powerful software that allows you to create and schedule effective backups

www.macrium.com

 

[Wayne Larmon]

I have no experience with that Paragon product.

But, I'd probably do a few things prior to trying to use it for cloning.

For example, I'd to go Computer, "right click" on your c: drive, select Properties, and use disk cleanup to get rid of anything extra on it (temp files, etc.).

Good hint. I've never done this.

Then, I'd disable hibernate and virtual memory (your pagefile)...

This I don't need to do. I've used the free version of Paragon Backup more times than I can remember to make a disk image and then do a bare metal restore onto a different HD. Paragon Backup knows about the hibernate and page file and automatically excludes them (you can add other files/directories to the exclude list.)

Personally, I'd leave hibernate disabled though (it's going to eat up as much room on your drive as you have RAM, and it's usually just as fast to perform a clean boot versus using hibernate anyway, so I personally leave that feature disabled to save space).

I use apcupsd with my APC Smart-UPS (as we've discussed on a different thread) and that uses hibernate to do a soft shutdown if the UPS has been running on batteries for a while and the battery is close to exhaustion.

My current Oct. 2011 Win 7 install, with all my programs, uses about 100 Gig. I plan on devoting the entire ~230 GB SSD to Windows so I don't think I'll be short of space.

Then, I'd defragment your drive (click on Computer, then right click on your c: drive, select Properties, and you'll find a defrag option under the Tools tab).

When I was checking defrag status as part of making my system SSD ready, I noted that Windows was already configured to defrag all existing HDs (but not the SSD) once a week, currently on Wed. night.

Then, go into Windows Disk Management and resize your c: partition smaller.

I don't this this is needed with Paragon Backup. "Drive Imaging" is a misnomer, because it doesn't copy unused sectors--for all practical purposes, it "images" all the files that are on the disk (and the boot track and the system partition) and ignores any unused space on the disk. And it has the capability to resize the destination partition either up or down from the original partition size.

I'm not trying to niggle argue. I'm including this information for anybody else that is reading this and is considering backing up or copying their C: Windows drive to a different drive.

(RE: your 2nd post. I'm sticking with Paragon Backup because I have used it successfully many times, with no glitches attributable to the Paragon software. A program in the hand is worth 2^10th in the bush. I even used the free version to backup/restore a SSD a few months ago. But have always used the free version. I sort of want to pay them back by giving them some money. And because I can use the additional features that the paid version has.)

With all this said, I am still weighing doing a fresh Win 7 install from scratch. After I wrote my previous post (with the speedy Magician times after I switched to the Intel SATA III port), I did some more tests of copying stuff around and it still seems slower than it should (even though Magician says that the SSD is lightning fast.) I recently configured a new laptop with quad core i7, Haswell chipset, a Samsung 540 Pro SSD and an Intel mSATA SSD. That machine was jaw droppingly fast when doing similar disk-to-disk copies. I'm hoping that there isn't enough difference between a 2nd generation Sandy Bridge i7 machine and a 4th generation Haswell i7 machine that would make disk-to-disk copies be (at least) 100X faster.

Wayne

 

[Wayne Larmon]

Now that the drive is working I might try a copy of the Paragon Hard Disk Manager 14 Suite to clone my C: drive to the SSD. With the most important part for me right now is that it can clone (not just make a drive image) from drive to drive. And it adjusts as needed when going from HD to SSD. The free version of Paragon Backup that I have been using to make drive images doesn't do this.

I used HDM (Paragon Hard Disk Manager 14) to clone my C: drive to the Samsung SSD. The only glitch is the "free demo" version of HDM is crippled and won't clone. You need to actually buy the program before you can see if it works. You can create drive image backups, but you can't create recovery media. The demo version is crippled enough that you can really only use it to see how the GUI of the program works.

So I bought a license and used to to clone from my HD to the SSD. It worked more or less like I expected it to. I never cracked the manual and the user interface was mostly self-explanatory. I'm running on the SSD now. (I did use Magician to tune the OS for SSD after I booted up.)

You can clone (from HD to HD, from SSD to SSD, but not from HD to SSD) with the free version of Paragon Backup. But it involves first making a disk image, creating a recovery disk (flash drive is easiest), booting from the recovery disk and restoring from the disk image. It is all GUI, but is Linux based and isn't quite as self-explanatory as the Windows program is. (For starters, you have to figure out that restoring a disk image is three separate operations: 1., restoring the boot track, 2., restoring the system partition, and 3., restoring the part that we think of as the C: partition.) But it does work and I have used it several times. You can sidestep booting from recovery media with the free version by making a disk image in the full Windows program, and then using the full Windows program to restore from the disk image to a drive that is mounted in, say, a dock. And you still need a paid version to go from HD to SSD because the free version of Paragon doesn't support that at all.

But I've used the free version for years and figured that the cost of the HDM was minimal, compared to the additional features it adds. If you have used the free version of Paragon Backup, then HDM is the same thing and acts (mostly) the same way, but it has a lot more features.

I don't know if this needs stating now, but for years the mantra on this forum was to never attempt to clone Windows from a HD to a SSD: you must always reinstall Windows from scratch. I haven't monitored this forum closely enough to know if this is still the conventional wisdom. I just wanted to report that Paragon HDM has worked to clone a fairly complex Windows 7 install from HD to SSD quickly and easily. And has a whole bunch of features in addition to cloning.

Thanks again for your advice.

Wayne

 

[Jones2112]

Hi Wayne,

You seem to be an old pro at using Paragon Hard Disk Manager so I thought I ask you a few questions...

First off, I have never backed-up a drive before nor have I ever used the aforementioned program, with that out of the way...

I have purchased a bare SATA III drive (the same exact drive and size as the one inside the PC), a dock and Paragon HDM 14. My PC is a Dell 660 that came with OEM installed 64 bit Windows 8 (no media for the operating system came with the PC). I upgraded to Windows 8.1 via the Windows store which was a free upgrade.

I"m trying to create a bootable HDD in the event the one inside the PC fails. I've been told that Windows cannot boot from the drive inside of the dock if I use system image backup utility inside of Windows 8.1 unless several steps are taken to make that happen (hence the reason I bought HDM-14). I guess it has something to do with Windows not being able to boot from a drive connected via USB port, not really sure?

My questions are:

1) Do I simply clone the drive inside the PC and it will create an exact copy with operating system and all? If so, that leads me to my next question...

2) How do I go about cloning the drive inside of the PC to the HDD in the dock and making it bootable with HDM-14?

3) In the event the drive cannot boot from the dock I could always replace the drive inside the PC with the one in the dock, but will it boot?

One of my concerns is that when I clone the HDD inside of the PC it won't have the upgraded version of Windows on it. After I upgraded to Windows 8.1 a message came up from Dell's backup and recovery app that said unless I deleted the original partition that they put on the drive, it would revert back to factory condition if I had to recover the PC, needless to say that would not be good and I have no idea how to delete the partition its referring to. Of course Dell's app tried to sell me the "fix" if I upgraded to the premium version of the app! However, if the drive stopped working and I needed to replace it, thats not going to work anyway...

This is a new PC and doesn't have a whole lot on it right now which is why its optimal to get this all straightened out now...

Any help/advice would be appreciated...

Thanks,

J

 

[Wayne Larmon]

Sorry I missed this when you posted this. This is an old thread and I don't think your post showed up on my DPReview "fresh reply" indicator.

On the off chance that you still need an answer....

The procedure I used with HDM 14 was to mount the drive I wanted to clone to (the SSD, in my case) in the external dock. I then used the "Copy and Migration" tab in HDM. It is sort of obvious: it asks you which drive you want to copy and which drive you want to copy it to. (If you have multiple drives installed, you might want to temporarily unplug every drive except for your C: drive, so you don't get confused and copy onto the wrong drive.) It is pretty straightforward.

After the copy operation was done, I powered down, disconnected the SATA and power cable from my old C: drive, took the freshly cloned drive out of the dock, connected the SATA and power cables to it and powered up. Because I was migrating from a spinning HD to an SSD, this is what I wanted--I didn't need the old drive C: anymore (except as a backup.)

Mind, this is with Windows 7. I haven't done this with Windows 8.x so I don't know if there are any other considerations.

Before going much farther, make a Recovery boot disk by following the HDM instructions. I make my recovery boot disks on a flash drive.

Every few months I use HDM to make a fresh image backup of my drive C:, for disaster recovery purposes. To do a disaster recovery (if, for instance, your drive C: suddenly dies completely), you need to have made a recovery disk using HDM. Remove the old drive C: and put in a new drive. Then you boot from the HDM recovery disk and use the "Restore" option. Point it to the most image backup you made. I usually store my image backups on my drive D: (second physical drive.) But you can store them on a USB external drive. Or on a drive that you put in your dock.

What I usually do with new computers is to first boot them up and run them for a few days to make sure that there aren't any problems. But I don't install any programs or do anything like configuring email. Once I'm satisfied that it works OK and I won't be returning it for being defective, I copy drive C: to a different drive. Then I take the OEM drive C: out and put it on the shelf, and install the cloned drive C: I just made. Doing this is a 100% test that the disk cloning software works. Also, if the computer dies and I need to take it in for service, I replace the OEM drive C:, so I don't have any worries that any of my data is on the drive C: when it goes in for service.

Spare drives are cheap. My time and data aren't.

Wayne

Hi Wayne,

You seem to be an old pro at using Paragon Hard Disk Manager so I thought I ask you a few questions...

First off, I have never backed-up a drive before nor have I ever used the aforementioned program, with that out of the way...

I have purchased a bare SATA III drive (the same exact drive and size as the one inside the PC), a dock and Paragon HDM 14. My PC is a Dell 660 that came with OEM installed 64 bit Windows 8 (no media for the operating system came with the PC). I upgraded to Windows 8.1 via the Windows store which was a free upgrade.

I"m trying to create a bootable HDD in the event the one inside the PC fails. I've been told that Windows cannot boot from the drive inside of the dock if I use system image backup utility inside of Windows 8.1 unless several steps are taken to make that happen (hence the reason I bought HDM-14). I guess it has something to do with Windows not being able to boot from a drive connected via USB port, not really sure?

My questions are:

1) Do I simply clone the drive inside the PC and it will create an exact copy with operating system and all? If so, that leads me to my next question...

2) How do I go about cloning the drive inside of the PC to the HDD in the dock and making it bootable with HDM-14?

3) In the event the drive cannot boot from the dock I could always replace the drive inside the PC with the one in the dock, but will it boot?

One of my concerns is that when I clone the HDD inside of the PC it won't have the upgraded version of Windows on it. After I upgraded to Windows 8.1 a message came up from Dell's backup and recovery app that said unless I deleted the original partition that they put on the drive, it would revert back to factory condition if I had to recover the PC, needless to say that would not be good and I have no idea how to delete the partition its referring to. Of course Dell's app tried to sell me the "fix" if I upgraded to the premium version of the app! However, if the drive stopped working and I needed to replace it, thats not going to work anyway...

This is a new PC and doesn't have a whole lot on it right now which is why its optimal to get this all straightened out now...

Any help/advice would be appreciated...

Thanks,

J