[SOLVED] New SSD Drive

I received the Corsair Force 3 yesterday and immediately packaged it up for
return - unopened and unused. Today I received the Crucial M4 and I have
already got it setup and running in my PC. I used Acronis True Image 10 to
clone my old 64GB C300 to the new Crucial M4 and all went well. The first
time I loaded Windows 7 HP I used Paragon Alignment tool to see if the drive
was properly aligned which it wasn't so it sorted that for me. Then I ran a
Crystalmark benchmark and had low results, I was pulling my hair out trying
to figure out why then I realised I had connected it to a SATA 2 instead of
a SATA 3 port. After I had sorted that my WEI score jumped to 7.9 from 7.7
it had been with the C300 and below are some Crystalmark benchmark scores
for the old C300 and the new M4.


C300
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/11/c300a.jpg/

M4
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/528/21183234.png/

On 09/12/2011 13:12, Nick Le Lievre wrote:
> I received the Corsair Force 3 yesterday and immediately packaged it up for return - unopened and unused. Today I received the Crucial M4 and I have already got it setup and running in my PC. I used Acronis True Image 10 to clone my old 64GB C300 to the new Crucial M4 and all went well. The first time I loaded Windows 7 HP I used Paragon Alignment tool to see if the drive was properly aligned which it wasn't so it sorted that for me. Then I ran a Crystalmark benchmark and had low results, I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out why then I realised I had connected it to a SATA 2 instead of a SATA 3 port. After I had sorted that my WEI score jumped to 7.9 from 7.7 it had been with the C300 and below are some Crystalmark benchmark scores for the old C300 and the new M4.
>
>
> C300
> http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/11/c300a.jpg/
>
> M4
> http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/528/21183234.png/

Those 4k write speeds are rather nice!
--
Rob

On 09/12/2011 13:12, Nick Le Lievre wrote:
>
> M4
> http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/528/21183234.png/

Impressive.

>"sender" wrote in message
>news:ZIKdnS5a0ZDGjX_TnZ2dnUVZ7qGdnZ2d@brightview. co.uk...
>On 09/12/2011 13:12, Nick Le Lievre wrote:
>
> M4
> http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/528/21183234.png/
>
>Impressive.

Yes quite. I am now going to put my old 64GB C300 in my budget games PC,
although it only supports SATA2 so I won't get the full speed out of it but
still. Probably going to have to do a reinstall of Windows 7 as I don't
think I will be able to clone a 1TB drive to a 64GB SSD as its too small.
Any ideas how to do that? If I backed it up first would I be able to restore
to a smaller drive.

>"Nick Le Lievre" wrote in message news:jbt3s4$qkj$...
>Impressive.
>
>Yes quite. I am now going to put my old 64GB C300 in my budget games PC,
>although it only supports SATA2 so I won't get the full speed out of it but
>still. Probably going to have to do a reinstall of Windows 7 as I don't
>think I will be able to clone a 1TB drive to a 64GB SSD as its too small.
>Any ideas how to do that? If I backed it up first would I be able to
>restore to a smaller drive.

FWIW I am only using 50GB of the 1TB drive so it would theoretically fit on
a 64GB SSD but I think if you clone the drive has to be the same size or
bigger but I am not sure if thats true if you back it up first.

On 09/12/2011 13:57, Nick Le Lievre wrote:
>> "Nick Le Lievre" wrote in message news:jbt3s4$qkj$...
>> Impressive.
>>
>> Yes quite. I am now going to put my old 64GB C300 in my budget games PC, although it only supports SATA2 so I won't get the full speed out of it but still. Probably going to have to do a reinstall of Windows 7 as I don't think I will be able to clone a 1TB drive to a 64GB SSD as its too small. Any ideas how to do that? If I backed it up first would I be able to restore to a smaller drive.
>
> FWIW I am only using 50GB of the 1TB drive so it would theoretically fit on a 64GB SSD but I think if you clone the drive has to be the same size or bigger but I am not sure if thats true if you back it up first.

I'm sure True Image can handle that. If not, use Windows 7 own disk
management to shrink the partition down to below 64GB, clone to the SSD
then boot SSD and use w7 to expand it to the full 64GB.
HTH
--
Rob

>"Rob" wrote in message news:...
>
> FWIW I am only using 50GB of the 1TB drive so it would theoretically fit
> on a 64GB SSD but I think if you clone the drive >has to be the same size
> or bigger but I am not sure if thats true if you back it up first.
>
>I'm sure True Image can handle that. If not, use Windows 7 own disk
>management to shrink the partition down to below 64GB, clone to the SSD
>then boot SSD and use w7 to expand it to the full 64GB.

I have spent the best part of 3 hours trying to get my Acronis Boot Disk to
see any of my internal hard drives. At first I thought it was because my
version was out of date so downloaded a trail version of the latest
installment but nada.

Then I went into the BIOS and noticed it was set to IDE rather then AHCI so
changed it to AHCI but to no avail. Eventually I found out it was because my
hard drive was not on the SATA 0 port which it apparently needs to be for
Acronis to see it.

Anyway am now in the process of backing up the 1TB drive to an external
drive. Could not use the clone option as my PSU only has 1X Molex to sata
power connector so I cannot connect two drives at the same time.

On 09/12/2011 13:12, Nick Le Lievre wrote:
> I received the Corsair Force 3 yesterday and immediately packaged it up
> for return - unopened and unused. Today I received the Crucial M4 and I
> have already got it setup and running in my PC. I used Acronis True
> Image 10 to clone my old 64GB C300 to the new Crucial M4 and all went
> well. The first time I loaded Windows 7 HP I used Paragon Alignment tool
> to see if the drive was properly aligned which it wasn't so it sorted
> that for me. Then I ran a Crystalmark benchmark and had low results, I
> was pulling my hair out trying to figure out why then I realised I had
> connected it to a SATA 2 instead of a SATA 3 port. After I had sorted
> that my WEI score jumped to 7.9 from 7.7 it had been with the C300 and
> below are some Crystalmark benchmark scores for the old C300 and the new
> M4.
>
>
> C300
> http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/11/c300a.jpg/
>
> M4
> http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/528/21183234.png/

FWIW, the results on my i5 iMac, 160GB Intel SSD/20% free, using XBench:

Sequential 200.93
Uncached Write 186.59 114.56 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 147.36 83.38 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 190.23 55.67 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 399.16 200.61 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 370.81
Uncached Write 472.68 50.04 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 139.00 44.50 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 2378.54 16.86 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 946.19 175.57 MB/sec [256K blocks]

That's after about 18 months - it's hardly changed over that time.
Marvellous things.

Rob

>"Rob" wrote in message
>news:4ee259df$0$20068$c3e8da3$ web.com...
>FWIW, the results on my i5 iMac, 160GB Intel SSD/20% free, using XBench:
>
>Sequential 200.93 Uncached Write 186.59 114.56 MB/sec [4K blocks]
>Uncached Write 147.36 83.38 MB/sec [256K blocks]
>Uncached Read 190.23 55.67 MB/sec [4K blocks]
>Uncached Read 399.16 200.61 MB/sec [256K blocks]
>Random 370.81 Uncached Write 472.68 50.04 MB/sec [4K blocks]
>Uncached Write 139.00 44.50 MB/sec [256K blocks]
>Uncached Read 2378.54 16.86 MB/sec [4K blocks]
>Uncached Read 946.19 175.57 MB/sec [256K blocks]

I have now successfully copied the image of my 1TB drive to the 64GB Crucial
RealSSD 300 by backing it up first then restoring to the smaller drive. Here
are my CrystalDiskMark scores for the RealSSD C300 running in SATA2 mode
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/97/cdmj.png/

I have the drive set to IDE in the BIOS as it was set to that by default and
I did not know, so if I want to use AHCI mode I might have to reinstall as
Windows does not load if I change the BIOS to AHCI. Is the performance
likely to be negatively affect by being in IDE mode or does it not matter.

>"Nick Le Lievre" wrote in message news:jbtkkr$i4$...
>I have spent the best part of 3 hours trying to get my Acronis Boot Disk to
>see any of my internal hard drives. At first I thought it was because my
>version was out of date so downloaded a trail version of the latest
>installment but nada.
>
>Then I went into the BIOS and noticed it was set to IDE rather then AHCI so
>changed it to AHCI but to no avail. Eventually I found out it was because
>my hard drive was not on the SATA 0 port which it apparently needs to be
>for Acronis to see it.
>
>Anyway am now in the process of backing up the 1TB drive to an external
>drive. Could not use the clone option as my PSU only has 1X Molex to sata
>power connector so I cannot connect two drives at the same time.

Hmmm the plot thickens, I just tried to create a new Acronis backup of the
64GB RealSSD C300 with the restored image of the 1TB drive on it and it
could not see the hard drive again, so I went back into the BIOS and set it
to AHCI and now it sees the drive again, so unless I am very much mistaken
it needs to be on SATA 0 port and also set to AHCI mode.

Of course the machine won't boot Windows if set to AHCI becuase it was
installed in IDE mode, I wonder is there a way to change an IDE mode build
into an AHCI compatible installation?