Thinkpads Forum

So here's some performance information of my Samsung 830 256GB running cloned XP Pro 32bit from HDD on which I made clean install.

- running AHCI mode, cloned with Acronis True Image Home 2011 but misaligned as Acronis does the standard 63 sector offset so 31Kb (63x512b), drive pretty new (~40GB ever written):
http://i50.tinypic.com/bgwa9z.jpg

- same as above but aligned with Partition Assistant Pro 5.1 to the 2048 sector offset so 1024Kb, drive pretty new (~ 110GB ever written):
http://i48.tinypic.com/10oilno.jpg

Laptop is the T61 with Intel GPU in my sig, running Middletons BIOS.

Thanks for sharing; very nice performance!

Question: Do you know whether the free version of AOMEI Partition Assistant --> AOMEI Partition Assistant Home will allow to fix the partition alignment issue? (reason for asking is the "AOMEI Partition Assistant Pro" cost around $36 which is a tad expensive if only needing to fix one SSD alignment, for one time only!).

Any other tips about free tools for XP/SSD partition-alignment are very welcome (as I am about to clone a non-aligned XP-HDD installation onto a SSD, and wish to aligne the SSD installation just as you did).

Thanks in advance!

Johan

Quite a difference in 4K QD32 writes. With misaligned partition not only the performance is worse but the SSD lifetime also is reduced quite significantly.

Johan, you can partition the drive with Vista/W7 install disc and it automatically creates properly aligned partition.

Raceboy wrote:Johan, you can partition the drive with Vista/W7 install disc and it automatically creates properly aligned partition.

Yes, I know this very well, but the case is that I, like miro_gt in the above example, have a (non-aligned) XP-installation on a HDD. If/when cloning this XP-HDD installation onto a SSD, then the resulting XP-on-the-SSD installation will obviously also be non-aligned. The issue is therefore: How to fix the partition alignment issue on the SSD-with-cloned-XP in this case?

Johan

unfortunately the Pro version is paid. But here are some other ways to do it:

- manually partition the drive with DiskPart under XP, here's how:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/docu ... x?mfr=true

when done, image (or backup) your existing XP installation to a file somewhere else, not on the newly partitioned SSD. You can do this with various backup software. (Note this is different than cloning). Then restore the image onto the SSD. In this case the partition properties do not change, only the partition gets filled up with the information from the image.

Here's information from Acronis on the subject:
http://kb.acronis.com/content/2699

Norton Ghost 15 comes with Samsung Magician (which comes with Samsung SSDs) so you can use that to create backup images. I've never tried it.

if anybody has used other clone/backup software, please post results.

EDIT: Also, since XP does not have TRIM command, I have set the Samsung Magician Performance Optimization for once per week, but may change it for longer time. This is my manual implementation of the TRIM command right there Garbage collection still works internally when the drive is at idle for some time.

Useful info, thanks for sharing.

Johan wrote:Question: Do you know whether the free version of AOMEI Partition Assistant --> AOMEI Partition Assistant Home will allow to fix the partition alignment issue? (reason for asking is the "AOMEI Partition Assistant Pro" cost around $36 which is a tad expensive if only needing to fix one SSD alignment, for one time only!).

It is my guess that the "Migrate OS to SSD" function within the free Home edition will indeed align the SSD when a HDD is "migrated" to an SSD.

"Tips: During the operation, the partition will be aligned automatic."
http://www.disk-partition.com/help/migr ... izard.html

I have used the Paragon tools :
- "Migrate-OS-to-SSD"(version 2.0)
- and that same function within their "Drive Copy 11 Pro SE"
products to 'clone' XP HDD systems to an SSD that then was correctly aligned (confirmed by using "AS SSD")
The Paragon products are not normally free but are sometimes free at :
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/

The structure and GUI of the AOMEI product is very similar to the Paragon products.

The 'differences' at this AOMEI link :
http://www.disk-partition.com/download-home.html
mention "Align Partition" as an additional feature of the non-free Pro version.
That must mean changing the alignment of a partition on an existing SSD realtime, whereas the "Migrate OS to SSD" function of the free Home version is good enough for me since my usage of the product would always be to move an OS from HDD to SSD.

Thanks to the OP .... very nice product.

I also like AOMEI very much as I recently discovered it

currently I'm thinking of removing Acronis and using AOMEI as primary backup solution, since my version of Acronis apparently can not clone my SSD back to HDD as it is getting stuck when the operation is about to start, though the other way works fine. There is an update available that could fix the problem, however alignment remains an issue there thus my interest has shifted towards AOMEI.

I haven't tried the "migrate OS" option but it looks like it may do the alignment job just fine within the free version, thanks for looking that up.

I have successfully used gparted on my Samsung 830 SSD with XP loaded on a T23. This was necessary after restoring an Acronis image onto it even though both the SSD and the donor HDD were already aligned.
Gparted does take a bit of time but it does the job well.
I have also downloaded, but not used the freeware HitachiAcronisAlignmentTool.exe, it is a tool for Hitachi disks obviously but it may well work with Samsung SSDs.
Hope this helps. I am hoping the Samsung Magician SSD garbage collection will be a replacement for Trim for XP based Thinkpads. Time will tell......

Raceboy wrote:Quite a difference in 4K QD32 writes. With misaligned partition not only the performance is worse but the SSD lifetime also is reduced quite significantly.

Johan, you can partition the drive with Vista/W7 install disc and it automatically creates properly aligned partition

So, if I partition my new SSD with my T61 Windows 7 machine, I suppose that precludes me from installing XP Pro on my T60 using the recovery disks. IIRC, the recovery disks will write over any existing partitions. So, I'd have to install XP from an XP install CD and put in the key that's on the sticker on the bottom of the machine? I'm trying to figure out if I can get by using XP on the machine or go to the trouble of either buying another OS or shuffling around the ones I have. I could revert my T61 to Vista Business and use the Windowx 7 64 bit on the machine that's going to get the SSD:

T60, Intel Core 2 Duo processor T5500
Genuine Windows® XP Professional
14.1 SXGA+ TFT
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 w/o WWAN
2GB RAM

Muse wrote: So, I'd have to install XP from an XP install CD and put in the key that's on the sticker on the bottom of the machine?

The key from the COA sticker will not work with the retail version.

Personally, unless you have a very good reason for sticking to XP, I'd move on to W7.

Muse wrote:
So, if I partition my new SSD with my T61 Windows 7 machine, I suppose that precludes me from installing XP Pro on my T60 using the recovery disks. IIRC, the recovery disks will write over any existing partitions.

Not 100% clear what you want to do but if you are putting an SSD in your T60 then if you use the XP recovery disk you can then use gParted to realign your partitions after the installation. So it is not essential to use only W7. Your choice.

JBUK wrote:
Not 100% clear what you want to do but if you are putting an SSD in your T60 then if you use the XP recovery disk you can then use gParted to realign your partitions after the installation. So it is not essential to use only W7. Your choice.

Thank you, that makes sense!

What are the downsides to using XP rather than W7 with an SSD? I do have some applications that won't run in W7. Yes, I could use them on my XP machine instead, but it's less than convenient to have to do so. Still, if the pluses outweigh the minuses in using W7 on the machine with the SSD, I'll do so.

Basically it's the lack of XP-support for TRIM.
But the Samsung 830 comes with a CD, on which you find the Magician Software, which includes the Trim function.
That also works in XP (only Intel and Samsung supply this type of support).
Things to do with an SSD under XP:
- disable indexing
- disable prefetch
- disable system restore
- disable hibernation - SSD's don't like it
- ensure there is no scheduled defrag

Yes to all those RBS tweaks.
I have also disabled: system restore and updating of last file access time. I think it all helps a bit to minimize the writes to the SSD and ensure optimal longevity.
The Samsung Disk Magician only works with NTFS I noticed, so no more FAT32.

Samsung 830 256GB SSD recently hit 6 Pib writes under endurance testing impressive

that is over 6.2 million gigabytes written, and it maintains average speed of ~300MB/s through the whole test (under SATA3 interface of course). And is still going ...

Recent calculations show that with about 10GB/day writes this drive will last for some 2,000 years ... OMG LOL.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/sho ... nm/page215

I guess impressive is not enough to be said for this drive, it's EPIC

very impressive SSD, indeed ... I think I should get 1 more 830 when it's on sale

(too bad newegg cannot send to Indonesia T.T )

nice info, miro_gt