Hard drives
Hard drives
In terms of enabling AHCI (not sure what it is but assuming it'll be a setting in the BIOS?), should I do this then before I even install the SSD?
sprinter2012 4. Disable defragmenting, superfetch, hibernation and move the pagefile to the HDD (if you have a good amount of RAM)What is superfetch? And what is the pagefile and how do I move it? I have 3gigs of RAM, is that considered a good amount? My PC is quite old so I'm not even sure if it's any higher than SATA 1 though.
EDIT: Also, make sure you plug the SSD into the first SATA port on the motherboard, as some boards with multiple ports only have the highest speed access on one or two of the ports. e.g. mine has 3 SATA ports, 1 is SATA3 and the others are SATA2.
sprinter2012 Also @Parthiban, have you got the SSD yet or are you still shopping around?Yep I've already bought it, and I went for a 128GB Crucial M4 for exactly the reason of reliability. In any case my PC probably isn't fast enough to exploit the super fast drives, and I'm not a PC gamer or anything so absolute speed wasn't as important as reliability.
Crucial M4 gets good reviews as being the most reliable but a bit slow (only 250MBs or so), but I went for an OCZ Vertex 3 which is blisteringly fast (500-550MBs) and since the new sandforce drivers came out they have had some very good reviews too.
Make sure you get at least 120GB though whatever you go for.
It was a toss up between the M4 and the Samsung 830 but decided on the M4 in the end.
2002 '02' IS200 SE Auto - DVD Satnav with Voice Activation - [COLOR="Blue"]Strathcaron Blue - Parking Sensors - 5000K HIDs with Anti-Glare Bulbs - PIAA 6500K Main Beams - LED Sidelights - Mirror/Sunroof Closure - TTE Styling Kit - 18" Styling Kit Alloys with nitrogen filled Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric Tyres - Bluetouch Multimedia Kit - Gromaudio AUX in - Black painted calipers with silver Lexus decals - 12 LED Dome Light - 96 LED Boot Light - Stainless Steel Sport Sill Plates - PIAA Silicone Wipers[/COLOR]
Thanks, some really useful info there, I'll remember that list when I do the install.
In terms of enabling AHCI (not sure what it is but assuming it'll be a setting in the BIOS?), should I do this then before I even install the SSD?
sprinter2012 4. Disable defragmenting, superfetch, hibernation and move the pagefile to the HDD (if you have a good amount of RAM)What is superfetch? And what is the pagefile and how do I move it? I have 3gigs of RAM, is that considered a good amount? My PC is quite old so I'm not even sure if it's any higher than SATA 1 though.
EDIT: Also, make sure you plug the SSD into the first SATA port on the motherboard, as some boards with multiple ports only have the highest speed access on one or two of the ports. e.g. mine has 3 SATA ports, 1 is SATA3 and the others are SATA2.
sprinter2012 Also @Parthiban, have you got the SSD yet or are you still shopping around?Yep I've already bought it, and I went for a 128GB Crucial M4 for exactly the reason of reliability. In any case my PC probably isn't fast enough to exploit the super fast drives, and I'm not a PC gamer or anything so absolute speed wasn't as important as reliability.
Crucial M4 gets good reviews as being the most reliable but a bit slow (only 250MBs or so), but I went for an OCZ Vertex 3 which is blisteringly fast (500-550MBs) and since the new sandforce drivers came out they have had some very good reviews too.
Make sure you get at least 120GB though whatever you go for.
It was a toss up between the M4 and the Samsung 830 but decided on the M4 in the end.
2002 '02' IS200 SE Auto - DVD Satnav with Voice Activation - [COLOR="Blue"]Strathcaron Blue - Parking Sensors - 5000K HIDs with Anti-Glare Bulbs - PIAA 6500K Main Beams - LED Sidelights - Mirror/Sunroof Closure - TTE Styling Kit - 18" Styling Kit Alloys with nitrogen filled Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric Tyres - Bluetouch Multimedia Kit - Gromaudio AUX in - Black painted calipers with silver Lexus decals - 12 LED Dome Light - 96 LED Boot Light - Stainless Steel Sport Sill Plates - PIAA Silicone Wipers[/COLOR]
Personally I'm not sure I'd bother with superfetch/hibernation file etc, it's not like they get used much anyway. The scheduled defragmenter is the biggest hit.
If your PC is old it probably won't have AHCI as an option in the BIOS. If it does, it will be under something like chipset features / SATA mode, or something like that. You will have to change it back to whatever it is set on at the moment to boot your old windows installation if you ever need to.
Personally I'm not sure I'd bother with superfetch/hibernation file etc, it's not like they get used much anyway. The scheduled defragmenter is the biggest hit.
I've read that Windows 7 can identify an SSD and automatically disables defrag and superfetch - I'll check in any case but quite cool that it does it for you potentially.
2002 '02' IS200 SE Auto - DVD Satnav with Voice Activation - [COLOR="Blue"]Strathcaron Blue - Parking Sensors - 5000K HIDs with Anti-Glare Bulbs - PIAA 6500K Main Beams - LED Sidelights - Mirror/Sunroof Closure - TTE Styling Kit - 18" Styling Kit Alloys with nitrogen filled Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric Tyres - Bluetouch Multimedia Kit - Gromaudio AUX in - Black painted calipers with silver Lexus decals - 12 LED Dome Light - 96 LED Boot Light - Stainless Steel Sport Sill Plates - PIAA Silicone Wipers[/COLOR]
You're right Toxo, checked my BIOS and there's no option for AHCI so don't need to worry about that. Did some reading and it doesn't appear to be the end of the world, yes I won't get the absolute best out of the SSD but it'll still be considerably faster than before so that's good enough for me.
I've read that Windows 7 can identify an SSD and automatically disables defrag and superfetch - I'll check in any case but quite cool that it does it for you potentially.
2002 '02' IS200 SE Auto - DVD Satnav with Voice Activation - [COLOR="Blue"]Strathcaron Blue - Parking Sensors - 5000K HIDs with Anti-Glare Bulbs - PIAA 6500K Main Beams - LED Sidelights - Mirror/Sunroof Closure - TTE Styling Kit - 18" Styling Kit Alloys with nitrogen filled Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric Tyres - Bluetouch Multimedia Kit - Gromaudio AUX in - Black painted calipers with silver Lexus decals - 12 LED Dome Light - 96 LED Boot Light - Stainless Steel Sport Sill Plates - PIAA Silicone Wipers[/COLOR]
Only issue I'm having which I'm not sure whether it's down to the SSD or the switch to Windows 7, but I use my PC with an LCD TV rather than a monitor, and it is connected using a DVI to HDMI converter and a standard HDMI cable.
I simply switch the TV on when using it, and then off when not (fairly simple!) and never had any problems before, but ever since the change every so often now when I turn the TV on I get "no signal" on screen and the only way to fix it is to unplug the cable and plug it back in.
Anyone know what could be causing this?
2002 '02' IS200 SE Auto - DVD Satnav with Voice Activation - [COLOR="Blue"]Strathcaron Blue - Parking Sensors - 5000K HIDs with Anti-Glare Bulbs - PIAA 6500K Main Beams - LED Sidelights - Mirror/Sunroof Closure - TTE Styling Kit - 18" Styling Kit Alloys with nitrogen filled Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric Tyres - Bluetouch Multimedia Kit - Gromaudio AUX in - Black painted calipers with silver Lexus decals - 12 LED Dome Light - 96 LED Boot Light - Stainless Steel Sport Sill Plates - PIAA Silicone Wipers[/COLOR]
Ok so the SSD has been in a week now and it's amazing! My 7 year old PC feels like a completely different machine, was expecting it to be fast after getting the MBA but didn't think it would be quite as fast as it is.
Only issue I'm having which I'm not sure whether it's down to the SSD or the switch to Windows 7, but I use my PC with an LCD TV rather than a monitor, and it is connected using a DVI to HDMI converter and a standard HDMI cable.
I simply switch the TV on when using it, and then off when not (fairly simple!) and never had any problems before, but ever since the change every so often now when I turn the TV on I get "no signal" on screen and the only way to fix it is to unplug the cable and plug it back in.
Anyone know what could be causing this?
2002 '02' IS200 SE Auto - DVD Satnav with Voice Activation - [COLOR="Blue"]Strathcaron Blue - Parking Sensors - 5000K HIDs with Anti-Glare Bulbs - PIAA 6500K Main Beams - LED Sidelights - Mirror/Sunroof Closure - TTE Styling Kit - 18" Styling Kit Alloys with nitrogen filled Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric Tyres - Bluetouch Multimedia Kit - Gromaudio AUX in - Black painted calipers with silver Lexus decals - 12 LED Dome Light - 96 LED Boot Light - Stainless Steel Sport Sill Plates - PIAA Silicone Wipers[/COLOR]
toxo My money would be on power saving, Windows 7 is much more aggressive with things like suspending to RAM etc.
Either that or it's some behaviour that's changed between the version of the driver you were using under your old OS and the new one.
I thought it might be power saving so I changed it to never switch the display off but it's still doing it.
If it's driver related do you know what I might need to change it too? At the moment win7 has set it up as generic pnp monitor, I did a quick search but couldn't find anything, do you think there might be a specific driver for my TV?
2002 '02' IS200 SE Auto - DVD Satnav with Voice Activation - [COLOR="Blue"]Strathcaron Blue - Parking Sensors - 5000K HIDs with Anti-Glare Bulbs - PIAA 6500K Main Beams - LED Sidelights - Mirror/Sunroof Closure - TTE Styling Kit - 18" Styling Kit Alloys with nitrogen filled Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric Tyres - Bluetouch Multimedia Kit - Gromaudio AUX in - Black painted calipers with silver Lexus decals - 12 LED Dome Light - 96 LED Boot Light - Stainless Steel Sport Sill Plates - PIAA Silicone Wipers[/COLOR]
toxo My money would be on power saving, Windows 7 is much more aggressive with things like suspending to RAM etc.
Either that or it's some behaviour that's changed between the version of the driver you were using under your old OS and the new one.
I thought it might be power saving so I changed it to never switch the display off but it's still doing it.
If it's driver related do you know what I might need to change it too? At the moment win7 has set it up as generic pnp monitor, I did a quick search but couldn't find anything, do you think there might be a specific driver for my TV?
2002 '02' IS200 SE Auto - DVD Satnav with Voice Activation - [COLOR="Blue"]Strathcaron Blue - Parking Sensors - 5000K HIDs with Anti-Glare Bulbs - PIAA 6500K Main Beams - LED Sidelights - Mirror/Sunroof Closure - TTE Styling Kit - 18" Styling Kit Alloys with nitrogen filled Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric Tyres - Bluetouch Multimedia Kit - Gromaudio AUX in - Black painted calipers with silver Lexus decals - 12 LED Dome Light - 96 LED Boot Light - Stainless Steel Sport Sill Plates - PIAA Silicone Wipers[/COLOR]
It may be other power saving related things. Disable them all (hibernate/suspend etc) and see.
Another thought (I'm sure you'd have already checked this) - DVI to HDMI adaptors are pretty bulky and when combined with the weight of an HDMI cable can be a lot to hang off the back of a graphics card. Are all your connections done up tight? I guess you've had the PC out and disconnected everything to install the SSD. I had this with my mum's media PC when she got her HD panel, ended up replacing adaptor + cable with a direct DVI to HDMI cable.
It'll be graphics card drivers not monitor drivers. I doubt there will be a driver for your TV and even if there is, all it does is list supported resolution & refresh rates (and clock timings and a few other things). This is not applicable with HDMI, DVI or even late VGA connections as they use a thing called DDC to communicate directly with the monitor and interrogate its list of valid resolutions, rather than requiring the driver file.
It may be other power saving related things. Disable them all (hibernate/suspend etc) and see.
Another thought (I'm sure you'd have already checked this) - DVI to HDMI adaptors are pretty bulky and when combined with the weight of an HDMI cable can be a lot to hang off the back of a graphics card. Are all your connections done up tight? I guess you've had the PC out and disconnected everything to install the SSD. I had this with my mum's media PC when she got her HD panel, ended up replacing adaptor + cable with a direct DVI to HDMI cable.
This will make a dramatic improvement on slower systems, and help with better builds, as it increases the available cache.
In laptops, just pop an SD card in
I have nearly doubled the speed of a machine in the past for less than a tenner!
Just a note for those who run Windows 7, and cannot afford a nice SSD, plug in a 4GB flash drive, and when prompted, set it up for ReadyBoost. (You may want to stick it in the back as it needs to stay in)
This will make a dramatic improvement on slower systems, and help with better builds, as it increases the available cache.
In laptops, just pop an SD card in
I have nearly doubled the speed of a machine in the past for less than a tenner!
Also it only caches physical memory, so if you have plenty of RAM already it makes no difference.
See I'm not sold on ReadyBoost. Usually the device you're plugging in is attached via USB, and most computers USB controllers (especially old ones) are dog slow. Your seek times will go down but your actual read and write times will go through the roof!
Also it only caches physical memory, so if you have plenty of RAM already it makes no difference.
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