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Answer» So I decided to swap roles of 2 drives in my older gaming system and now it feels snappy like a brand new system even though its a 5 year old dual-core.
It was previously configured to have the 40GB Corsair SATA II SSD just for games to run from for fast reads of game files etc, and the OS and everything else was on the 500GB Seagate SATA II 7200rpm HDD. I did an upgrade the other day to 64-bit and installed 64-bit to an older HDD that I later found out was only SATA 1.5 vs SATA 3.0 speed when it was running slower than the original 32-bit build I had prior.
Last night I swapped the SATA cables between the HDD and the SSD and installed Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit to the 40GB Corsair SATA II 3.0 SSD, and set up the older HDD that is SATA I 1.5 as the slave to hold game content. ( *Note: This older SATA 1.5 drive is going to get pulled and a 3.0 data rate drive is going to go in its places as soon as I free up a SATA II drive to use or just buy one to swap with. )
From clean build on this SSD after the POST slash screen as stop watched, it takes just 13 seconds to the logon prompt. I type in my password and the desktop and all services are loaded in 3.8 seconds.
The hardware is:
Biostar MCP6PB M2+ Motherboard AM2+
AMD Athlon 64 x2 2310Mhz 4450B CPU AM2
4GB Corsair DDR2-800Mhz XMS2 RAM
40GB Corsair SATA II SSD
164.7GB Hitachi Deskstar 7200rpm 8meg cache, *but only SATA 1.5
Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium
Prior to this new configuration, with the 500GB SATA II HDD as master boot drive and the 40GB SATA II SSD as slave drive on a 32-bit Windows 7 build I was looking at about 30 seconds before I got to the logon prompt after the POST slash screen, and about 15 seconds before the desktop was accessible to launch applications etc with the hard drive LED on solid during the process.
Then the latest attempt prior to this of Windows 7 64-bit onto a different drive was a let down when I didnt pay attention to the fact that this HDD for the new install was only a SATA 1.5 and not a SATA 3.0 data rate drive. So Windows 7 64-bit was running slower than the prior 32-bit Windows 7 install because of this data rate bottleneck.
Swapping roles of the HDD and SSD was a drastic improvement in performance not just with the system booting up, but navigation to the slower drive and launching programs and games off of this slower drive almost feel like this older slower SATA 1.5 drive is running better/faster as a slave vs an OS drive.
Lastly to avoid overworking the cells on the SSD with the swap space, I moved the swap space over to the HDD instead and then rebooted the system with no swap space on the SSD, but only using the older slower HDD for swap space, and to my surprise the boot time of Windows 7 64-bit to logon prompt after splash screen was only increased by 1.3 seconds at 14.3 seconds. I then logged on after resetting stop watch and it came to functional desktop after just 4.3 seconds. *Note windows didnt go through any other changes during this time and no other software added to affect services at start up etc.
So running with swap space on this older drive added just 1.3 seconds to the boot to logon and .5 seconds to functional desktop after password entered.
I then navigated to World of Warcraft on this HDD and launched it and it launched not as fast as it did when it use to be on the SSD prior, but fast enough to not be annoyingly laggy. Once the game was running, there was no big performance detractions to running it on the HDD vs the SSD. The only noticable difference is in the time it takes to load maps which use to be almost instantaneous with the SSD and now I see the loading bar for a second or so. So I can live with that.
I highly recommend upgrading to an SSD even if just a $35 40GB like I have for the benefits of it as the main drive in a desktop that can hold multiple drives; however because mine is just 40GB, Windows 7 64-bit consumed so far about 16.5GB of it so I am going to try to keep as much off of this SSD as possible to allow breathing space for Windows 7 64-bit to grow as more and more patches and service packs are thrown at it down the road, as well as in case I need to install software that doesnt give the option for an alternate installation path and its hard coded to C:\program files\.... which fortunately is a rare problem since most installers give the option to install to another drive path vs default install path.
If you can afford a larger than 40GB SSD, I'd definately go with larger, and if its a laptop I'd suggest 60GB or larger if a non gaming build, and 128GB or larger for a laptop that will hold games such as World of Warcraft that is currently around 27GB in installation capacity size. Also as is the case in my netbook the SSD I installed in that added almost an hour to the battery life per full charge. * I am now tempted to take the SSD out of that Intel Atom Netbook and put its HDD back into it and get better performance use out of that SSD in a system with a far more powerful CPU than just an Intel Atom which is definately holding back the potential of the SSD for speed according to how this 5 year old build sprung to life as if it was a brand new computer off the shelf vs 5 years old and only an older dual-core with 1meg cache shared between 2 cores at just 2.3Ghz.
Currently it is just Windows 7 64-bit after 133 updates and it still has to go through SP1. I RAN out of time to patch it FULLY before work, and am CURIOUS as to how large Windows 7 will be when fulling patched. But this 5 year old dual-core feels like a new computer in how fast it is to boot, logon, launch windows components, firefox etc, and the games launched from the slower HDD while slower are tolerable. As SSD's have been getting cheaper for larger capacity, I hope to do away with the slower HDD's in my gaming systems within the next 12 months or so. I saw a deal on a 128GB SATA III SSD for $80 the other day and I was very close to clicking BUY, but I held out because I still have to buy gifts for everyone else for christmas other than myself..LOL
YAY!! I have a Seagate 480GB SSD SITTING right in front of me, waiting to be installed. I both look forward to it and don't. It will be nice for the speed boost as well as a fresh install; but it will suck to get the appropriate data copied over as well as reinstall all the programs I use. Probably less of a pain than I think it is, though.Quote I have a Seagate 480GB SSD sitting right in front of me, waiting to be installed. I both look forward to it and don't. It will be nice for the speed boost as well as a fresh install; but it will suck to get the appropriate data copied over as well as reinstall all the programs I use. Probably less of a pain than I think it is, though.
yes, this was one of the reasons why I held off for so long. But I also didnt wipe my prior Win 7 32-bit build off of the 500GB HDD yet, and installed a different HDD to use as a slave because 40GB is too tight for anything other than Win 7 64-bit OS to reside on.
Last night I actually performed the same build setup to my wifes computer as I did to mine. Instead of having the SSD as a slave for just a large game, I made her HDD a slave and moved the SSD to SATA port 1 vs SATA port 3 making it a bootable drive. Then going through the reinstall of Windows 7 32-bit for her system because she only has 2GB RAM it worked out nice that during the clean install of Windows 7 32-bit it detected the prior build of Windows 7 32-bit on the HDD and so the Windows Boot Manager prompted with selection of Windows 7 or Windows 7 in which the first on the list is the new SSD clean build and the 2nd down on the list is the old build on the HDD. I went into msconfig and changed the delay from 30 seconds to the MINIMUM of 3 seconds, so if needed I can boot up the old build off the HDD vs the SSD, and it works great.
If you leave your prior build in while installing Clean to the SSD and the SSD is at SATA port 1, it should set you up also with boot option for the new clean build or the old build.
When I installed mine, I probably should have gone this route, but I didnt know that the clean install would link the other Win 7 install as a bootable option. I installed on my system initially with just the SSD present so it would build clean and no confusion on which drive Win 7 is installed to. I then added the 164.7GB old SATA 1.5 drive as a slave to make up for lack of SSD storage capacity. But for me, if I need anything off that 500GB HDD, its as simple as swapping the SATA com and power cables over and booting so not that much of a pain. After doing my wifes system up though, I wish I did it up like hers with the HDD present for the Windows 7 install to detect the prior version of Windows on that other drive which is then added to the Windows Boot Manager selection. * I am sure if I really wanted to, I could always disconnect the 164.7GB and plug the 500GB HDD back in, and edit the msconfig boot manager to give option for this older 32-bit boot as well as the clean 64-bit boot.
Fortunately I have a folder on all systems with software for the build located in it, and so I just needed to back that up to external and then copy it to new build and then go through the reinstall process. I also exported my Firefox config etc so I could import my favorites etc.
Looking at all that has to happen for the build before installing it, it looks like it will stink having to go through it all, but in the end you will be glad you did!
One of my systems has a SATA III SSD running backwards compatibility as SATA II speed and I have wondered how much faster SATA III would be vs SATA II, however it might not be much difference if the OCZ SSD Drive is running already full speed at SATA II and at SATA III it would be I guess less conjestion at that Data Rate at 6.0 vs 3.0 because of a bottleneck to around the 3.0 speed anyways of the internal chipset. I was tempted to add a SATA III controller to it, but heard about a 5.0 speed cap when using SATA III adapters in the PCIe slot vs integrated SATA III which is true 6.0 speed.
BTW: If you are installing Windows 7, it may show up as "up to date" green, when you check to see if it needs updates and yet it isnt even SP1 yet!
I ended up going to Windows Update and telling it to check for new updates because it wasnt up to date it then detected a whole bunch more updates like 128 updates of which one of them was SP1. And it did this for both my clean build as well as my wifes clean build last night. Not sure why it was showing as Up to Date, and yet I knew it wasnt, and then when I told it to search for updates it then detected that it needed another 128 updates which one of them was SP1. *Also I found odd that after all updates were completed and when searching for mew it came up with none, that IE was still version 8. But when going to www.microsoft.com for updates I was able to download IE 11 and update IE 8 directly to IE 11. I would have expected IE update to be a part of the normal Windows 7 update process, but that seemed broken so it had to be manually done.
Then came the normal plug ins and handlers such as Adobe Flash, Java, Acrobat Reader, and then the free doPDF and printer drivers and so on as well as importing her prior IE config to the new build.
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