Is Windows trying to knacker my SSD?

fwor

Just replaced the original 64GB SSD in my HP notebook with a 128GB one (because it's dual boot and Win7 is a bit of a squeeze on a 32GB partition).

Cloned the old SSD onto the new one and moved/resized the partitions Ok with GPARTED and it booted fine - both Win7 and Linux Mint boot up no problem from their new larger partitions.

However... when I check Windows to confirm that it knows it's running from an SSD, the first signs are that it doesn't! Both Prefetch and Superfetch are turned on (non-zero values in the registry), and the Win7 partition was marked in Disk Defragmenter to be defragged once a week. AFAIK, none of these should be enabled for an SSD.

So is there any definitive way to get Win7 to tell me (without having to install third party software) whether it thinks its HDD is an SSD or not?

John_Gray

Has TRIM been set up?
Later... Actually that fsutil command returns 0 for my system, which doesn't have an SSD, so TRIM appears to be "enabled" for ordinary HDs as well as SSDs.

Another possibility is to see if the drive letter is found in Disk Defragmenter - if it isn't found then the drive is being regarded as an SSD.

Notmyrealname

Prefetch and superfetch WILL be turned on with a SSD as they are READ ONLY. It is services that WRITE such a swap files and defragging that need turning off.

There are unlimited reads but limited writes.

fwor

Thanks JG - DisableDeleteNotify=0, so it does know it's an SSD, or perhaps from your experience with a conventional HDD, it doesn't...

The online advice on Disk Defragmenter is confusing. Yes, the drive letter is present and was shown as requiring defragmenting when I first looked at it ~BUT~ if I go to the Disk Fragmenter scheduler and choose Select Disk, the only checkbox I get is (select all disks) - it does not appear there explicitly.

And thanks NMRN - just goes to show that I shouldn't believe what the first few Google results tell you... (the first few that I looked at said definitively that, except for first-generation SSDs, both should be turned off!).

Do you know a quick simple way to tell if swap is turned off in Win7?

Figment

Swap as in a Paging file?

Control Panel > System > Advanced System Properties > Advanced > Performance Settings > Advanced > Virtual Memory

fwor

Figment wrote: »

Swap as in a Paging file?

Yes, I guess so - got too used to Linux terms now.

Shows as "System managed" and not "No paging file". Just changed it to the latter.

So... looks like Win7's supposed ability to automatically optimise itself when running from an SSD doesn't work as well as it should...

Notmyrealname

Actually it does. The problem is that you cloned the original HDD so it doesn't.

If it had been a clean install then it should have.

John_Gray

fwor wrote: »

So... looks like Win7's supposed ability to automatically optimise itself when running from an SSD doesn't work as well as it should...

It's a work-in-progress, and depends on the manufacturer of the SSD and its firmware, and quite probably disk drivers.

Compare the flakiness of USB3 now, and USB 1 in Windows 98SE a few years ago.

fwor

Notmyrealname wrote: »

Actually it does. The problem is that you cloned the original HDD so it doesn't.

You're wrong there - the original installation was to an SSD.

It's never been installed on a conventional HDD, so there's no reason for it to suddenly think that it's ~not~ installed on an SSD. The process of cloning won't make any difference to that.

fwor

John_Gray wrote: »

It's a work-in-progress, and depends on the manufacturer of the SSD and its firmware, and quite probably disk drivers.

Agreed - although it should be clearly identified via an ATA parameter when the disk is initialised. If I boot into Mint and look at it with Disk Utility, it's clearly identified there as an SSD.

I accept that Linux doesn't (yet) optimise itself for SSDs and you have to do that yourself (a simple edit of /etc/fstab) - but I'd rather have that than a situation where the OS is supposed to but actually doesn't. Makes me wonder how much unnecessary wear the previous Crucial M4 was subjected to without me realising...