Crucial C300 - very slow bootup

[Chris]

So, I got a Crucial C300 128GB 1.8in for my laptop. Loaded it with an image of Vista by Acronis. Boot up time is just as long as my HDD. Acronis did the partition with 1 MB before the 119.2 MB c: partition. After boot, C300 driver was loaded automatically. It comes the latest firmware. Any idea what is happening?

[JD]

I don't think Vista is the best of choices, but try doing a clean install rather than using an image.

You could try something like this: Paragon Paragon Alignment Tool - Overview to make sure it's properly aligned as well if you don't want to install Windows cleanly.

[francisw19]

Do you have your SATA mode set to AHCI? AFAIK, if it's only set to IDE, the drive won't perform nearly as well as it can.

[Chris]

Thanks for your replies. Yes, Vista is not the good choice. I just don't want to give Bill more money. I would rather spend some money on a SSD to speed it up. I'll try to clean install vista, buit my problem is that I only have a recovery disk, not an installation disk. I am going through hoops now to see if I can clean install it.

As to AHCI mode, I do not have control, since Sony Vaio do not let me into the detailed BIOS to change it. But it uses micro-sata connection, so hopefully it is AHCI.

BTW, I did try to install W7 on it and it boots in 22 sec. pretty fast. But, my objective is to stay with vista.

[vulcan500rider]

Chris:

I suspect it's the image. I'm no specialist in this area, but I remember reading that SSDs write their boot sectors differently than platter-based HDs, and that it's fairly essential to do a fresh install.

[EmptyMellon]

Originally Posted by Chris

So, I got a Crucial C300 128GB 1.8in for my laptop. Loaded it with an image of Vista by Acronis. Boot up time is just as long as my HDD. Acronis did the partition with 1 MB before the 119.2 MB c: partition. After boot, C300 driver was loaded automatically. It comes the latest firmware. Any idea what is happening?

I remembered a review that AnandTech did on the Crucial C300 a while back, a very good read and very informative: AnandTech - The SSD Diaries: Crucial's RealSSD C300 - highly recommended if you have the C300.

Basically, two main things play a role in degrading your drive (assuming your drive has a firmware 0002 or higer):
1. not using Windows 7, you need TRIM
2. heavy random writes

For Crucial the achilles heel is our old friend: the read-modify-write, a used C300 can potentially lose a good amount of its initial performance. The major disadvantage for SandForce is if you’re writing perfectly random or highly compressed data. Again I’m talking about data that’s random in nature, not random in terms of access pattern. Our heavy downloading workload shows this best where the 256GB C300 remains on top while the 100GB SandForce drive drops to Indilinx-like performance.

The C300 is clearly a drive made for Windows 7. With no TRIM utility, poor 512-byte aligned performance and clear degradation over time with heavy random writes, the C300 is best used with Windows 7 and its native TRIM support. Luckily for Crucial, there are a lot of Windows 7 users out there. Update: Version 2.6.33 of the Linux kernel supports TRIM as well. Presumably the C300 would do just as well under Linux so long as there's TRIM support.

Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3812/the-ssd-diaries-crucials-realssd-c300/9

[Chris]

Thanks for all responses. I have rma it today as I have no intention of buying another W7. My other OCZ Vertex 2 is working well for my linux which I used most of the time.