new SSD: OCZ Agility2 60GB (Extended Capacity)

[profJim]

OCZ Agility 2 OCZSSD2-2AGTE60G 2.5" 60GB - spec sheet (pdf)

I'm using THE BASIC GUIDE & FAQ - ABC for OCZ SSD which is a gold mine for SSD information.
SSD = boot drive only, just arrived
HDD = WD640 Caviar Black for all data and programs, arriving soon
MSI N460GTX Hawk (1GB), recently installed (replaces EVGA 7600GT)

Goodbye win2000, hello win7 x64 (it's about time that I leave the stone age)

Impressions and benchmarks to follow soon.

[wazza300]

cant wait,what do you think of win7? if you havnt installed it yet you will like it

[profJim]

Ya, promises, promises....
Are you implying that win7 is better than win2k?

***EDIT***
After I've installed win7 and let it perform all the updates, installed needed hardware updates (graphics card, sound card, etc), is it safe to delay installing Zonealarm and Avast anit-spyware for several days or a week?
Will the built-in windows firewall offer "good enough" (temporary) protection?

[jojodancer]

much smoother........

you may not like it at first but time will change

[profJim]

Yep, the devil we know is always preferable to the devil we don't know ;)
Like it or not, win2k just doesn't cut it, too many software apps won't work with it.
My brief exposure with installing Vista on a friend's laptop convinced me to wait.
Didn't want to go with XP when win7 was coming out "soon".
Going with the inexpensive m/s Family 3-pack [Home "Premium"], $130 for 3 licenses. Whata Deal! Custom install, here I come!!

[wazza300]

i use avg, and windows firewall,works fine for me, i find win xp a good os too,as good as win7 imo,but the onboard sound is much superior in win7,thats using the microsoft sound drivers,not realtek/gigabyte

dont forget to set to ahci in bios before you install,and you shouldnt need any drivers as it windows will find and install lan,sata drivers for you,just update after from gigabytes website

[profJim]

^^good info, thanks
If I recall correctly, Lsdme once said that there are performance advantages to installing the operating system using RAID instead of AHCI even if your aren't using a RAID array. Comments anyone?

The OCZ SSD guide discusses Intel versus Microsoft AHCI/RAID drivers, and suggests installing Intel RST.
I'll probably just enable AHCI in the bios prior to my win7 install.
Only the SSD will be connected for the install.
With my current system, I won't be installing a RAID array.
Hopefully my IDE optical drive won't have "issues" with AHCI enabled.

The WD640 will be formatted and have 4K aligned partitions after the install and updates have completed.
My setup will have one SSD, one HDD, and on occasion, I use e-sata to connect to my backup hard drive.

Thanks for the feedback and suggestions.

[wazza300]

yes ahci would be best,not ahci/raid as it wont support trim in raid,you should see big performance gain with ssd in ahci mode,yes use intel rst drivers

[Darkje]

Just AHCI is fine if you don't use raid, but like you said you could set the controller to raid too and use it's ahci mode (that will kick-in on single disks connected to it). I've tried both and found behaviour quite similar, give or take a few mb/s in some benchies but nothing shocking. Considering the time spend in bios initialising the raid controller, it's not worth it if you don't actually use raid.

I would not tweak w7 too much the first couple of days, the guides often suggest you need to tweak a lot, but if you fresh install w7 on a system with ssd only it will setup itself quite nicely for ssd doing the major tweaks for you. (like disable defrag and reduced indexing)

Once you are up and running it's a good idea to use the w7 resource monitor to analyse disk usage, and with the goal of reducing writes to the ssd relocate the most written files to your hdd using junction links. (nice proggy for this is "junction link magic")

It may be a good idea to setup idle timer so that you logoff when idle, because the ssd will trim when idle at the logon promt, keeping condition optimal.

[profJim]

Ah, good thought, I definitely want Trim to work and I'll install Intel RST drivers using the flopsy method. Yes I have a flopsy drive.

Brief update:
I have my new OCZ and and new WD640 HDD installed in my backup (N650SLI-DS4) w2k system right now, both are raw and unformatted. SMART information shows that both new drives are good.

I'll be running WD win diagnostics for several hours to ensure that the WD640 HDD is okie-dokie.
I've downloaded some OCZ tools that hopefully will let me confirm (using w2k) that I have the latest ssd firmware and possibly let me update the firmware before I do the win7 install. OCZ recommends that firmware should be done with a non-overclocked system. To update the firmware, the bios must temporarily be set to IDE mode, AHCI mode can't be used for the firmware update.

I like not hearing mechanical noises from the SSD, but I swear that I hear the NAND chips rotating at low speed.
Thanks for the suggestions.

New question: I might want to dual-boot with Linux in the future.
How much space should I reserve on the WD640 drive for a modestly sized Linux setup?
I'm hoping that Linux can read from and write to NTFS partitions.