Y
Yousuf Khan
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B
BillW50
Samsung SSD 840 Evo 1TB is another one. There was one around 2009 or
so. I forget who made it and it was on some super high priced laptop.
O
OldGuy
BillW50 expressed precisely :
I installed a Samsung EVO 512G as my laptop drive.
It is 10X faster than the HDD taken out and speed proven by speed
testing.
If you buy the EVO kit you get a USB3 to drive cable (was $10 more) to
do a clone so I was able to clone the laptop HDD to SSD easily and very
quickly. Now I have a handy cable too.
I installed a Samsung EVO 512G as my laptop drive.
It is 10X faster than the HDD taken out and speed proven by speed
testing.
If you buy the EVO kit you get a USB3 to drive cable (was $10 more) to
do a clone so I was able to clone the laptop HDD to SSD easily and very
quickly. Now I have a handy cable too.
G
GlowingBlueMist
Cloning is an easy way to get the system over onto the a SSD but you
might want to verify the TRIM command is turned on for OS's newer than
XP. TRIM is basically the SSD replacement for the older defrag utility.
A fresh install of Windows 7 or newer automatically turns on the TRIM
utility but a clone from a hard drive to SSD may not automatically turn
it on.
Here are a few links showing how to verify it is activated or how to
turn it on.
Windows 7
http://lifehacker.com/5640971/check-if-trim-is-enabled-for-your-solid-state-drive-in-windows-7
Windows 8
http://www.tweakhound.com/2012/11/14/windows-8-ssd-settings-etc/
Windows 8.1
http://www.tweakhound.com/2013/11/02/windows-8-1-ssd-settings-etc/
M
Mike Barnes
OldGuy said:
You've reminded me of what happened to me when I went down a similar
route last month. I'll tell the story in case it's relevant to you, or
in case anyone else has any illumination to add.
The Samsung SSD clone program was easy to use and appeared to work fine,
though getting Windows Disk Manager to set the drive letters properly
afterwards was a bit of a struggle as I recall. When a few days later I
went to do my regular Windows Backup, it failed with an error message
about insufficient disk space for Volume Shadow Copy. (I'm doing this
from memory so the details might not be quite right.) Naturally, the
backup being a Microsoft program, it didn't tell me useful things such
as *which* of the four volumes allegedly didn't have enough disk space,
or *how much* extra might be required, but it looked to me as if it
could only be that small (100 MB) "System Reserved" volume that was
created when I installed Windows.
Looking at the Properties of the cloned "System Reserved" volume it had
the same total space and the same used space as the original, but the
free space was much lower.
By analysing the volume (well outside my areas of expertise by now) I
realised that the "lost" space was actually occupied by the NTFS log
file. I compared the log file sizes of the original and cloned volumes
and they were startlingly different.
So I changed the log size for the cloned "System Reserved" volume to be
the same as the original volume. Then the amount of free space increased
satisfyingly, and Window Backup started working OK.
Conclusion: The results of the Samsung clone program are not exactly
perfect. Any flaw might not be immediately apparent and can be tricky to
diagnose.
Having said that I'm actually very pleased with the SSD itself.
P
Paul
Mike said:
By any chance, did you assign a drive letter to SYSTEM RESERVED ?
You're not supposed to do that.
On Windows 7, you can even remove the SYSTEM RESERVED entirely,
and avoid problems in the future. SYSTEM RESERVED is only
really needed, if you're using BitLocker full disk encryption
(to encrypt C
.(I've removed SYSTEM RESERVED from my Win7 laptop, using this method...)
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=409
Paul
M
Mike Barnes
Paul said:By any chance, did you assign a drive letter to SYSTEM RESERVED ?
You're not supposed to do that.
No.
On Windows 7, you can even remove the SYSTEM RESERVED entirely,
and avoid problems in the future. SYSTEM RESERVED is only
really needed, if you're using BitLocker full disk encryption
(to encrypt C
I read some opinion that agreed with that, and some that didn't. One
problem is that the System Reserved volume is on Windows Backup's list
of volumes that are essential for a bare metal restore. So by deleting
it I might have made the backup problem worse instead of better.
P
Paul
Mike said:
Windows 7 can be installed as a single partition installation.
What you do, is prepare an empty NTFS partition on the hard
drive, insert your installer DVD, and when the installation
starts, it'll ask what you want to do. By pointing it to a
partition to use, you can cause the installation to not
have a SYSTEM RESERVED. If you offer no partition for
the installer to use, it does a two-partition install
as a default.
And it means the backup facility has to be able to handle
either situation (a one partition or two partition install).
Now, naturally, if I reach for an old backup, done when
my laptop had two partitions, and tried to restore to
the laptop as it stands now, I could be in for a surprise
So I agree that some future care would be needed, in terms
of not making a real mess of things. System Image is not
known for being very clever. A real backup utility, has
more options not to wreck things.
The System Image capability in your OS, is also available
via "wbadmin". And that utility supports an "AllCritical"
argument, or explicitly naming C: if you want. It's still
possible, using that utility, to back up exactly what
you want.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc754015.aspx
As examples
Wbadmin start backup -backupTarget:F: -include:\\?\Volume{C38A95FE-9261-11E1-92E9-806E6F6E6963}\,C: -quiet
wbAdmin start backup -backupTarget:E: -include:C:,D:,F: -allCritical -quiet
wbAdmin start backup -backupTarget:N: -allCritical
That last command, backs up C: and SYSTEM RESERVED. The AllCritical
argument was invented, so you don't need to look up the
pesky GUID for the SYSTEM RESERVED partition. The first
command, shows the equivalent of AllCritical, spelled out
in fine detail. The first argument is a GUID for SYSTEM RESERVED,
followed by a comma, then partition C: . The example in
the third line, is a shorthand of what is in the first line.
And the example in the second line, includes some redundancy
in terms of what it is asking the backup to do (C: is effectively
specified twice in that example).
And the capabilities of wbadmin, should mimic how the built-in
System Image works.
Paul
M
Mike Barnes
Paul said:
That doesn't mean to say that it will handle a two-partition install
where one partition was subsequently deleted. This *is* Microsoft we're
talking about.
Now, naturally, if I reach for an old backup, done when
my laptop had two partitions, and tried to restore to
the laptop as it stands now, I could be in for a surprise
So I agree that some future care would be needed, in terms
of not making a real mess of things. System Image is not
known for being very clever. A real backup utility, has
more options not to wreck things.
The System Image capability in your OS, is also available
via "wbadmin". And that utility supports an "AllCritical"
argument, or explicitly naming C: if you want. It's still
possible, using that utility, to back up exactly what
you want.
Kind of.
I do in fact use wbadmin. If I use AllCritical it backs up System
Reserved, C:, and (bizarrely, as it contains no system files) N:. And
the backup is described as being suitable for a bare metal restore.
This might seem like a digression, but bear with me... Some months ago I
decided I really didn't want N: backed up, so I tried explicitly backing
up just System Reserved and C:. The result was that the backup was no
longer described a being suitable for a bare metal restore.
Unfortunately I don't have any bare metal around to test it, so I have
to believe what I'm told. I suspect that the same would happen if I
explicitly saved C: and N: leaving out System Reserved.
My command line:
wbadmin start backup -backupTarget:F: -allCritical -include:c:\ -quiet
Backs up System Reserved, C:, N:.
[To continue the N: story, if I remove the N: letter assignment from the
volume concerned, Windows Backup proceeds without complaint. I contacted
Microsoft support to find out why Windows Backup is obsessed with my N:
drive and after going round the houses several times they told me that
as this appeared to be a fault, I'd have to pay for it to be
investigated.
]Paul, thanks for your response. In-depth knowledge of wbadmin seems to
be thin on the ground.
P
Paul
Mike said:Paul said:
That doesn't mean to say that it will handle a two-partition install
where one partition was subsequently deleted. This *is* Microsoft we're
talking about.
Now, naturally, if I reach for an old backup, done when
my laptop had two partitions, and tried to restore to
the laptop as it stands now, I could be in for a surprise
So I agree that some future care would be needed, in terms
of not making a real mess of things. System Image is not
known for being very clever. A real backup utility, has
more options not to wreck things.
The System Image capability in your OS, is also available
via "wbadmin". And that utility supports an "AllCritical"
argument, or explicitly naming C: if you want. It's still
possible, using that utility, to back up exactly what
you want.
Kind of.
I do in fact use wbadmin. If I use AllCritical it backs up System
Reserved, C:, and (bizarrely, as it contains no system files) N:. And
the backup is described as being suitable for a bare metal restore.
This might seem like a digression, but bear with me... Some months ago I
decided I really didn't want N: backed up, so I tried explicitly backing
up just System Reserved and C:. The result was that the backup was no
longer described a being suitable for a bare metal restore.
Unfortunately I don't have any bare metal around to test it, so I have
to believe what I'm told. I suspect that the same would happen if I
explicitly saved C: and N: leaving out System Reserved.
My command line:
wbadmin start backup -backupTarget:F: -allCritical -include:c:\ -quiet
Backs up System Reserved, C:, N:.
[To continue the N: story, if I remove the N: letter assignment from the
volume concerned, Windows Backup proceeds without complaint. I contacted
Microsoft support to find out why Windows Backup is obsessed with my N:
drive and after going round the houses several times they told me that
as this appeared to be a fault, I'd have to pay for it to be
investigated.
Paul, thanks for your response. In-depth knowledge of wbadmin seems to
be thin on the ground.
Does Disk Management show any notation for N: ?
Is N: being monitored by System Restore ? I don't use
the System Restore function on anything but C: , if at
all.
You may also have moved some user profile files off
to that partition. I don't think the thing would go all
arbitrary on its own. It must have a defined set of
trigger conditions. Maybe it could even include an
attempt to install a second pagefile and put it on N: .
Paul
M
Mike Barnes
Paul said:Mike said:[To continue the N: story, if I remove the N: letter assignment from the
volume concerned, Windows Backup proceeds without complaint. I contacted
Microsoft support to find out why Windows Backup is obsessed with my N:
drive and after going round the houses several times they told me that
as this appeared to be a fault, I'd have to pay for it to be
investigated.
Paul, thanks for your response. In-depth knowledge of wbadmin seems to
be thin on the ground.
Does Disk Management show any notation for N: ?
Healthy (Logical drive).
System restore is off for N:.
But thank you for prompting me to look. For some reason it was off for
C: but on for my old C: (which now has no drive letter). I've fixed that.
I've never had any user profile files there. The "N" stands for "NOT
BACKED UP" and contains scratch data of one sort or another that I can
easily re-create without backups. Ironic that Windows insists on backing
it up.
N: used to contain the (only) pagefile (pagefile.sys being probably the
best qualified file in the universe for a NOT BACKED UP volume), and I
was as suspicious as you. As an experiment I tried moving the pagefile
to C: and that made no difference. With my new larger SSD I've now moved
the pagefile permanently to C: and the problem persists.
It's possible that the fact that the pagefile was once on N: is
prompting the unwanted behaviour. But (a) the pagefile isn't there now,
and (b) I would hope that the pagefile is very definitely *excluded*
from any backup so I don't understand the relevance of its location.
My lengthy attempts at exploring the issue with Microsoft, to find out
what criteria or registry settings are consulted in order to establish
the AllCritical list, have got me precisely nowhere.
P
Paul
Mike said:
I lust took a look in the Registry, and I can still see
an entry for a previous attempt to add a second pagefile.
But it's in an "old" ControlSet.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management
PagingFiles F:\pagefile.sys 3980 3980
Now, if I go to the Performance Options in the System control panel,
that one on F: isn't enabled and the value in question is not
visible. And this is because there are several ControlSet
groups. And I think that is an old one.
In my CurrentControlSet, it's set to this. And this is my
"standard" setting on this system.
PagingFiles C:\pagefile.sys 2048 2048
Take a look at your CurrentControlSet. And if you suspect
Microsoft is actually looking at the others, you could
try editing the other entries back to the way they should be.
Maybe the backup isn't even looking at reg keys, and it did
a quick check for the presence of pagefiles on the other
partitions. (It would be looking for N:\pagefile... type
entries, and not scanning the entire partition or anything.)
Paul
M
Mike Barnes
Paul said:
Thanks for that. I made similar checks when I looked at this some time
ago, and I've just looked again. There are no occurrences of
"N:\pagefile.sys" in the registry and no such file.
And I've been through much the same process with the TEMP directory:
reasoned that you'd never want to back it up, moved it from N: to C:
anyway, and observed that that had no effect.
It's all getting a bit far fetched, with guesswork layered on
assumptions, and once again, in the absence of any assistance from
Microsoft, I'm going to have to give up. Thanks for your help and for
taking an interest.
M
Mike Tomlinson
Mike Barnes said:
Did you manually delete N:\pagefile.sys? In my experience using the GUI
tools to move the pagefile from one volume to another does not always
delete the original pagefile.
It's not a good idea to put the pagefile on a SSD, IMO, unless you have
no spinning rust to use for it.
S
s|b
I've read that too, but then some users asked me why I'm using a SSD and
not store the page file on it. I've disabled Superfetch/Prefetch, I'm
not using ReadyBoost, I don't defragment the SSD and moved my temp
folders to another hdd (SATA). So what harm can the page file really do?
M
Mike Tomlinson
s|b <[email protected]> said:
1) If the pagefile gets busy, it'll decrease the lifetime of your SSD,
which can only take a finite number of writes per flash cell.
2) putting the pagefile on SSD to speed up paging operations is a really
bad idea. It not a substitute for real memory. If your machine is so
busy that it needs to use the pagefile, you should fit more physical
memory or close some apps.
K
Ken Blake
Also true, but essentially irrelevant. That has nothing to do with
whether the page file is on a HD or SSD.
M
Mike Tomlinson
Ken Blake said:
Actually, it has everything to do with it. Some people see putting the
pagefile on SSD, because it's faster than HDD, as a substitute for
adding real RAM. It's a bad idea.
S
s|b
So it will only last 10 years instead of 20? I'm sorry if I'm not going
to loose any sleep over that.
I have 8 GiB of RAM installed; that's more than enough for me. People
claim disabling the page file is a bad idea, so I leave it enabled,
system managed size, on my SSD.
M
Mike Tomlinson
s|b <[email protected]> said:
It'll last a lot less long than that, but hey, it's your SSD.