NVMe SSD Install on Windows 7

[Pudgie]

Update:

The Samsung SM951 128Gb AHCI PCI-E SSD came in today & I've installed it got all prepped out as I want it.

All looking good at this time.

Transition speeds (primarily latency related) between apps, screen changes, etc have noticeably improved and is very snappy in feel.

Gonna run some tests to find out just what is what but it looks good at the moment.

 

[Pudgie]

Update:

By accident I've stumbled upon a real world event of 2 apps actually using my page file to page out streaming data to disk while in operation and 1 app affecting the performance of the other due to page file access issues.....

I was making an ATTO run on my Sammy SM951 AHCI 128Gb PCI-E SSD (SSD which has the page file located on it) while playing music using Spotify (a client based music processing software used to process streaming sound packets from the Internet to my SB X7 DAC-AMP outputting thru my Logitech Z623 THX 2.1 speaker\subwoofer setup) and noticed that once I commenced on my ATTO benchmark run all went w\ no issue on every ATTO read test but on EVERY ATTO write test, the sound output went into a sound loop (exactly like a platter w\ a scratch across the grooves) until the particular ATTO write test concluded at which time the sound looping stopped and all synched back up and moved on. This occurred on EVERY ATTO write test...not the read test...until the benchmark was completed.

Discovering this I then ran ATTO on my Sammy 850 Pro SATA SSD (which doesn't have a page file assigned to it) for verification and sure enough, when ATTO ran a write test on this SSD the sound wasn't affected at all.....all was in perfect synch.

This little discovery has now helped to confirm my thoughts concerning Windows OS and apps usage of paging to operate well as the OS had addressed a certain amount of system mem according to the app's interrupt request which had filled so it them started using the page file to page out data to disc that wasn't needed anymore that was taking up addressed mem space....even though I have 16Gb of system mem onboard and Prefetch and SuperFetch (which could account for the paging out due to the nature of how SuperFetch works) enabled along w\ an OS managed page file size.

Also confirms, to me at least, the benefit to software performance that an OS\app and the page file can provide when the page file is set up on separate disk(s) from the disk that the OS\app is on, along w\ the latency speeds\data transfer rates of the disks being used, along w\ the speed\bandwidth of the data path(s) between the 2 disks that the data travels across and system mem latency\data transfer rates.............along w\ the importance of keeping to a minimum the number of software apps being used on a computer at the same time, especially softwares that are KNOWN to use a page file to operate........

IOW's the computer subsystem performance as well as the components themselves............

Something to consider in the future when you're playing AH (which does page out to disk) w\ other software running in the background regardless of computer set up and component capability and you're seeing AH not perform as well as you think it should..............

Just by chance it may not be a vid card\CPU\Internet issue alone........................ ........

 

PS--Here is the ATTO run on the Sammy SM951...............

[Pudgie]

Update:

I was going thru my Services today using Black Viper's list to "fine tune" Windows and found that SuperFetch had already been disabled (musta been from running Samsung Magician's OS Optimization routine when I was using my Sammy 850 Pro SATA SSD as the boot drive earlier) so what I posted in the last post was w\o SuperFetch in operation..........which further cements my reasoning concerning all this.

FYI.......................... ...............

 

PS--SuperFetch is now enabled......................

 

[Chalenge]

I think when Windows is installed to an SSD that it will automatically optimize for that environment. I would have to go back and read up on that, but that is how I remember it.

[Pudgie]

I think when Windows is installed to an SSD that it will automatically optimize for that environment. I would have to go back and read up on that, but that is how I remember it.

Yeah I've read this as well, but I've also noted w\ my copy of Win HP x64 SP1 that this is hit and miss....especially when moving from a SATA based SSD (SATAe and PCI-E SSD's came later on) but even w\ a SATA based SSD it seems to be connected to how well Win 7 can ID the particular SSD to then auto set the coded optimizations for a SSD at the time of this OS's development and the development cycle of SATA SSD's (shut down defragmenter, SuperFetch, Prefetch, etc).

I'll assume that starting w\ Win 8 forward this would be more streamlined and efficient.

I do know that Samsung Magician software will perform SSD Optimizations on any Samsung SSD that the software can fully ID (so far it can't fully ID my Sammy SM951 AHCI PCI-E SSD.....I think due to this SSD being an OEM product....ID's the drive model name, serial #, capacity, firmware but can't ID the AHCI mode, SATA Interface and OS Optimization. Fully ID's the other 2 Sammy SSD's but states for the 950 Pro NVMe SSD that this SSD doesn't support Samsung's OS Optimizations but the 850 Pro SATAIII SSD does).

I had run Samsung's Magician OS Optimizations on the Sammy 850 Pro SATA SSD when I had the OS cloned onto it from the Plextor M6e BK AHCI PCI-E SSD just to see how it would handle the SSD so this is when I believe SuperFetch got disabled....but I also can't be sure of this as I didn't go and check all this before-hand and afterwards.

I have checked in Services several times since I set SuperFetch to automatic to see if Win 7 would auto disable this service....so far it has not done so......service is still set to automatic. I also have had to physically set the Defragmenter schedule to not perform a defrag on my SSD's......Win 7 never did this automatically for my SSD's that I know of. I did find this set to disabled in Services but can't verify if the OS did this on its own.

This may be due to the Sammy 950 Pro NVMe controller being too new for the coding that is residing in Win 7.
I'll wager that w\ Win 10 this will be very different...................

 

[Chalenge]

After what I ran into today I wouldn't bet on Windows 10 getting anything right. SSDs are one of the remaining glitches under W10A.

[MADe]

the controling features that ms is employing is really gonna turn me off.
W10, packaged updates where you can not remove problem patches.
Inability to disable windows updates and other resource hogs.
Read where they intend same approach to future w7 sec updares.....

[Skuzzy]

They have been feeding updates to Windows 7 with features from Windows 10.  It is tricky to keep track of as they do not explain what they are doing.  Just a generic, "This update resolves issues...".

On my home system I have pretty much stopped updating Windows 7.  If I have a problem, then I will look for the specific solution to that problem, but I have not had any issues in a long time.

[Pudgie]

I have set up Windows Update on my box to "Check for updates but let me decide whether to download and install them".
Then when I get the notification that new updates are ready I open and read every 1 of them to see what it is about then decide to either install it or hide it.

That's what I do.............can be lengthy but at least I know what's what as best I can deduce from what I've read.

So far no issues to report........all seems to be clean.

All SSD's are working great at this time...................

 

[MADe]

I disabled win ups because I was using it the same way pudge. Lately however something was bogging down my rig, it was win ups! Affected page loads, app loads and was not allowing a shutdown. Had to force shutdown every time, no more with win ups disabled.
Jugged along in background hashing cpu cycles and grabbed and held ram.............

[MADe]

getting ready to buy the M.2 drive pudge. Any observations in general about your overall hardware discovery here?

[Pudgie]

getting ready to buy the M.2 drive pudge. Any observations in general about your overall hardware discovery here?

Outside of what I've already posted, not much more if any to add.

The most noticeable effect that you'll notice is the latency improvements........all stuff happens much quicker.
Boot up into Windows will be marginally faster unless you shut down the graphics (Windows graphics on boot up will run at a certain speed and time duration regardless of how fast the HDD\SSD is). I like the graphics so this doesn't bother me none.
YMMV
If you're looking to go w\ a NVMe SSD be sure to have all the necessary drivers\UEFI and such at hand before install but you already know this................

All I can say is all is working great for me!

You'll love the latency improvements in software usage or anytime data needs to move.

You gonna go w\ Win 10?

If you do then post on how it goes w\ you as I might make another attempt to install it sometime in the near future (had a lot of driver issues trying to load them the last time I tried it).

 

[MADe]

You gonna go w\ Win 10?

I was kind of leaning that way since w7 support is effectively nil. I want w7 but...............do I want to buy a reg key for something thats effectively dead?

Yet what I keep reading about w10 and MS's ham handed direction.........AH doesn't support LINUX..........

tbh I would be surprised if I noticed a big diff from what I got now. but point of a new machine was to do better than I got, so......

[Pudgie]

Hi MADe,

Here are a couple of ATTO runs on this here Samsung 950 Pro NVMe 512Gb PCI-E SSD for comparison:

1st 1 is dated 8-4-16 after I got the Angelbird Wings1 PCI-E adapter to move this SSD off the ACHI M.2 slot to the #2 PCI-E x16 slot that goes thru the I7 5820K CPU to get the rated read-write speeds of the Sammy NVMe SSD.............
2nd 1 is dated today 1-7-17 after this SSD has been in action since then.............

Looks like she's settled in quite well now!