Windows 7, XPS 420, and SSD

Question

I'm trying to install Windows 7 on an XPS 420 with an SSD. The problem is that the system is not recognizing the SSD as an SSD. If I set the BIOS to "Autodetect RAID/SATA", then when the installation is done, the disk is detected as an "ATA" device, and stuff like disk defragmentation is turned on, and so on. If I set the BIOS to "RAID ON", when the system is installed, same thing happens, disk defragmentation is turned on, and the system doesn't seem to know that the disk is an SSD. In fact, for "RAID ON", the disk manger wants to call it a "basic disk", whatever that is.

Is there anybody out there that can give me some advice on how to end up with a system that knows that it has an SSD, and so will send TRIM commands to it, and will turn off the stuff that decreases it's life? I understand that some people can turn on AHCI in their BIOS, and this takes care of it, but I don't have that choice.

Is it something with installing with the BIOS "RAID ON", and then doing something after that? Installing with BIOS "Autodetect RAID/SATA" doesn't seem to offer any help, since the SSD is just treated as an ATA disk, so the "RAID ON" path seems to offer more hope.

Or is there another BIOS setting that I'm not seeing?

This is frustrating, and even though the installations are pretty fast, it is worrying me that Windows 7 is not able to determine that it is installing onto an SSD.

Thanks for any help, someone out there must have gotten this done.

-Roger

DELL-Chris M · Answer

Read this to find out if the Bios version on that SSD drive is capable of TRIM.

doh_123 · Answer

Chris,

Thanks, since I'm sure that my SSD supports TRIM, this suggests that if I download and install the new (May 2010) Intel RAID driver thatthe OS should see the drive as an SSD? Is that pretty much what I'm reading here?

I'll also make sure that my system BIOS is on the latest.

Thanks for your help.

-Roger

doh_123 · Answer

Ah, I see I have a problem...do you have a link for the 64-bit OS version of the Intel RAID driver?  The 32-bit driver isn't likely to work for me. Thanks again. -Roger

osprey4 · Answer

Roger, Here are all of the drivers for your system.

doh_123 · Answer

Osprey,

Thanks for the pointer, this page isn't a lot of use to me now, since I bought the system from Dell with 32-bit Vista on it, and have upgraded to 64-bit Windows 7. The best I can get on that page is 64-bit Vista drivers which do work for the most part on Windows 7, so I'm not thrilled with that situation.

I did install the Intel Matrix Storage Driver 9.6.0.1014 A04, and it works fine in my system. However, it still doesn't treat my SSD as an SSD. I don't understand why, but I've set up the Intel SSD Toolbox to run it's optimizing tool (includes TRIM) once a week, turned off defrag, and so on. And if I delete a big file (I use VM's that are GB's) I run the tool manually.

But I don't feel that doing that all manually is the right answer, the OS should be able to do this all much better than me, since I don't know nearly enough about what it's doing to be able to do this optimally.

The only thing that I see that's odd is that the "driver" for my SSD is listed as:

C:\Windows\system32\DRiVERS\disk.sys and C:\Windows\System32\drivers\partmgr.sys

Provider: Microsoft Corp.

File version: 6.1.7600.16385 (win7_rtm.090713-1255)

Driver Date: 6/21/2006

while my "storage controller" driver is the one mentioned above, Intel SATA RAID Controller

Driver Version: 9.6.0.1014

Driver Date: 3/3/2010

So I'm not sure what the driver that's listed with my SSD is, or if there's a later version of it, or if it even matters...but my SSD is still not being recognized as an SSD is the bottom line.

Anyways, the system does work well, with just this one problem.

Thanks.

-Roger

doh_123 · Answer

Chris,

Okay, since installing the new Intel Matrix Storage driver, things have definitely speeded up on my system. In fact, when I boot, the boot animation doesn't have time to finish before the Welcome screen comes on, it gets about halfway through and is replaced by the Welcome screen, so it is doing something that the older Intel RAID Storage driver wasn't doing. When I was using the older storage driver, the full boot animation ran, although the system was still much faster than it had been with a regular disk.

It wouldn't suprise me if Windows 7 is sending TRIM commands down through the Intel storage driver now, although I've not been able to verify that. I'm not sure if I can verify that, without MS putting some kind of instrumentation for that (like a log or something). There may in fact be a log somewhere that mentions that, I haven't looked...Unfortunately, the disk itself doesn't log even the timestamp of the last TRIM command (which it could do *smile*), so verifying that TRIM commands are being sent and received is very difficult. Since it is critical to the life of an SSD that these commands be done on the disk, and it doesn't cause any problems to run it more than it's needed, I'm leaving the Intel SSD toolkit optimizer runs scheduled once a week as a backstop. It doesn't take very long to run it (which also may mean that it is getting TRIM commands from the OS, since I've written over 100GB to it over the last couple of days of installing.

Another interesting thing was installing on a new disk on a system that has it's own upgrade Windows 7 media with license (originally had Vista installed by Dell). I had to use the "dual-install" method, since MS would not take my upgrade license code as a fresh install for this case. I understand this, and that may be why MS has left this ability open, that you can use upgrade media for a fresh install by using this time-consuming "trick".

Anyways, thanks for the help, it was very useful.

-Roger

Tankus · Answer

exactly the same issue .....but my bios does seem to recognize the ssd ......it seems a windows issue that windows wont load onto it ....windows doesn't seem to like the disc .....

..now trying to get my head around trim

osprey4 · Answer

Hi Tankus, If your BIOS does not recognize the drive, then it's not a Windows problem. Make sense?

Tankus · Answer

Yes it does see it  in the bios...but windows wont ......on loading

osprey4 · Answer

Sorry, I misunderstood. So when you start the installation, the installer does not see the drive?

Tankus · Answer

cheers for replying  though windows wont load to the drive ....give up for the mo ! waiting to put in a new psu (arrives tomorrow - corsair 650 )  then I'll have another go

Tankus · Answer

seen this http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/f/3514/p/19353315/19776444.aspx#19776444

Tankus · Answer

It is a bios issue ..!..widows does recognize it ...once windows is loaded ...the bios now does not see it ...which is a bit weird as Im sure I saw it there first time put it in ... Ive successfully cloned my main HD , but it wont boot from it

Ive flashed the Bios with the last available update a07 2009 , but to no avail

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Windows 7, XPS 420, and SSD

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