SSD - Tweaks/Recommended Configuration

I've just purchased my first SSD drive (a 32GB MLC from Imation) without doing enough research ahead of time in the spirit of giving the new technology a shot and getting myself up to speed by empirical research rather than reading countless reviews and I'm now at a crossroads.

I've built a new server to test the new drive and at first I wanted to test it with Windows Server 2003 R2 x86 but after I loaded the OS on it and it had problems loading the drivers of the motherboard I went to the internet and did more research and the more I read the more I got confused.

Finally I decided to try out Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 since it supposedly has certain support for SSD drives inherent in the NT 6.1 core. Indeed I've had much better luck with the new OS and got all the drivers installed but now I still have some questions:

• Should I set the drive to: IDE Emulation or AHCI in the BIOS?
• Should I make any other changes in the BIOS (I've read on the internet that Write Through should be changed to Write Back)
• Should I make any other adjustments in Windows (i.e. Tweaks such as disabling prefetching or disabling the Last Accessed Timestamp on the filesystem) and if so, is there a good/reliable online resource with instructions?

I'm so tired of reading through countless online posts which spend 80% of coverage on the history of SSDs and benchmarks and explanations of how SSDs work. I got that, now I'd like to know if there's anything I should actually do to make sure Windows Server 2008 R2 makes good use of the SSD.

Solution 1:

SSD's mostly come as SATA devices right now, so as far as the operating system is concerned, they are a 'normal' harddisk drive. Your initial problems with Win2003 where not related to the SSD, but probably the configuration / motherboard / SATA drivers for Windows.

Regarding IDE mode or ACHI: AFAIK it makes no difference for the SSD; I'm not 120% sure that the TRIM command works with all modes and OS combinations, that's the only potential caveat that I see. ACHI is newer, more capable and generally better than IDE, so for a modern OS (Vista / Win2008+) it would be my default choice.

Regarding tweaks: With Windows 7 / 2008 R2, there is nothing you strictly need to do. These OS's automatically change configuration to avoid continuous background writes to the SSD (to reduce drive wear) and disable Prefetch (as it's not so useful with super-fast SSDs). With older OS'es (up to and including Win Vista / 2008) you should do the same things as the MSDN blogpost mentions.

now I'd like to know if there's anything I should actually do to make sure Windows Server 2008 R2 makes good use of the SSD.

As per above, no there is not. As the OS sees the world the SSD is a plain old SATA harddisk, just one that is a lot faster. Win 2008 R2 already comes with the needed optimizations for SSD's, mostly to reduce background writes and hence improve drive longevity.