Are the Intel G2 SSDs telling Windows 7 they are a SSD upon install?

[MJohn29]

New/empty 160GB G2 with latest firmware from 10/26/2009.

P55 chipset on a Intel DP55KG motherboard with latest BIOS.

Storage controller set to AHCI in BIOS.

Installed Windows 7 Ultimate x64

Upon install, checked for automatic SSD optimizations that are supposed to be done if and only if the SSD properly notifies Windows 7 that it is a SSD.

Noticed that defrag was turned ON (the Intel SSD is my only drive in the computer)

Prefetch and Superfetch both turned ON per the registry

Drive Indexing turned ON (not sure if this was supposed to be turned OFF or not).

Whats up with this? Are these drives not communicating with Windows 7 properly upon install?

[idata]

I have noticed that although the standard Defrag option does appear to exist against my SSD System Drive, the automatic Defrag scheduling window does not appear to permit defragging of the System Drive.

So maybe Windows 7 does realise that it is an SSD after all, but I can't figure out why the manual option would appear to be still active if the automatic defrag has indeed been disabled....

[idata]

I have the Intel 80Gb G2 installed, on first building Windows 7 all of the things that were supposed to be turned off for an SSD were still on, running the WEI turned them off. From what I have ascertained the Intel SSD does not announce itself as an SSD (Mine just shows as a normal HDD) this means Windows bases it's configuration on the performance of the drive.

There is an interesting article here: http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx (Been posted here before) that explains how Windows 7 is set to work with SSD's.

Why the Intel SSD doesn't declare itself as an SSD is the main problem but if Windows detects a drive that meets certain performance criteria then it changes the settings anyway (They found that some SSD's weren't actually high enough performance so still performed better with SuperFetch etc left on)

Will Superfetch be disabled on SSDs?

Yes, for most systems with SSDs.

If the system disk is an SSD, and the SSD performs adequately on random reads and doesn't have glaring performance issues with random writes or flushes, then Superfetch, boot prefetching, application launch prefetching, ReadyBoost and ReadDrive will all be disabled.

Initially, we had configured all of these features to be off on all SSDs, but we encountered sizable performance regressions on some systems. In root causing those regressions, we found that some first generation SSDs had severe enough random write and flush problems that ultimately lead to disk reads being blocked for long periods of time. With Superfetch and other prefetching re-enabled, performance on key scenarios was markedly improved.

Will disk defragmentation be disabled by default on SSDs?

Yes. The automatic scheduling of defragmentation will exclude partitions on devices that declare themselves as SSDs. Additionally, if the system disk has random read performance characteristics above the threshold of 8 MB/sec, then it too will be excluded. The threshold was determined by internal analysis.

All I can say is looking at Disk Defrag on first build it was turned on; ran WEI went to Disk Defrag it's still on but my HDD was not selectable for defragging - Windows had disabled defrag on the SSD.

Hope this helps - oh and come on Intel please just update the firmware to announce to Windows 7 it's an SSD...thanks!

[idata]

I have an hybrid system with the boot code and Win7 on an Intel 160 G2 SSD and a RAID0 of two SAS 15k HDs.

My win7 x64 only disabled the scheduled defrag.

Just to let you know.

[idata]

What that article does not tell you is how the SSD is supposed to declare itself an SSD. The article I read states specifically: Windows 7 will set Defrag off as a default, when detecting non-rotating media, improving device endurance by reducing writes.

Source: http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Windows-7-Evolution-to-NAND-Flash-Solid-State-Disks-SSDs-98097.sh... http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Windows-7-Evolution-to-NAND-Flash-Solid-State-Disks-SSDs-98097.sh...

Perhaps Microsoft changed the method by which an SSD is recognized, but I would not put the blame on Intel because there are people with OCZ SSD also having their SSD not recognized. In other words, the problem is with Windows 7.

And my SSD was selectable for defrag after running WEI.

[idata]

You need to run the Windows Experience Index under Control Panel\System and Maintenance\System

The drives aren't so much as announced rather their status as SSD is derived from their performance. Once the WEI has been run and the HDD has been assessed for performance Windows turns off all the appropriate services.