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SSD in a Vintage Computer

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First post, by Roman78

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SSD's getting cheaper and cheaper these days. a 120GB SSD is available for less than 20€ (22 Dollar). This would be a great supplement for some old Computers.

On DOS-Age computer i mostly use SD-Cards as Harddisk. But from Windows95-age onwards the SD-Card lacks the cache and it feels slower than a normal hard disk. On Windows XP an SD-Card is a no go. So SSD... it's even possible to install an SATA-drive on an IDE-Mainboard with SATA-IDE adapter. So I managed to install an SATA-drive in to a MacMini G4 (http://www.die-oswalds.de/blog/2016/07/20/sat … -in-macmini-g4/)

So installing a Modern SATA-SSD is quite easy. But how to maintain? Modern OS have TRIM-Support, but what to do when running something old. I have the following:

i3 running XP
Pentium IIIs running Win98 and XP
MacMini G4 running OS9
MacMini Intel 1.1 running OSX 10.4.11

First i would like to upgrade the i3.

I did not find any useful information about using an SSD on Vintage Computers.

Reply 1 of 29, by BushLin

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Fast storage for windows 98?

Screw period correct; I wanted a faster system back then. I choose no dropped frames, super fast loading, fully compatible and quiet operation.

Reply 2 of 29, by Roman78

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I searched a little for Windows XP and found some information:

Disable services: Defrag, Superfetch and Windows Search

Disable File indexing, System Restore and the Pagefile

And, because XP only supports 3.3 GB ram, i install 8gb and use Dataram RamDisk 3.5 to crate a 4GB RamDisk to use as Temp-drive. Could even use 5,7 gig as Ram-Drive, but only in the paid version.

But still some questions: What about TRIM? In one article they wrote about Partition Alignement. What do they mean?

Reply 3 of 29, by BushLin

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I'm sure there are other methods but my solution to both 4K alignment and TRIM is booting from a Win 7 based Windows PE USB or DVD. Partitions created in either of the built in utilities; Diskpart or Disk Management will align partitions correctly on an SSD for best performance. (Don't try this for DOS 6 and below, the FAT partition must be created without large disk support.)

I've not yet encountered slowdown from an untrimmed drive with all its free area written to. I suspect this is because I also use that Win7 PE boot to make Ghost images/backups occasionally and Windows 7 natively supports TRIM.

Screw period correct; I wanted a faster system back then. I choose no dropped frames, super fast loading, fully compatible and quiet operation.

Reply 4 of 29, by Jo22

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Yes, using the Win7 boot media usually works fine. It usually creates NTFS partitions that are aligned to 4K boundaries.
(In contrast to Win XP's boot media, which starts NTFS at sector 63..)

Also useful:

Paragon Partition Alignment Tool & Windows98 FAT32 partition
Paragon Partition Alignment Tool & Windows98 FAT32 partition

Using SSD on XP SP2 system
Using SSD on XP SP2 system

gparted since 0.9.0 removed support for FAT16 and FAt32!
https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/46 … FAT16-and-FAt32

Benchmarks: HDD vs. CF vs. true SSD on Tualatin rig
Re: Benchmarks: HDD vs. CF vs. true SSD on Tualatin rig

Windows MBR and Advanced Format Drives (e512)
https://digital-forensics.sans.org/blog/2010/ … mat-drives-e512

How to kill CF cards ?
https://www.pcengines.ch/cfwear.htm

Roman78 wrote:

Disable File indexing, System Restore and the Pagefile

"Should the pagefile be placed on SSDs?
Yes. Most pagefile operations are small random reads or larger sequential writes, both of which are types of operations that SSDs handle well.
In looking at telemetry data from thousands of traces and focusing on pagefile reads and writes, we find that

Pagefile.sys reads outnumber pagefile.sys writes by about 40 to 1,
Pagefile.sys read sizes are typically quite small, with 67% less than or equal to 4 KB, and 88% less than 16 KB.
Pagefile.sys writes are relatively large, with 62% greater than or equal to 128 KB and 45% being exactly 1 MB in size.

In fact, given typical pagefile reference patterns and the favorable performance characteristics SSDs have on those patterns,
there are few files better than the pagefile to place on an SSD
."

Source: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/e7/2009/05/0 … d-state-drives/

Last, but not least, there is an performance issue with FAT32, as mentioned in one of the links above.

[..] clusters in a Fat32 volume can be aligned at will, it improves speed, and alignment is more difficult than with Ntfs because the Fat's bizarre size shifts the clusters.

Which means that it isn't enough to align a FAT32 partition itself (or the whole volume), but it's also necessary to align its clusters accordingly.

FAT12/FAT16 may or may not be affected..

FAT-32 is different from FAR-12/16 in that the root directory may be anywhere, and grow as needed.

Please also note that these issues are not only restricted to SSDs.
HDDs since ~2008 or so do use 4K sectoring (socalled Advanced Format, AF).

While they do accept 512Bytes per Sector externally, they nolonger use them internally.
If you're using a stone age OS like Win98 on it, a read-modify-write will occur, reducing performance by ~50%.

Unless you're fixing the alignment issue or running Windows XP on an early HDD with the Sector 64 hack.
On Western Digital HDDs, that's the "WD Align" jumper switch (pins 7-8).

Edit: Small corrections.

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Reply 5 of 29, by Roman78

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Ohha... this is totally new to me...

Jo22 wrote:
Please also note that these issues are not only restricted to SSDs. HDDs since ~2008 or so do use 4K sectoring (socalled Advance […]
Show full quote

Please also note that these issues are not only restricted to SSDs.
HDDs since ~2008 or so do use 4K sectoring (socalled Advanced Format, AF).

While they do accept 512Bytes per Sector externally, they nolonger use them internally.
If you're using a stone age OS like Win98 on it, a read-modify-write will occur, reducing performance by ~50%.

Unless you're fixing the alignment issue or running Windows XP on an early HDD with the Sector 64 hack.
On Western Digital HDDs, that's the "WD Align" jumper switch (pins 7-8).

Mostly i just install the OS on a HDD and never checked for any incompatibility. Never did any Alignment. On my XP-rig I have a quite new 500GB SATA drive and on the Win98/XP machine I have an older 320GB IDE-Drive.

So on the XP-rig, do i have to do a new installation on the new SSD after the alignment or can i just clone the HDD. Or can i just use the tool from here (Paragon Partition Alignment Tool & Windows98 FAT32 partition) after migration? Although that tool is not freeware and legacy, so not available for sale.

I just installed Minitool Partition Wizard on the XP machine and there is an alingment option. Just tried it and it told me that i have to align on a Thinclient i just installed XP on. Ill try this at home on my XP-rig. Also installed the Software on an Windows 7 machine, but there the Align option is missing. Does W7 automagically has the 4K alignemt?

And than the Win98 machine. At this point I've not planned to install an SSD there, but how do i check for 4K sectoring? Having about 50% performance would be grate if my HDD would have 4k secoring.

Reply 6 of 29, by BinaryDemon

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Don't worry about TRIM, modern SSD's will do periodic garbage collection at the firmware level.

Check out DOSBox Distro:

https://sites.google.com/site/dosboxdistro/ [*]

a lightweight Linux distro (tinycore) which boots off a usb flash drive and goes straight to DOSBox.

Make your dos retrogaming experience portable!

Reply 7 of 29, by Jo22

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Hi, you can check the alignment with tools like Crystal Disk Info.
It has a spot in the program where it shows a "BAD Alignment" message if the partition is misaligned.
"Fixing" it is only necessary if the HDD uses AF (4KBytes per sector, 512e) internally.

Not sure howto find out what the HDD in particular uses internally, though. 🙁
Except checking the manufacturers manual/datasheet, of course.

If you already installed Win XP, you can use gParted to realign the NTFS partition.
That way, there's no need to reinstall anything (gParted has an option to align to Megabyte boundaries).
But I'd make a backup (image) using Acronis True Image (or similar), nevertheless, in case something goes wrong. 😀

Roman78 wrote:

And than the Win98 machine. At this point I've not planned to install an SSD there, but how do i check for 4K sectoring?
Having about 50% performance would be grate if my HDD would have 4k secoring.

I'm not 100% sure it it is exactly 50% in real life, it rather was as an estimation.
An AF HDD can't read/write units of 512Bytes per sector directly anymore, but only a group of them (8 pieces = 4K; plus some ECC information).

Since the classic OSes use the old 512Bytes/Sector scheme, the drive must combine 512Byte sectors during write or extract them during read (hence 512e).
In a bad situation (misalignment), it can happen that logical and physical sectors do not overlap each other.
In that case, the HDD has to do twice the work (read/write a pair of 4K sectors.)

On the bright side, NTFS uses 4K clusters which match both the 4K sector format and the Windows memory scheme
(32-Bit/64-Bit Windows uses 4K segments; Windows 3.1 on a 286 used 64K segments by comparison..)

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"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 8 of 29, by cyclone3d

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BinaryDemon wrote:

Don't worry about TRIM, modern SSD's will do periodic garbage collection at the firmware level.

This right here. I was going to post the same.

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 9 of 29, by looking4awayout

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In my overclocked Tualatin machine, when I restored my XP image from the old HDD to the SSD (a 500GB WD Blue 3D NAND), I have used AOMEI Partition Assistant in order to align the C partition to the 4K boundary. I've also left some unpartitioned space on the drive, which I've read prolongs the life of the SSD. I TRIM it manually using a program called SSD Tweaker, not sure if it works but I've seen no harm in doing it so I keep using it. On the other hand, I keep the pagefile on the data drive as I haven't noticed any noticeable performance gain by keeping the pagefile on the SSD.

My Retro Daily Driver: Pentium !!!-S 1.7GHz | 3GB PC166 ECC SDRAM | Geforce 6800 Ultra 256MB | 128GB Lite-On SSD + 500GB WD Blue SSD | ESS Allegro PCI | Windows XP Professional SP3

Reply 10 of 29, by Intel486dx33

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Hard-drives work fine up to Win-2000.
For Win-XP or higher I would not use anything less then an SSD.
Yes, CF cards and IDE SSD’s do work great in old computers and greatly improve file system performance.
Today, CF cards and IDE SSD’s are inexpensive.
You can still find some NEW old stock IDE hard-drives but they are of large capacity like 80gb.

Reply 12 of 29, by Roman78

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Thanks @Jo22

I just made a test on some i5 i have here. I just installed XP an took a look in Chrystal DiskInfo, but could not see any information about the alignment. But running MiniTool Partition Wizard 11 told me about the alignment and was able to align.

Something different: I read on SSD and Windows 7 that the Timestamp-Funktion should be disabled for the last access. fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 1 This prevents a new timestamp on each file opend. Could this also being used on XP? The commando works on XP, at least i get no error message.

Reply 13 of 29, by looking4awayout

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Pushed by curiosity, I'm experimenting with the pagefile on the SSD, rather than the HDD. I've set a dynamic pagefile that goes from 1024 to 1536MB. Apparently the system is seemingly running better than with the pagefile on the WD Velociraptor data HDD. I can either try to make a secondary pagefile on the HDD and see how the system shares the load, or just stick with it on the SSD.

Based on my experience, the best performance I got was with a PCI SATA controller, in my case a Promise SATA300 TX2 Plus. If I hook the SSD on the onboard ATA100 controller with a SATA to IDE adapter (a Delock one with a Marvell chipset) I can notice a degradation in performance. My Tualatin runs pretty fast this way, so I personally recommend an SSD + PCI SATA controller.

My Retro Daily Driver: Pentium !!!-S 1.7GHz | 3GB PC166 ECC SDRAM | Geforce 6800 Ultra 256MB | 128GB Lite-On SSD + 500GB WD Blue SSD | ESS Allegro PCI | Windows XP Professional SP3

Reply 14 of 29, by The Serpent Rider

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But from Windows95-age onwards the SD-Card lacks the cache and it feels slower than a normal hard disk.

I have cacheless SATA SSDs from multi-function units (4-8gb) and they work absolutely fine. SD cards are just slow.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 15 of 29, by BushLin

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looking4awayout wrote:

...Based on my experience, the best performance I got was with a PCI SATA controller, in my case a Promise SATA300 TX2 Plus. If I hook the SSD on the onboard ATA100 controller with a SATA to IDE adapter (a Delock one with a Marvell chipset) I can notice a degradation in performance. My Tualatin runs pretty fast this way, so I personally recommend an SSD + PCI SATA controller.

Promise make solid controller cards but that particular one is a bit too new for Windows 98 and if you're running XP you'll get much more bandwidth on an Intel chipset:

P45 ~300MB/s single drive, ~500MB/s RAID
P67/Z77 ~600MB/s single drive, ~1000MB/s RAID

Screw period correct; I wanted a faster system back then. I choose no dropped frames, super fast loading, fully compatible and quiet operation.

Reply 16 of 29, by Nprod

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The most common choice of "modern" storage for old computers is CompactFlash, it's readily compatible with ATA/IDE and the transfer speeds are similar. A rev.4.0 card will cover UDMA133 making it almost a drop-in replacement for an XP machine.

Reply 17 of 29, by pico1180

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Not sure how this devolved in to partition alignment and block size when the question was about TRIM and Won XP 😕

Anyways, as others have said, TRIM is a non-issue. If you're really concerned about it, us 80GB WD Velociraptors. They can be had for around $10 to $20 on eBay.

For Win 9x/ME use UDMA CF cards. They are super fast. Save the SD cards for Dos.

Reply 18 of 29, by pico1180

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Nprod wrote:

The most common choice of "modern" storage for old computers is CompactFlash, it's readily compatible with ATA/IDE and the transfer speeds are similar. A rev.4.0 card will cover UDMA133 making it almost a drop-in replacement for an XP machine.

You cant use CF cards on XP. XP sees through the IDE adapter and treats it like what it is, causing all kinds of strange problems.

Reply 19 of 29, by mothergoose729

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I have a 22$ 120gb Kingston SSD in my XP machine right now. It gets between 200Mb/s and 400Mb/s reads on a SATA 6 bus, and somewhere around 30-120MB/s writes. I didn't do anything special with alignment, I just formatted and installed with the XP boot media. Make sure your SATA controller is configured for IDE mode.

I have also used the same model SSD with windows 98 via an IDE to SATA adapter and it works fine. I had to install windows 98 with the SSD adapted to IDE, but once installed I could boot from the SSD just fine with SATA. The problem I ran into is that my motherboard didn't have SATA drivers for windows 98, so while I got 122MB/s read speeds, I was only getting 4MB/s write speeds. With the IDE adapter and a DMA driver installed, I was getting 33MB/s reads and writes - fully saturating the IDE bus on my board. My suspicion right now is that windows 98 would probably work better with an IDE devices in general, and seeing as there are boards with IDE 66MB and Ultra IDE 133MB I don't think that is much of a problem.

The IDE adapter cost me about 25$.