StamatisX

I have updated all the drivers under the device manager one by one manually, tried as many drivers possible I could find, the same performance. If it was a driver issue, the results should be different, even when using the default MS drivers, but they are not, they are very similar so it can't be the drivers.

You shouldn't be worried about magnetic fields, but rather about electromagnetic radiation, in any case though you don't have to worry because no device you may have on a normal house can create such strong fields. If you are that worried you can use a faraday cage and isolate your electronic equipment. The easiest way to create such a case for very small items like an HDD/SSD is to use static shield bags that come with many static sensitive electronics (ie CPUs). For instance they use that in computer forensics when they want to isolate let's say a cell phone and prevent it from transmitting or receiving any kind of signal before they get it to the lab and extract its data.

I haven't seen any option like that on the GUI during Windows installation.

Good to hear that

That's true, I was referring to used SSDs

This method allows you to create as many partitions as you want and set the size of partition according to your preference using the GUI, check step2. You can use linux as well, the same result, different tools. This way is just quicker. If you plan to use the 64K cluster size for your OS partition you need the 100MB System Reserved partition which is 4K and required by the system, otherwise you won't be able to boot, Windows won't let you proceed with the installation for this reason. You can get rid of the 100MB partition which won't be necessary if you plan to use the default 4k cluster size. Those Windows installations on the pre created partitions you mentioned must logically have a cluster size of 4K and that's why Windows allowed the installation. About the unallocated space and the longevity of the SSD, I am not aware if this a unique way to increase the over-provisioning and applies only to the Intel SSDs or in general, but in order for this to work, you need first to secure erase the disk and then create a partition with some unallocated space after it, otherwise you won't have the expected results.

Not the only one but yes, I like it too cause it's free

Sick IOps indeed...

Your are welcome, I don't know about the speed of the G3s but you will get much more space for sure and there should be a price drop on the rest of the models.

Another option you have instead of acronis is the dd (unix program) It is really good if you want to back up the whole disk or a partition but in this case combined with the Gparted you can use it to transfer those partitions to the SSD Take a look at the wiki page for some examples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dd_%28Unix%29

These are the steps to change the cluster size to 64K Step 1 If you have one partition (it's not the default) for windows like me (the other partitions that you see are form the external drive) click drive options (advanced) and delete the partition. If you have two (the default for windows installations), delete first the big partition and then the small 100MB System reserved one. Step 2 After delete the partitions you will have one big Unallocated Space on Disk 0 Click new and apply You will have something like this Step 3 Press Shift - F10 to open the console and type: diskpart Then type: select disk 0 Then type: select partition 1 Then type: active Then type: select partition 2 Then type: format fs=ntfs quick unit=64k Then type: exit and again exit Step 4 Click Refresh and then click on the Disk 0 partition 2 and press next Step 5 After you finish with windows installation open a command promt as administrator and type: fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo C: If it says Bytes per cluster: 65536 then your installation was successful and your cluster size (or else allocation unit size) is 64K instead of 4K.

Hello raydabruce, it is better for you to change the cluster size during a clean installation of Windows. I am not on the computer right now so give me some time to find the steps for you. If you want you can create a new thread and I will post the step by step guide there.

I will try to find out if there are any registry settings that can be applied and work for everybody without sacrificing too much CPU or SSD performance

Yes with that tweak you get the option under the power plan to disable CPU idle and only with that tweak, you get the best synthetic benchmark results (not real world performance though due to temperatures), in order to fine tune it there are at least 7 other registry settings that you need to change (core parking overutilization threshold, performance decrease/increase threshold, idle demote threshold, etc...) I didn't mentioned them cause they will vary in every laptop and I would create more confusion rather than help. In case you had an extreme processor like i7 920XM or i7 940XM on your Vaio with a BIOS that supports them, you could disable the CPU drivers as suggested and use the ELEET as a work around in order to restore the Turbo Boost. This way you would have increased SSD performance without sacrificing your Turbo Boost.(this worked on Asus laptop) It's up to you if you can further tweak the registry or leave it as is, in every case you will have to balance CPU performance over SSD performance, consider temperatures, battery life, etc...

Yes there is, you use the other tweak that prevents the CPU from idling and you modify the rest of the registry settings for further tuning (they are not mentioned in this article), this way you keep the Turbo Boost but you might loose SSD speed in order to keep temperatures low as well