On Mon, 4 Mar 2024 08:22:17 -0500, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

>On 3/3/2024 12:39 PM, crasso@nycap.rr.com wrote:
>> Or: how to throw a bunch of money at my hobby computer without much to
>> show for it.
>>
>> I've always steered away from adding an SSD, mainly because I'm still
>> running XP. But recently I read that modern SSDs could withstand more
>> abuse, even XP. I don't if that's true but it got me started thinking
>> about one. I boot XP, Win7 and Win10, I didn't intend to install XP on
>> the SSD anyway.
>>
>> My motherboard is an Abit IP35Pro XE, circa 2008. SSDs were not heard
>> of yet. It does have two PCI Express X16 slots and it seems you can
>> put an SSD into them with an adaptor.
>> https://www.newegg.com/p/17Z-0103-00002?Item=9SIAVF7EVS4360
>> but I couldn't figure out how I MIGHT be able to boot from it.
>>
>> Then I discovered 2.5" SATA adaptor boxes to make it fit into a
>> desktop hard drive bay.
>> https://www.newegg.com/orico-1125ss-bk-hard-drive-caddy/p/0VN-0003-001F4?Item=9SIA1DS9EZ7409
>>
>> The only company that seemed to offer an instructions in this venture,
>> that I could find anyway, was Crucial. I purchased a 1TB SATA 2.5"
>> SSD.
>>
>> I thought I could make my SATA power cable JUST stretch far enough to
>> reach my hard drive bay, but turns out I needed an extension cable. I
>> had SATA5 open to connect to.
>>
>> Crucial's online instruction said to download free their special
>> version of Acronis True Image and use a USB cable. I hated True Image
>> when I had it and have long been using Macrium for imaging, and they
>> wanted me to CLONE my drive to the SSD. I wanted to transplant Win7 to
>> a SSD partition of my choosing. So ignored that part of their how-to.
>>
>> When all the stuff in hand I installed the SSD into the 2.5 adaptor
>> box. It didn't feel like the SSD plugged into their jack very far.
>> Also there was no way to screw it in securely like mounting a regular
>> hard drive is done. I wedged some popsicle sticks behind it and
>> wrapped electrical tape to keep them in place. Hitched it in and BIOS
>> showed me SATA5 was still unconnected. Booted Win7, no SSD showing in
>> DiskManagement. Same with Win10. Couldn't think of anything else, so
>> back to Crucial's instruction.
>>
>> Crucial wants you to connect the SSD with a USB to SATA cable.
>> https://www.newegg.com/startech-usb3s2sat3cb-usb-to-sata/p/N82E16812400542?Item=N82E16812400542
>>
>> Booted Win7, connected SSD via the USB cable and there it was in
>> DiskManagement. Don't need no True Image which wouldn't install on
>> Win7 anyway, not enough updates. Guess Crucial insists on Win10 if you
>> want to use their stuff.
>>
>> I created a good-sized primary partition and imaged today's Win7
>> Macrium Backup into it. Took a LOOONG time. Said it was using Trim.
>>
>> I rebooted and connected the SSD to SATA5 without using the adaptor
>> box, just let it hang. Tried adjusting BIOS to boot SATA5 (and
>> unplugging Boot drive to avoid unpleasantness) Nope Disc Boot Failure.
>> Not unexpected as this Win7 install expected to boot off a BCD menu.
>>
>> Fixed BIOS boot back to normal and plugged boot drive back in. Booted
>> regular hard drive Win7. Brought up EasyBCD and made a new entry for
>> Win7 on SSD. Pointed it at disk V:
>>
>> When I booted "Win7 on SSD" from my new boot menu entry the darn thing
>> booted!
>>
>> Booting XP the new drive shows as G: and ominously has the wrong
>> VolumeID, the name of regular Win7 partition. I was very leery of
>> changing the name or letter, chose to leave it alone (and worry about
>> it, but never use G: while in XP).
>>
>> I put the SSD into the adaptor box, without horsing it into the drive
>> bay slot. Does't show in BIOS. The SATA connection in the box
>> apparently is not meant for Crucial stuff? I wrote them a note asking
>> for fix. So I just left the SSD hanging on the SATA cables in the
>> bottom of the hard drive bay.
>>
>>
>> The new Win7 booted slightly more snappily, and behaves slightly more
>> snappily. Not almost $200 worth which is about my investment with all
>> experimenting I did. Nord VPN won't run, says "Nord background process
>> not running". Wrote Nord a note.
>>
>> If you made it this far – now you guys can tell me how I should have
>> done it.
>
>We just wouldn't do that.
>
>That's an NVMe sled. On an old computer.
>
>https://www.newegg.com/p/17Z-0103-00002?Item=9SIAVF7EVS4360
>
>And a weird one at that. It has an x16 edge card, even though
>it has no intention of using x16 wiring. The edge card only
>ever needed to have x4 wiring, because the adapter is cheap and
>has no PCie switch chip on it. If it had a switch chip, it might
>have cost $100 more.
>
>The aluminum heatsink isn't necessary.
>
>*******
>
>Given the vintage of your machine, the NVMe in the sled won't run
>at full speed. the 1000MB/sec bandwidth will run at about half of
>that, when PCIe buffer size in chipset is taken into account.
>The NVMe storage will run at 500MB/sec to 1000MB/sec instead of
>3500MB/sec native.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_P35
>
> LGA775
> PCI Express 1.1 x16 (could be split as two x8 slots) 250MB/sec per lane times 4
>
>Your machine BIOS has no support for NVMe, as a starting point.
>You would have been better off with a SATA SSD. I have
>an addin SATA card here for example, which has AHCI WinXP drivers.
>
>*******
>
>They *do* make a RAID controller board with NVMe sled, which
>is bootable on a machine like yours. The card might cost on
>the order of $500 or so. Such a board has a config ROM which
>registers with the BIOS disk read routine. If it doesn't
>have passthru SMART support, then you would not be able to
>monitor your new NVMe. You would want to locate the owners
>manual and review specs before purchase. There is no monkey-business
>on the edge card -- it's a plain x8 which will plug into an x8
>pr x16 slot.
>
>https://www.highpoint-tech.com/bootable-hardware-raid-solutions
>
> 2 sled (install just one NVMe, run in JBOD mode)
>
> SSD6202A (fan cools the RAID PCIe chip, not the NVMe devices) $321
>
> https://www.newegg.com/highpoint-ssd6202a-pci-express/p/N82E16816115342
>
>*******
>
>This represents an unnecessary electrical reflection. 2.5" SATA SSD don't
>need careful mounting. They're shock resistant "to 1000G", which is only
>true in a very limited sense. Since there are no rotating or mechanical
>parts, they're more rugged. Some people have fastened them in their PC
>with nylon ties. The SATA SSD drives are quite cool to the touch.
>They run cooler than an NVMe, most of the time. Electrically, they may have
>small power transients, but they can frequently run in a 2.5 watt footprint.
>Check the spec sheet for the SATA SSD for details.
>
> https://www.newegg.com/orico-1125ss-bk-hard-drive-caddy/p/0VN-0003-001F4?Item=9SIA1DS9EZ7409
>
>How it works, is you fit your new purchase, to the two cables (15 pin power,
>7 pin signal), then look at where you can mount it or strap it to something.
>The metal case is at ground potential, if it has any potential at all. Because
>it has eight screw holes, there are any number of things you can attempt.
>
>Mine right now, is just laying on a stick, loose :-) Not a biggie.
>
>SATA data cables come up to three feet long. The average
>cable is half that, or about 18" or so. The power cabling
>is generally more limiting, more of a nuisance, but not for
>any electrical reason.
>
>ESATA cables can be six feet long (and that's an external
>drive standard for the same SATA interface). ESATA was only
>officially SATA II, which helps with the max six foot cable.
>
>But the short PCB in your aluminum slab, may be the thing
>preventing operation. Connecting the Crucial SATA drive
>to the cables you've got directly, is much more likely
>to work.
>
>If Macrium clones the drive, it will change both the identifiers
>used on the new SSD partitions, as well as change the BCD file
>on the SSD, so that it too has those same identifiers. This
>ensures that the new drive "boots independently" of the old hard drive.
>I don't know what Acronis does in this case. The BCD is actually
>a Registry file (in terms of format) and you can dump the contents
>with the right invocation of the bcdedit command.
>
> bcdedit # enumerate the boot drive BCD file
>
> bcdedit /store C:\boot\BCD # When booting a Windows installer DVD, where the
> # DVD boot letter is X: , you can enumerate the BCD
> # on the partition temporarily known as C: . This assumes
> # that is where the BCD file is located.
>
> bcdedit /store C:\boot\BCD /set {bootmgr} displaybootmenu True # Change the boot menu, using
> # a Windows installer DVD and the
> # Command Prompt in Troubleshooting.
>
>So where is the BCD file ? It's tricky. The syntax in this answer,
>is not exactly right, but I still appreciate the answer for the
>hint it provides.
>
> "It is stored in a file in folder “\Boot”.
> The full path to this file is “[active partition]\Boot\BCD”. <=== like in my example
>
> For UEFI boot, the BCD file is located at /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/BCD <=== sorta Linux terminology being used
> on the EFI System Partition.
> "
>
>OK, let's assign a temporary letter to the ESP, and see where it is.
>
> [Picture]
>
> https://i.postimg.cc/V6p9339T/Disk-Management-My-SSD.gif
>
>The sequence would go like this (Admin window):
>
> diskpart
> list disk
> select disk 1
> list partition # Tells me "Partition 1 System 100 MB"
> select partition 1
> assign letter=K
> exit
>
> K:
> dir
> cd EFI
> cd Microsoft
> cd Boot
> dir # Looking good, I see it.
>
>Now, a copy/paste of where I am now.
>
>K:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot>dir BCD
> Volume in drive K has no label.
> Volume Serial Number is 0A4D-6710
>
> Directory of K:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot
>
> 03/03/2024 06:24 PM 57,344 BCD
>
>Now, when I do this, they should match, as the file referenced is the same.
>
> bcdedit
>
> bcdedit /store K:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD
>
>And that looks like this:
>
> [Picture]
>
> https://i.postimg.cc/cHRYbrHK/fun-with-diskpart-and-bcdedit.gif
>
>The letter K: will exist in my Terminal session, but tends not to
>be available elsewhere. It is a transient letter and will be gone
>after I reboot. But since it is available in Terminal, I can
>fix a BCD using that K: letter concept, like if I boot a Windows DVD
>and use the Command Prompt in Troubleshooting. Having a picture of
>my Disk Management, with the window opened wide to get all the strings,
>can help later on.
>
> Paul

I've decided to leave the SSD lying on the floor of my harddrive bay.
Did get a reply from Orico re the adaptor box, said I needed to apply
more pressure to plug the SSD into the box.

I've been wondering how much my SATA Type ? On my motherboard slows
down my accessing the SSD? If it would account for what I consider
the SSD's lack-luster perceived speed? I've not observed other
people's computers to compare (and anyway my computer clock is 3ghz, 2
cores, modern pcs have multicore cpus, but usually slower clocks, hard
to compare.)

I've not been able to ascertain the level of the SATA on my
motherboard but I know it's not the latest. I expected more snappiness
that I am getting. Sometimes I'm still surprised: opening Macrium, for
example, is MUCH faster. Is all the time I'm saving due to eliminating
disk seeks? I kind of thought the transfer rate would be faster than
the hard disks. I downloaded HWINFO64 and CristalDiskInfo but they're
not helping me compare.