ssd success story

I just wanted to add to the success stories especially if someone is debating what to do with their aao. While also introducing myself. fyi i felt the need to write a novel :lol: if theres questions i'll try to answer i'm not really an IT guy. i'll probably be on this site alot for awhile until i get the aao running beautifully on the slow ssd hahahahahahhahahaahhha

AAO 8G (slow) ssd
3cell battery (weaker 2200)

I enjoyed linpus but felt limited so tinyxped the aao. I chose option 8 (idk if thats the option# but its the stripped one without ie outlook drivers etc). I also followed the happy xp thread abit also. but everything works. leds webcam wifi fnbuttoncombinations everything. it was under a 2g install too.

I was a little disappointed with performance at first but i knew i didn't buy a desktop replacement. I bought it basically for school and surfering and hopefully 3g soon

I then read more and found out its the ssd so i bought a 16g sdhc (while i was at it bought 1g ram) installed the sdhc and started working on a better performing netbook. Everything is installed to the sdhc now and it is performing much much better the ssd light doesn't come on (a little exageration but really i rarely see it). i support portableapps.com now its so legit. The aao is actually running pretty good. I've had xp installed for about a week and its going strong. I do word, t-bird, winamp, and firefox at the same time (yes its still the 512mb ram) with a bit of hesitation during the progstartup but i feel as though i almost have a desktop replacement. I do not feel the need to try ewf because the ssd light doesn't come on but it does sound interesting.

I have just done the ram install wow its pretty intense (yes lots of foul language intense). i needed the help of a dremel tool because a screw was just on way to tight so i made a cut so i could use a minus screwdriver and woot 1.5g ram now. it feels the same really. but its probably because i'm not running anything resource heavy.

This successful xp install has gotten me confident enough to try a vista install. i have yet to use the webcam so that wont bother me. i just can't wait for a bios update for storage expansion boot.

 

If you install windows Vista ultimate, simply convert your SD card and your SSD to dynamic disk and join them together. Windows Vista will assemble an software RAID JBOD between the SD card and the SSD.

 

Exactly how do I do this? I've been trying for some time...

 

Which operating system are you using? Only windows XP professional, windows Vista business and ultimate will work.
Windows server 2003, 2008 and windows 2000 server edition will work also, but I'm not going to discuss it.

Goal: Combine the SSD and the SD card into single spanned (RAID JBOD) or striped (RAID 0 which sometimes double the performance compared to the SSD alone).

Instructions:
Read the two links below on how to convert disks to dynamic disks
Windows XP Professional Edition - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314343
Windows Vista Ultimate and Business - https://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windo ... e1033.mspx
Install a copy of compatible OS, format the SSD/HDD with NTFS partition.

First, you to turn your SD card from a removable storage to a non-removable storage.
I made a package which simplify this task. It can be downloaded from http://cid-2fedd1342ad58911.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Acer Aspire One/Acer Aspire One.exe
It's compressed using winrar SFX (self extracting) thus the file ends in .exe
Extract this package to your desktop (recommended) or any place you have easy access to. Open the file called "Instructions" and read it and follow it.

After you've done all of the above, start the dynamic disk wizard.
Turn the SSD and the SD card into dynamic volume and configure them into either striped (almost doubles the performance, A.K.A RAID 0) or spanned (A.K.A RAID JBOD-just bunch of drives).
Finish the wizard.

Restart your computer. After restart, you should see that the SSD/HDD and SD card will be combined into one. If you configured the SSD and SD card into a striped volume, you will notice a lot of performance improvement, especially with the slow SSD version.

 

Thanks a lot. I'm running Vista Ultimate, so it should work for me. This is done from inside the OS then, not during installation?

Edit: Sorry for a bit stupid question, but where do I fidn the "dynamic disk wizard"?? :?
Edit2: Duh, I have removed dynamic volume support form my Vista Installation, I'll have to reinstall first

 

LOL

 

I did everything per your instruction(formated both SSD & SD to NTFS,made the SD as a non-removable device by using your .inf,then converted both disks to dynamic)but when i tried to merge to a striped set,but i the only option I had is "Single" volume,the Stripe and Spanned options were grey out,what did i do wrong?how to fix this?thanks.

 

I am confronted with the same problem, both disks are converted to dynamic disks, but the stripe and spanned options are greyed out (Vista Ultimate x86).
And with EWF i get a bluescreen at starting windows.

 

Still haven't figured mine out, I'll buy a second SDHC some day and raid those instead...

 

This is my actual solution, with MKLINK command from vista i have ntfs-symlinked some folders like profile dir and program files to my SD raid array, which gives a nice performance boost. i've set my temp dir to a ramdrive and deactivated the pagefile. However windows still means to write to SSD often enough...

 

You can't use software raid on the boot partition. Pretty much makes it useless then.

 

"First, you to turn your SD card from a removable storage to a non-removable storage.
I made a package which simplify this task. It can be downloaded from http://cid-2fedd1342ad58911.skydrive.li ... %20One.exe
It's compressed using winrar SFX (self extracting) thus the file ends in .exe
Extract this package to your desktop (recommended) or any place you have easy access to. Open the file called "Instructions" and read it and follow it. "


Kinda off topic, but I'd like to know if turning the SD into a non-removable storage will allow me to point the windows swap file to my SD instead of SSD.... Thanks in advance.

 

yes it's possible to point the windows swap file to SD.
I disabled it completely and i am lucky with my solution: Vista Ultimate, Software-RAID with 2 Kingston Class6 SDHC Cards, no pagefile, redirected profile and program files dir to raid array, set TEMP dir environment variable to a 256 MByte Ramdisk, disabled prefetch.
Next action is trying EWF
/EDIT: EWF did another step to perfection.
SSD: read ~33MB/s, no writes due to EWF, unless i want it to write
SDHC: read ~42MB/s, changes in c:\program files and c:\users\profile are written to it (via NTFS junctions)

 

Could any of you upload an image of your fresh install to torrent so that we can restore, add our serial numbers and be all set?

Thanks in advance, Matias