Here's a couple of tweaks to further extend the life of an SSD with XP: - disable the "last accessed" timestamp that XP creates every time you open a file (saves a lot of writes in the long run) - make sure to disable the "hard disk optimization" setting that defrags your drive when idle (defragging an SSD is not just useless: it's actually harmful) If you create your custom XP isos with nLite, you can find both of these settings in the "tweaks" section so they're always disabled by default. For partition alignment before installation and for trim I often use a linux livecd with fdisk and fstrim respectively. Also super convenient for backups... I recently got rid of the old IDE HDD I was using and plugged in a cheap SSD with a Startech adapter. I didn't expect that much of a change given the huge bottleneck but oh boy if I was wrong! This thing flies now. So much more responsive... :O
@@jameslewis2635 That will certainly help the SSD but I wouldn't recommend it since disabling virtual memory will introduce instability when low on RAM and swapping to a hard drive is very slow and might bottleneck performance.
> I wouldn't recommend it since disabling virtual memory will introduce instability when low on RAM That's only with poorly-written programs that have bad error-handling (like Firefox 😒). > defragging an SSD is not just useless: it's actually harmful Defragging SSDs might be harmful but it's NOT useless. Defragging isn't only about performance, it also improves data-recovery chances by making files contiguous instead of broken and scattered.
@@I.____.....__...__ Doesn't matter if poorly written or not. If there's no RAM left, the OS will start killing programs left and right and data loss becomes much more likely at that point. Especially on a system with very low memory like a retro machine. Contiguous files can indeed make data recovery easier on certain filesystems so that's technically correct but, if aiding data recovery starts harming data retention in the long run, it's just not worth it anymore in my opinion.
After many failed CF cards, I went over to just using tiny SATA SSDs with an IDE converter and this has worked flawlessly and the difference is very noticeable. Plus, something like a 32-128GB SSD is almost free because what modern use is there for something this tiny? But if you take the same 32-128GB and think of it in an XP or 98SE box, it's suddenly *massive*
As someone who started using computers in the mid 90s as kid, finally installing your OS on an SSD was like the first time you installed a GPU instead of using integrated graphics.
@@lucasrem No. I mean CPU software rendering with the video output done via motherboard chipset. This was how it was in the 90s without a graphics card.
Great video - glad to see you covering this now. Nice job Phil! This is much more important on CF and SD cards. Setting the format cluster/allocation size to match the specific card's block size would also help, where possible.
This is solid advice, I once worn down an SSD pretty quickly with under Windows XP because of a misaligned system partition. Fortunately it was an old SSD, but it still would have been nice to extend it's lifespan a bit.
For XP installs, I'll format the SSD under Windows 10, which will automatically aligns the partition correctly, and make sure to leave 8-9MB of space at the end like XP normally does when the XP setup formats a drive itself. Then I just tell the setup program to leave the already-formatted partition the way it is, and install XP. As for 9x, I _have_ gotten gparted-formatted FAT32 partitions (which are properly aligned) to work with 98SE, but never with ME. Overall it's a hit-and-miss in my experience.
i was pleasantly surprised how quick a relatively modern IDE drive was on a retro build, with windows 98 and even XPs data footprint you don't need a fast drive, that being said if you don't have an IDE or SATA disk lying around a small SSD is probably the cheapest option - really useful video with some great info
I've read somewhere that when installing Windows XP on a retro PC with an SSD, you should first boot a Windows 7 DVD, create the partitions, and then boot the Windows XP CD and install on the existing partitions you've just created. Not sure if that works or is true... I installed my XP retro PC this way, but I'll definitely verify using these tools. Thanks Phil!
Yeah, in general you should use something else to partition the disk. Just about anything modern will do. You can use a Linux boot disk, too, for example, either something generic or something purpose-built like GParted Live.
Thank you for this, I have been looking for a program that didn't look like it was laden with malware. Now I can boot up my 3 XP options and use this program.
If you do a lot of downloading and transferring of files,your SSD has a very limited life. I learned that the hard way. OS only,IMHO. Mechanical drives for the rest. BTW,you are a great source of info and nostalgia for older OS issues and retro PCs.
How much downloading and transferring are you doing? I've been using an SSD for video recording for more than 7 years and it's still at 70% of its reported cell life...
Oh~ That is a good vid for me to follow when I install XP on my old X60t using my first SSD from 2014 or even Win98 on the SD Card for the HP Thinclient you once showcased for the same purpose.
i got a few dozen of tho old WD SiliconDrive CF cards in a lot some years ago, they're been perfectly reliable using basic IDE/CF passthrough adapters. SLC should more or less last "forever" as well, even without garbage collection or TRIM! Def prefer these over MLC/TLC storage solutions for my retro rigs as well.
I installed my first SSD last week and it looks like my OCD for exact partition sizes has paid off! Notes for setting exact partion sizes that I have used for 20 years: For 100 GB: 102400 MiB + 4 MiB = 102404 MiB => exactly 100GB on Windows MB GB 102404 100 204804 200
And here I thought I was the only crazy person who does this. I think the problem is caused by some stupid rounding error in Windows, and adding 4 MiB to every volume compensates for this, and gives you the right total size in Explorer.
Finally needed this info as I'm putting an ultimate XP AGP machine (Asrock AM2NF3-VSTA, Phenom II X4 955 BE, 6800 Ultra) together with a spare 120gig SSD :)
To align partitions, I usually just boot from a Windows 7/10 DVD first, create and format the partitions from there. Then reboot with with a CD and install from there.
I've had situations in systems where Windows (9x) couldn't find any partition to use, or format, if I did this. I had to fdisk it from the original OS installer disk or a DOS boot floppy. Not a method I trust across the board.
Very useful information, thanks you! (I was aware of only the lack of OS support for TRIM-ing issue before, even though I've done alignment once on an old XP partitioned disk, but it never came up since, and it definitely wouldn't have occurred to me as a problem with SSDs and old OS.)
Hi Phil, excellent video, however just a remark: you mention that to check correct partition alignment you can divide the reported partition starting offset by 4096, but this is good only for modern hard disks with 4K sectors. On SSDs it's recommended to align partition to 1 MB boundaries (that is what modern Windows will do). So to check good alignement on SSDs, divide the partition starting offset by 1048576. Cheers and thanks for all the nice videos.
Gotta love HIrens Boot CD and also the later DVD version with support for Win 7 etc. That has MiniTool Partition Wizard and many other utilities and bootable from disc operating systems.
Thank you Phil, this is a great video indeed, but when building a DOS or a Windows 9x retro PC, you would still partition your HDD in DOS compatibility mode. That means that partitions will be cylinder aligned, not sector-aligned, and the 1st partition, typically a FAT16 one, would start at sector 63 (1st cylinder), not 2048. Additionally, both DOS and Windows 9x would still assume a 512 byte sector size when creating FAT partitions (mkdosfs Linux utility can create a FAT with a 4k sector size, but that will be unreadable in Winfows 9x). The above means no SSD sector alignment for Windows 9x.
I recently found out that aligning the starting sector of a FAT partition to a MiB boundary is completely pointless, because the file clusters within the partition itself will almost always be offset in such a way that they break the alignment. However, there is a brand new solution to this problem - look for a tool called YSDDT by YS bits. It can readjust the starting position of the first cluster by fiddling with the file allocation tables.
The easiest way I found to install Windows XP and XP x64 are to first get the drivers (at least the IDE/SATA/RAID drivers) and a tool CD such as Strelec. I boot into the Strelec CD in the Windows 8 x86 environment (or USB in my case) and use MiniPartition Wizard to create a 20 or 30 GB NTFS partition called "WinXP" or "WinXP x64". 1. Get the drivers (at least the IDE/SATA/Raid drivers) for the motherboard and operating system you are going to install. 2. Get the Strelec Boot CD iso and either put it on a CD or a USB. I actually put it on a Ventoy USB. 3. Boot from the Strelec Boot CD in MBR or BIOS (not UEFI/EFI) and select the Windows 8 x86 for old computers. 4. Using the Mini Partition Wizard, I create a 20 or 30 GB NTFS partition naming it "WinXP" or "WinXP x64" depending upon the OS I am installing. And make it Active. 5. Insert your Operating System CD or mount the Operating System ISO. 6. Using the WinNT Installer usually on the desktop (make sure it is not the Windows 7), install your Windows XP ensuring that you tell the program to add the drivers for the install. 7. Once it is done, shutdown the pc and remove all of the drives/devices. 8. Power on the system and ensure that it boots from the drive you selected. Partitioning in Windows 8 should give you an aligned partition and using this method your drivers get loaded and you don't have to continuously play around with broken iso images while trying to inject the drivers of the different computers you are installing to. I actually learned this method back in the day with HiRens Boot CD. I used to use it with HiRens 10-15 and moved over to Strelec after that. Like others, there are some other tweaks once the system installs that you can do to help prolong the life besides making sure it is aligned.
These are nice tips but if for some reason you can't use them, like using an ssd in an Xbox or something, you still don't need to be too paranoid about wearing out an ssd. They can have many terabytes written to them before failing. If we estimate that a 250 gig ssd has a lifespan of 70TB (meaning 70TB can be written before it goes kaput) which is on the lower side of the average (60-150TB) you would have to write 190GB every day for a year. Given that you aren't going to be using these as a main system, even with the inefficiency of an os that doesn't understand what an ssd is, you'll likely be just fine. Just regularly backup any important data if you're still worried.
@@squid11160 I'm talking the original Xbox. It's entirely possible there's custom firmware for it that does make it ssd aware though. Admittedly I'm not too familiar with the Xbox modding scene.
@@philscomputerlab I'm not too familiar with how the original Xbox handles its partitions so I'm not sure. I only mentioned it because getting the drive out of an Xbox is a little tedious if it's already in there. 😅
I am using a 500 GB Seagete SATA HDD on XBOX with cheap IDE to SATA adapter. As I remember, when partitioning there was a option to select sector size and manual alignment, but didn't check much about that as I was using a HDD. TBH I don't think there would be a much speed up using a SATA on that Pentium 3 733 MHz XBOX. You need some custom BIOS to even enable higher ATA speeds and swap 40 pin IDE cable with a 80 pin one.
I don't think you can actually take a modern ssd to the end of its write cycles in a retro PC with Dos, Win9x, or Xp. Once you have all your games collection installed, no more important writes will be done, that computer will not have heavy use of the page file as there won't be really use of Web browsers or productivity tasks there, page file can be even completely disabled. It's always good to take care of it, but even if you don't, it can last for centuries. It's more important to buy a good reputable brand with quality nand chips and controller than anything else.
I concur with that, even on a modern system (I've been writing more than 0.3 drive writes per day for 7 years on one of mine and it's still at 70% reported life), but that also supposes you regularly use the vendor's TRIM tool, as an old OS can't do it on its own.
windows 10 has killed ssds for me ...Last one was because system restore. I hate the technology. I think i will in the future use it only f9r the OS and use mechanical disk drive for software. i don't understand why the nand has to have limited life memory.
I've been avoiding using SSDs on Win XP and newer systems for a long time because I didn't have much idea how to align partitions (or how to tell if they were aligned). Thank you Phil! PS: This also works to use SD cards with IDE adapter?
Yes it does! I did this when benchmarking SD cards in the recent video. Just to be safe, I recommend cloning or taking an image, especially if it's a curated installation that took you a lot of time. So make sure you have a backup 🙂
Yes that is seperate issue! What misalignment does it aamplify unnecessary write operations. But regards to OS not supporting TRIM, yes the firmware will mange this on its own.
Great advise, I have forgotten to align the partition on my XP machine. I did however partition only 2/3 of its full capacity based on your recommendations on previous videos.
Check the datasheet / specifications, it will mention if it uses 512 byte sectors or 4k / advanced format. I don't think there is a database that recorded all the drives for an easy lookup.
My understanding is that Prefetch shuffles files around as well, so in regedit I change the value of the following key to 0 (zero). HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ SessionManager \ Memory Management \ PrefetchParameters
Funny how I didn't think about this, especially when putting my SSD into my OG Xbox. It kinda poses a problem there because the Xbox has huge usage of the cache partition in games.
@@alextirrellRI Yeah iirc the OG Xbox's partitioning scheme is pretty weird. Still, I can't really align the partitions without causing problems with the Xbox's BIOS. If I was modchipped I'd definitely be able to do it.
I guess this explains the reason why the two SSDs that I put in those Dell Core2Duo systems died in less than a year. Is a simple solution is to put Windows 7 in that old system?
there also a tool called macrium reflect that is also free works on XP SP3 too nice to know more then one cloning tool that can be use for free. you also forgot to talk about dram on the SSD's cause that has an effect on the lifespan of the SSD.
As shown in the video, the SSD from your XP machine can be removed and re-connected to a PC with TRIM (ex. WIN10) by using a SATA/USB adapter. My adapter is so old that it reports to WIN10 that my SSD is a hard drive. In this case, WIN10 thinks my SSD is a mechanical drive and the optimize command gets replaced by the defrag command, which is not what I want to do. When I connect the SSD directly to the WIN10 motherboard, it shows up as a real SSD and the WIN10 optimize (RETRIM) command works. All that the TRIM/RETRIM command does is to allow blocks on the SSD containing data which XP considers to have been deleted, to now be thrown by the SSD garbage collector routine, into the pool of free blocks on the SSD available for future use. When existing data on a SSD is requested to be overwritten by XP, a new block is created on the SSD, while still keeping the old block around. The SSD knows which parts of the old block are stale. The stale parts of many old blocks can eventually be shuffled around by the garbage collector and consolidated into contiguous structures to be added to the same pool for reuse. I plan to RETRIM my XP SSD every 6 months in order to get rid of any temporary files that XP creates and subsequently erases, but the SSD still believes are active. While my XP SSD was plugged into my WIN10 PC for the first RETRIMing, I took the opportunity to shrink the 2 partitions on the XP SSD in order to create 2 unallocated areas that are guaranteed to be a source of free blocks to be used in the pool.
So I just started using an ssd in my win98 machine only to store all my .bin .cue files no os and no page file. How often should I align the sdd or is this a once and done thing?
5:50 I doubt that this will help. The SSD doesn't know what is partitioned space and what is unpartitioned space. Running trim also doesn't help here, because trim works only on partitions (at least in Linux).
Yes I've used Promise PCI SATA in Windows 98! After installation you need to install the driver and then you get good speeds. I like that Promise still has drivers and support onload to download.
I've had a few discussions about this in my retro discord. Mostly about TRIM support more than anything I'm a bit skeptical about if partition alignment on an SSD would be particularly problematic, especially for older machines that are behind an IDE bus anyway. I'm surprised you didn't run any before/after benchmarks on the device to validate the performance uplift. A quick search online doesn't show any benchmarked results either which is curious
I've tested before and after alignment and it makes a huge difference in random io. The older or slower your flash storage is the bigger the impact. Total reads and writes are reduced and you get much better latency
The Athlon 64 system I use in many of my projects uses IDE. I use SD card adapters and SATA to IDE adapters. I think since sometimes this year I align the partitions with my DOS and Windows 98 projects. I didn't run benchmarks because it was about the lifespan / wear of SSD not performance. Remember a SSD is much faster than the IDE or even old SATA interface of Retro PCs, so it can easily handle additional read/write cycles.
@@philscomputerlab I might be biased on lifespan since I'm living in the US these days (instead of Adelaide) 120 gig Kingston SSD's are $19 US. They're so cheap I put them in absolutely everything just out of habit now
I have a 2014 gateway 8 gigs ram.. last window update disconnected my drive and removed my Firefox data, deleted window movie maker and screwed up my machine bad.
Hmm doubt it to be honest as it reboots and then runs before booting into OS. But if your machine can run a portable XP from CD, like Hirens Boot CD, maybe that lets you run Partition Wizard...
@@philscomputerlabI asked because I have dual boot Retro Gaming PC with Win98 SE and Win XP SP3 (98 20GB and XP 100 GB), I have confused what to do, do I treat both partitions separately or can do both.
@PhilsComputerLab I've had great success with paragon's alignment tool, though it is windows exclusive afaik. Alternatively gparted can be used to nondestructively realign partitions manually. Another thing I would highly recommend for any retro windows machine is to disable last access time stamps on files, as they cause a lot of unnecessary small writes, which can also impact performance on ide/pata flash devices or if using other slow flash storage like cf cards, SD cards, emmc flash etc. Similarly, last modified time stamps and the creation of 8.3 filenames can also be disabled to further minimize disk utilization and overhead if you don't need those.
But as far im concern only old versions are free. MiniTool Partition Manager and AOMEI Partition Manager, EseUS Partition Manager had this function in free versions 8.0 (each one of these) but not anymore Marcium Reflect can do it during restore operation.
So far I have not needed to use SSDs on anything older than Windows 7. I have enough old era drives to install those operating systems on. Windows XP and Windows 98 runs quite fast on era specific hard drives and they can actually manage the space and maintenance of the drives quite well on their own.
You mention Win98, but all parts in the video shows NTFS filesystem being aligned. Can you come back to this topic and look into aligning FAT16 and FAT32 partitions? It's not that straight forward with those, as the filesystem is really weird and has some variable-sized data in front of the partition start offset and whatnot. Is there any chance to align FAT16/FAT32?
I have a problem with backing up and restoring a dual boot win 98/2k. The system boots both into win98 and win2k on a 1TB SSD connected through a PCI raid card flawlessly. Then I made a backup using AOMEI Backupper. I am trying to restore to a 120GB SSD (both OSs use maybe 1GB each so the partition sizes are adjusted automatically) just to test the integrity of the backup. After the restore, when I boot up I am greeted with NTLDR is missing. So then I used the Mini Tool to rebuild the MBR. And to my surprise I am greeted with the win98/win2k boot menu. Win2k boots fine, but if I choose win98 I get the black screen and blinking cursor, no boot. I'm wondering if I missed a step somewhere to ensure win98 boots fine. Any help is welcome.
I don't have help but these issues why I gave up on dual or multi booting. I now prefer drive bays and just swap SSDs. Some bays have power buttons so you can select between 4 drives...
@@philscomputerlab Ya I'm to the point where I think it's impossible with current backup software to capture what is needed to restore a dual boot that involves win 98. It would be cool to have a software switch, but hardware seems to be the way to go. I might just backup for save files and keep the dual boot operational, but I'll think about it. I'm so close to the perfect system. Would love to get a Gigabyte GA-6VTXD to max everything while having an ISA for my AWE 32 CT3990. Might even go for a AWE 64 Gold, but man prices are so high for the coolest stuff. Anyways thanks for all your great content!
We have a hp PC at work that we use for our CNC. The disk is audible starting to fail. I have 2 sata to usb adapters.(with power adapter) Should I connect both drives to my new PC to clone the mechanical xp drive to a SSD?
@@philscomputerlab , yeah I know. The machine is 12 years or older. A upgrade for the pc and controller cost 16k (euros) I was also thinking to buy the same refurbished pc if the mainboard fails. 😅🤣
www.seagate.com/au/en/tech-insights/advanced-format-4k-sector-hard-drives-master-ti/ "Consequently, they released 4K-sector-compatible software beginning with Windows Vista Service Pack 1. Software that creates partitions of Alignment 0 (those that work well with the Advanced Format standard) is referred to as “4K aware”. Table 2 describes the situation relative to current generations of the Microsoft Windows OS."
So if I want to install Windows 98, do I install that first and then connect the drive to a modern PC and align the partition? Or do I align the partition first and then install Windows 98?
Same thing to a SSD. Remember, a SSD doesn't think of data in terms of sectors, partitions, it's all the same. Basically make sure it's not full close to capacity. If you use a 1TB SSD, partition it to 120 GB for Windows 98, that's excellent, the SSD will have so much empty cells it can use to wear balance data.
Yes. And it actually makes more sense to do it that way. Installing to a misaligned partition and aligning it afterwards is a waste of time and SSD write cycles. Use any modern partitioning tool from a boot CD or USB stick to create your partitions before installing the OS, and you're good.
Did the image creation and alignment using AOMEI (great for making backups too) and the Win98SE 8GB CF card works perfectly fine afterwards, feels nice and fast but don't remember if it was much slower before. BUT the DOS 6.22 4GB CF with 2GB DOS partition won't boot with "Verifying DMI Pool Data... Missing operating system" after using the SSD alignment option. FDISK see the partition and it is also still set as the active partition. When writing the image without SSD alignment, it boots perfectly fine. Also tried a MicroSD to CF adapter card. Without alignment DOS boots fine, with alignment it hangs after "Verifying Pool Data...", not even showing "Missing operating system" but FDISK still recognises it and the partition. Also tried aligning a working one with the MiniTool instead but it always says that the partition has a problem. Scans of the partition didn't find any errors though. AOMEI doesn't recognise my Amiga formatted 4GB CF as formatted. Need to test if creating an image and writing it back will work at all and if so, if the alignment option works. Update: Writing the image back didn't work, the Amiga didn't recognize it, even without the alignment option.
Seems it doesn't work in all situations. I've also tried formatting SD card in camera with mixed results. Sometimes it works perfect, sometimes the Windows 98 installation fails at some point. With SD cards what I found worked best was pop SD card in card reader and run the Mini Partition Tool. I did this when benchmarking SD cards under Windows 98 for example.
Minitool Partition Wizard (v9.1) and AS SSD say my partitions are aligned but when I check manually (partition starting offset divided by 4096. Dividing by 512 results in a whole number, but 1024, 2048, 4096 don't) it comes out misaligned...
@@philscomputerlab Partition Wizard says they're aligned... it's just the 'manual' method where it comes out misaligned (decimal number). I think I somehow ended up using 512sectors instead of 4096... (Partitioned the drive in Win10)
So is there a recommended SSD for retro computers or do we just look after alignment and trim as you describe here? I have a Crucial Bx 120 GB on a Socket 939 windows xp set up that I am worried about since it’s getting quite full I am starting to see system freezing on intense gaming scenes. I’m going to clone the drive to a Crucial MX 500GB to see if more space fixes this issue, but if we have out of the box SSD’s designed for retro computers this would be a great solution.
The OG ones with Single Level Nand. Later MLC and now we have TLC or 3D Nand. I would just keep backups and not worry too much. If it fails, well then it fails and buy a new one.
I have Win98 on a 128GB SSD and wanted to make a copy to another 128GB SSD as a backup with AOMEI backupper but with no luck. I either get a "searching for boot record from ide-0 ok" or sector not found with "vswp.vxd" missing. What am I doing wrong? Or any suggestions for another program that lets you easily copy an SSD with in 98 on it? Preferably on a Win 10 system.
The FAT file system is so simple that there's really no need for disk imaging software. You can just hook up your Win9x SSD to a modern system and copy all files to another location. I sometimes make backups just by compressing all files to a 7z archive. Just make sure that you actually see and grab ALL files. Windows Explorer does not show hidden files and system files by default. Also, this will obviously not backup your MBR and partition boot sectors, but that doesn't matter, as those can be recreated anytime with a few clicks using BootICE. Make sure you know how to use this excellent tool.
Have to think that booting a Linux image to partition the drive with correct alignment first might be a quicker way to do it. Then boot into the Windows install and just format the existing (and correctly aligned) partition, rather than creating a new one.
I've found a lot of issues with different systems and Windows 95 or 98 getting installed to a pre-created partition. Notably, 286 to Pentium 1 era motherboards have given me problems as far back as DOS. Rather, creating it with the OS installer and later re-aligning has worked in almost all cases. Two systems I gave up on - weird controller issues.
@@masejoer I remember there was a method of creating an offset(to manually align) by using a programme(Intel I think) prior to creating the partitions.
I have heard that using an M.2 SSD with a DRAM cache (vs. an SLC cache) will double the durability of the drive. What is your opinion on that? Teamgroup's MP34 series of M.2's use DRAM cache, and they're very affordable. Thanks and greetings from Alaska.
We are talking XP here and there are only few chipsets with full or partial M.2 support. Intel H97 and Z97 are not officially XP-supported but work quite happily with 8-series drivers. On the AMD side, only series 9 chipsets have native M.2 support. Having said that, not all motherboards with these chipsets come with M.2 socket(s) installed.
@@philscomputerlab 2 or 3 yrs ago I've purchased Huanazhi X79 -Deluxe and it is a rather nice motherboard. For one reason or another, AliExpress no longer accepts orders from my country :( Intel never had XP support for X99 chipset. Hacked version do exist, Fernando over at Win-Raid forums has created sets of chipset drivers all the way up to the latest 500-series.
@@sirfoggy7682 Check out Snappy Driver Installer Origin. It's a massive torrent download, but the progrma is brilliant. It IDs your devices and has all the drivers ready to install. I let it do all drivers apart form sound and graphics, those I do seperately as it depends a bit on what card and what driver is a good fit.
so if you FDISK a CF card and install MSDOS... is all that alignment done for you? or do you have to prepare the SD/CF card before you do any FDISK stuff to install MSDOS? thanks for good video.
easiest way to align a partition from my experience is to connect the hard drive to a PC that can run either a modern windows like 7 or alternatively liveboot into a linux distro of some kind, and partition the drive there, then go back to win9x/2K/XP and start installing on that partition. For Win9x at that point of the partition creation its also convenient to copy the win9x dir from the install CD to C:, so you can straight up launch the installation from it afterwards, can also at that point add useful apps like nusb36.exe, patchmem or bhdd31.zip
If I create an image of the entire disk using Norton Ghost after I aligned everything, will it still be aligned when I restore the image again? Maybe I should test this. Would save me some hassle.
I just tried to install the newest version of the minitool program on my XP machine (12.06), and it won't load. There is also no legacy versions listened on the minitool website. Do you happen to host version 9 on your website Phil?
Thanks Phil. Using the USB to IDE/SATA adapter I have, do you think it would work to hook the XP SSD up to that and run the Partition Wizard from my modern W10 machine?
Every time retro channels show these ide to sd/cf card adapters my stomach turns. Great for a quick test but nothing more. The media was never foreseen for that kind of use and filesystems.
Prior to sata being commonplace (and even awhile after) compact flash was used to run dos and windows on a lot of embedded systems like thin clients. Considering how much more robust modern sd cards are (being designed to be hit with high bitrate video for long periods of time) then you don't need to worry about ms dos even starting to wear them out. Just don't keep anything important on them if you're worried about losing them.
@@philscomputerlab Sure but there is a difference between a few photos being written from time to time or a Windows 95 swap file constantly changing data.
@@chadmasta5 I work for a company that makes embedded systems. The OS is specifically adapted to write as less as possible to the sd/cf. Even log files are written to ram drives and sporadically written away to sd/cd. The SBC forums are also full of story's of corrupt SD's and many of the OSes are trying to prevent excessive writing as much as possible. It's one of the reasons why many SBC board manufacturers are now offering M.2 because of the known issues. Also with SD there is a wide variety in quality...
@@g412bb SBCs are also a completely different use case with a lot of projects running them 24/7. Nobody is running their retro gaming pc that long and it's realistically not going to be an issue even with a cheapo card. Even with a swap file moving stuff around. The worst thing that can happen is it dies and you buy another cheap one. Oh well. Just keep an image of your OS install handy to write to the new one and you're off like nothing happened.
Here's a couple of tweaks to further extend the life of an SSD with XP:
- disable the "last accessed" timestamp that XP creates every time you open a file (saves a lot of writes in the long run)
- make sure to disable the "hard disk optimization" setting that defrags your drive when idle (defragging an SSD is not just useless: it's actually harmful)
If you create your custom XP isos with nLite, you can find both of these settings in the "tweaks" section so they're always disabled by default.
For partition alignment before installation and for trim I often use a linux livecd with fdisk and fstrim respectively. Also super convenient for backups...
I recently got rid of the old IDE HDD I was using and plugged in a cheap SSD with a Startech adapter. I didn't expect that much of a change given the huge bottleneck but oh boy if I was wrong! This thing flies now. So much more responsive... :O
Also either disable the swap file or assign it to a secondary hard drive.
@@jameslewis2635 That will certainly help the SSD but I wouldn't recommend it since disabling virtual memory will introduce instability when low on RAM and swapping to a hard drive is very slow and might bottleneck performance.
"disable the hard disk optimization" How do you do that? I've installed TweakUI and I don't see that option anywhere.
> I wouldn't recommend it since disabling virtual memory will introduce instability when low on RAM
That's only with poorly-written programs that have bad error-handling (like Firefox 😒).
> defragging an SSD is not just useless: it's actually harmful
Defragging SSDs might be harmful but it's NOT useless. Defragging isn't only about performance, it also improves data-recovery chances by making files contiguous instead of broken and scattered.
@@I.____.....__...__ Doesn't matter if poorly written or not. If there's no RAM left, the OS will start killing programs left and right and data loss becomes much more likely at that point. Especially on a system with very low memory like a retro machine. Contiguous files can indeed make data recovery easier on certain filesystems so that's technically correct but, if aiding data recovery starts harming data retention in the long run, it's just not worth it anymore in my opinion.
I never tried a SSD in a retro system before, but this is good information for many of us, thanks Phil!
After many failed CF cards, I went over to just using tiny SATA SSDs with an IDE converter and this has worked flawlessly and the difference is very noticeable. Plus, something like a 32-128GB SSD is almost free because what modern use is there for something this tiny? But if you take the same 32-128GB and think of it in an XP or 98SE box, it's suddenly *massive*
As someone who started using computers in the mid 90s as kid, finally installing your OS on an SSD was like the first time you installed a GPU instead of using integrated graphics.
U can use both GPU's in windows
@@lucasrem No. I mean CPU software rendering with the video output done via motherboard chipset. This was how it was in the 90s without a graphics card.
or dealing with all the space left on your desk after a crt to lcd monitor upgrade 😂
Great video - glad to see you covering this now. Nice job Phil!
This is much more important on CF and SD cards. Setting the format cluster/allocation size to match the specific card's block size would also help, where possible.
This is solid advice, I once worn down an SSD pretty quickly with under Windows XP because of a misaligned system partition. Fortunately it was an old SSD, but it still would have been nice to extend it's lifespan a bit.
Windows XP doesnt have TRIM support and THAT is why it got worn down faster.
Yes that's right. Modern SSDs can handle this situation much better though.
@@tendosingh5682 That didn't help either, but I did use Intel SSD Toolbox to optimize it a couple times.
Phil here is showing me how to protect my SSDs! Amazing.
SSD companies hate this one simple trick!
lol
HOW are you this fast, Marco? 🤣
@@nanoluciani Hit the bell icon and be early every time!
Taiwan has super fast Internet to Australian servers 😅
@@philscomputerlab 🤣 the only logical explanation. Marco ain't fooling anyone with the "bell icon notifications"
Wow I just had to save this video. Very informative and helpful for us retro system enthusiasts. Thanks Phil’s 😊
For XP installs, I'll format the SSD under Windows 10, which will automatically aligns the partition correctly, and make sure to leave 8-9MB of space at the end like XP normally does when the XP setup formats a drive itself. Then I just tell the setup program to leave the already-formatted partition the way it is, and install XP.
As for 9x, I _have_ gotten gparted-formatted FAT32 partitions (which are properly aligned) to work with 98SE, but never with ME. Overall it's a hit-and-miss in my experience.
i was pleasantly surprised how quick a relatively modern IDE drive was on a retro build, with windows 98 and even XPs data footprint you don't need a fast drive, that being said if you don't have an IDE or SATA disk lying around a small SSD is probably the cheapest option - really useful video with some great info
Quick HDD ? are you dreaming ?
Why you need old non supported OS ? Running what ?
@@lucasrem this channel is specifically about running retro OS' on retro PCs
where did you think you were?
@@lucasrem SATA HDDs are rather quick.
System up to XP don't really benefit much from speeds above SATA III anyway
I've read somewhere that when installing Windows XP on a retro PC with an SSD, you should first boot a Windows 7 DVD, create the partitions, and then boot the Windows XP CD and install on the existing partitions you've just created. Not sure if that works or is true... I installed my XP retro PC this way, but I'll definitely verify using these tools. Thanks Phil!
Yes that works also, because Windows 7 is SSD aware and will partition it correctly. There are many methods you can use. Whatever works for you.
Yeah, in general you should use something else to partition the disk. Just about anything modern will do. You can use a Linux boot disk, too, for example, either something generic or something purpose-built like GParted Live.
Thank you for this, I have been looking for a program that didn't look like it was laden with malware. Now I can boot up my 3 XP options and use this program.
Just in time. I just installed a SSD Crucial BX500 as a secundary drive. Going to try these valuable tips! ☺️
If you do a lot of downloading and transferring of files,your SSD has a very limited life. I learned that the hard way. OS only,IMHO. Mechanical drives for the rest. BTW,you are a great source of info and nostalgia for older OS issues and retro PCs.
How much downloading and transferring are you doing? I've been using an SSD for video recording for more than 7 years and it's still at 70% of its reported cell life...
Great Video Phil, have been having some odd issues on a XP build with a SSD, alignment cured it, many thanks!
Very important information, thanks a lot Phil!
Oh~ That is a good vid for me to follow when I install XP on my old X60t using my first SSD from 2014 or even Win98 on the SD Card for the HP Thinclient you once showcased for the same purpose.
Yes for you I would recommend like in the video, install XP as usual, then install Partition Wizard Tool and choose to align partition.
Quick, accessible and to the point. Thumbs up!
I like older Industrial CF Cards. They are fast enough, have SLC most of the time and will run for odl DOS/ WIn9x systems like a charm
i got a few dozen of tho old WD SiliconDrive CF cards in a lot some years ago, they're been perfectly reliable using basic IDE/CF passthrough adapters. SLC should more or less last "forever" as well, even without garbage collection or TRIM! Def prefer these over MLC/TLC storage solutions for my retro rigs as well.
Very informative and educational video. Thanks Phil.
I installed my first SSD last week and it looks like my OCD for exact partition sizes has paid off!
Notes for setting exact partion sizes that I have used for 20 years:
For 100 GB: 102400 MiB + 4 MiB = 102404 MiB => exactly 100GB on Windows
MB GB
102404 100
204804 200
And here I thought I was the only crazy person who does this. I think the problem is caused by some stupid rounding error in Windows, and adding 4 MiB to every volume compensates for this, and gives you the right total size in Explorer.
Finally needed this info as I'm putting an ultimate XP AGP machine (Asrock AM2NF3-VSTA, Phenom II X4 955 BE, 6800 Ultra) together with a spare 120gig SSD :)
To align partitions, I usually just boot from a Windows 7/10 DVD first, create and format the partitions from there. Then reboot with with a CD and install from there.
I've had situations in systems where Windows (9x) couldn't find any partition to use, or format, if I did this. I had to fdisk it from the original OS installer disk or a DOS boot floppy. Not a method I trust across the board.
Very useful information, thanks you! (I was aware of only the lack of OS support for TRIM-ing issue before, even though I've done alignment once on an old XP partitioned disk, but it never came up since, and it definitely wouldn't have occurred to me as a problem with SSDs and old OS.)
Hi Phil, excellent video, however just a remark: you mention that to check correct partition alignment you can divide the reported partition starting offset by 4096, but this is good only for modern hard disks with 4K sectors.
On SSDs it's recommended to align partition to 1 MB boundaries (that is what modern Windows will do).
So to check good alignement on SSDs, divide the partition starting offset by 1048576.
Cheers and thanks for all the nice videos.
Good vídeo, people forget that Ssd are just like batteries, a consumable componente inside the PC
Gotta love HIrens Boot CD and also the later DVD version with support for Win 7 etc. That has MiniTool Partition Wizard and many other utilities and bootable from disc operating systems.
Need to check out the 7 version!
Thank you Phil, this is a great video indeed, but when building a DOS or a Windows 9x retro PC, you would still partition your HDD in DOS compatibility mode. That means that partitions will be cylinder aligned, not sector-aligned, and the 1st partition, typically a FAT16 one, would start at sector 63 (1st cylinder), not 2048. Additionally, both DOS and Windows 9x would still assume a 512 byte sector size when creating FAT partitions (mkdosfs Linux utility can create a FAT with a 4k sector size, but that will be unreadable in Winfows 9x). The above means no SSD sector alignment for Windows 9x.
I recently found out that aligning the starting sector of a FAT partition to a MiB boundary is completely pointless, because the file clusters within the partition itself will almost always be offset in such a way that they break the alignment. However, there is a brand new solution to this problem - look for a tool called YSDDT by YS bits. It can readjust the starting position of the first cluster by fiddling with the file allocation tables.
never knew about this, thanks
I never knew this, very useful information.
Windows 10 have option in Disk Defragramanter, to Trim SSD. Windows 10 is built in that way, it will have native SSD Trim support.
I was wondering if you can tweak your SSD to make it work with XP... Awesome to see this video, thanks, Phil.
How about using a dedicated app in order to trim your SSD? I'm using one of those for my retro win XP build.
Any suggestions?
Yeah, it would be nice to know which one, because I could not find one for my drive.
@@vasopel Smart defrag 7/8 from Iobit.
@@ares23dc Smart defrag 7/8 from Iobit
The easiest way I found to install Windows XP and XP x64 are to first get the drivers (at least the IDE/SATA/RAID drivers) and a tool CD such as Strelec. I boot into the Strelec CD in the Windows 8 x86 environment (or USB in my case) and use MiniPartition Wizard to create a 20 or 30 GB NTFS partition called "WinXP" or "WinXP x64".
1. Get the drivers (at least the IDE/SATA/Raid drivers) for the motherboard and operating system you are going to install.
2. Get the Strelec Boot CD iso and either put it on a CD or a USB. I actually put it on a Ventoy USB.
3. Boot from the Strelec Boot CD in MBR or BIOS (not UEFI/EFI) and select the Windows 8 x86 for old computers.
4. Using the Mini Partition Wizard, I create a 20 or 30 GB NTFS partition naming it "WinXP" or "WinXP x64" depending upon the OS I am installing. And make it Active.
5. Insert your Operating System CD or mount the Operating System ISO.
6. Using the WinNT Installer usually on the desktop (make sure it is not the Windows 7), install your Windows XP ensuring that you tell the program to add the drivers for the install.
7. Once it is done, shutdown the pc and remove all of the drives/devices.
8. Power on the system and ensure that it boots from the drive you selected.
Partitioning in Windows 8 should give you an aligned partition and using this method your drivers get loaded and you don't have to continuously play around with broken iso images while trying to inject the drivers of the different computers you are installing to. I actually learned this method back in the day with HiRens Boot CD. I used to use it with HiRens 10-15 and moved over to Strelec after that.
Like others, there are some other tweaks once the system installs that you can do to help prolong the life besides making sure it is aligned.
These are nice tips but if for some reason you can't use them, like using an ssd in an Xbox or something, you still don't need to be too paranoid about wearing out an ssd. They can have many terabytes written to them before failing. If we estimate that a 250 gig ssd has a lifespan of 70TB (meaning 70TB can be written before it goes kaput) which is on the lower side of the average (60-150TB) you would have to write 190GB every day for a year. Given that you aren't going to be using these as a main system, even with the inefficiency of an os that doesn't understand what an ssd is, you'll likely be just fine. Just regularly backup any important data if you're still worried.
Xbox is SSD aware and won't wear it down more than ab old OS
@@squid11160 I'm talking the original Xbox. It's entirely possible there's custom firmware for it that does make it ssd aware though. Admittedly I'm not too familiar with the Xbox modding scene.
What happens if you take a SSD from XBox and align in a USB adapter on modern PC? Will it break the installation or still work 🤔
@@philscomputerlab I'm not too familiar with how the original Xbox handles its partitions so I'm not sure. I only mentioned it because getting the drive out of an Xbox is a little tedious if it's already in there. 😅
I am using a 500 GB Seagete SATA HDD on XBOX with cheap IDE to SATA adapter. As I remember, when partitioning there was a option to select sector size and manual alignment, but didn't check much about that as I was using a HDD. TBH I don't think there would be a much speed up using a SATA on that Pentium 3 733 MHz XBOX. You need some custom BIOS to even enable higher ATA speeds and swap 40 pin IDE cable with a 80 pin one.
I don't think you can actually take a modern ssd to the end of its write cycles in a retro PC with Dos, Win9x, or Xp. Once you have all your games collection installed, no more important writes will be done, that computer will not have heavy use of the page file as there won't be really use of Web browsers or productivity tasks there, page file can be even completely disabled. It's always good to take care of it, but even if you don't, it can last for centuries. It's more important to buy a good reputable brand with quality nand chips and controller than anything else.
I concur with that, even on a modern system (I've been writing more than 0.3 drive writes per day for 7 years on one of mine and it's still at 70% reported life), but that also supposes you regularly use the vendor's TRIM tool, as an old OS can't do it on its own.
@@Olivyay I don't think XP can run trim tools
windows 10 has killed ssds for me ...Last one was because system restore. I hate the technology. I think i will in the future use it only f9r the OS and use mechanical disk drive for software. i don't understand why the nand has to have limited life memory.
Time to SSD all my systems! current trend is cheap nand now that there is oversupply from trying to catch up during the pandemic.
I've been avoiding using SSDs on Win XP and newer systems for a long time because I didn't have much idea how to align partitions (or how to tell if they were aligned). Thank you Phil!
PS: This also works to use SD cards with IDE adapter?
Yes it does! I did this when benchmarking SD cards in the recent video. Just to be safe, I recommend cloning or taking an image, especially if it's a curated installation that took you a lot of time. So make sure you have a backup 🙂
@@philscomputerlab I did it, it's so easy to work with SDs that there was no excuse not to have a backup ;)
Cool! I’ll look up how to do this on Mac vintage systems!
From what I know, some drives have built in management of NAND cell wear. will this affect those as well?
Yes that is seperate issue! What misalignment does it aamplify unnecessary write operations. But regards to OS not supporting TRIM, yes the firmware will mange this on its own.
@@philscomputerlab Cheers, Phil. Yeah I was wondering this, as Im about to put a Samsung EVO drive into a P3 machine and possibly running 2000 on it.
But the crunch of the HDD with the blinking activity lights are part of the real retro experience!
My preference is to format and prepare the drive in a modern OS first and then just install the retro OS onto the existing aligned partitions.
MS-DOS doesn't have a virtual memory swap file, hence no write operations.
Great advise, I have forgotten to align the partition on my XP machine. I did however partition only 2/3 of its full capacity based on your recommendations on previous videos.
Turn off automatic disc Defragmenter too.
very useful video, thanks
nice info , i use ssds in my xp and 2000 systems , hoping the minitool program works in windows 2000 like it does in xp
Is that System Information page/panel available in Windows 98? Basically, I would like to know how one can check alignment directly from Windows 98.
Nope not available in 9x I'm afraid...
@@philscomputerlab Ok, I wonder if there is another way to check directly from Windows 98. I will have to google around.
A SSD designed for old systems while being aware of technical limitations of NAND technology? Hell yeah!
Phil, what is the largest mechanical hard drive that I can use with Windows XP and not have to worry about "alignment" issues?
Check the datasheet / specifications, it will mention if it uses 512 byte sectors or 4k / advanced format. I don't think there is a database that recorded all the drives for an easy lookup.
Awesome! Thanks!
Another gem. Cheers Phil!
good work king, love you
My understanding is that Prefetch shuffles files around as well, so in regedit I change the value of the following key to 0 (zero).
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ SessionManager \ Memory Management \ PrefetchParameters
Funny how I didn't think about this, especially when putting my SSD into my OG Xbox. It kinda poses a problem there because the Xbox has huge usage of the cache partition in games.
Probably best to continue using hard drives in your OG Xbox
I'm trying to remember now how I even went about imaging my OG Xbox's SSD -- aren't there already some weird partitions involved?
@@alextirrellRI Yeah iirc the OG Xbox's partitioning scheme is pretty weird. Still, I can't really align the partitions without causing problems with the Xbox's BIOS. If I was modchipped I'd definitely be able to do it.
I guess this explains the reason why the two SSDs that I put in those Dell Core2Duo systems died in less than a year.
Is a simple solution is to put Windows 7 in that old system?
Yes Windows 7 will partition correctly and also supports TRIM.
there also a tool called macrium reflect that is also free works on XP SP3 too nice to know more then one cloning tool that can be use for free.
you also forgot to talk about dram on the SSD's cause that has an effect on the lifespan of the SSD.
As shown in the video, the SSD from your XP machine can be removed and re-connected to a PC with TRIM (ex. WIN10) by using a SATA/USB adapter. My adapter is so old that it reports to WIN10 that my SSD is a hard drive. In this case, WIN10 thinks my SSD is a mechanical drive and the optimize command gets replaced by the defrag command, which is not what I want to do. When I connect the SSD directly to the WIN10 motherboard, it shows up as a real SSD and the WIN10 optimize (RETRIM) command works.
All that the TRIM/RETRIM command does is to allow blocks on the SSD containing data which XP considers to have been deleted, to now be thrown by the SSD garbage collector routine, into the pool of free blocks on the SSD available for future use. When existing data on a SSD is requested to be overwritten by XP, a new block is created on the SSD, while still keeping the old block around. The SSD knows which parts of the old block are stale. The stale parts of many old blocks can eventually be shuffled around by the garbage collector and consolidated into contiguous structures to be added to the same pool for reuse.
I plan to RETRIM my XP SSD every 6 months in order to get rid of any temporary files that XP creates and subsequently erases, but the SSD still believes are active.
While my XP SSD was plugged into my WIN10 PC for the first RETRIMing, I took the opportunity to shrink the 2 partitions on the XP SSD in order to create 2 unallocated areas that are guaranteed to be a source of free blocks to be used in the pool.
So I just started using an ssd in my win98 machine only to store all my .bin .cue files no os and no page file. How often should I align the sdd or is this a once and done thing?
Yup just once!
Very useful info.
5:50 I doubt that this will help. The SSD doesn't know what is partitioned space and what is unpartitioned space. Running trim also doesn't help here, because trim works only on partitions (at least in Linux).
Hey Phil! Awesome vid as always! I myself build my w98 builds using 128GB SSDs (usually
Yes I've used Promise PCI SATA in Windows 98! After installation you need to install the driver and then you get good speeds. I like that Promise still has drivers and support onload to download.
Another method is the g-parted bootdisk
I've had a few discussions about this in my retro discord. Mostly about TRIM support more than anything
I'm a bit skeptical about if partition alignment on an SSD would be particularly problematic, especially for older machines that are behind an IDE bus anyway.
I'm surprised you didn't run any before/after benchmarks on the device to validate the performance uplift. A quick search online doesn't show any benchmarked results either which is curious
I've tested before and after alignment and it makes a huge difference in random io. The older or slower your flash storage is the bigger the impact. Total reads and writes are reduced and you get much better latency
The Athlon 64 system I use in many of my projects uses IDE. I use SD card adapters and SATA to IDE adapters. I think since sometimes this year I align the partitions with my DOS and Windows 98 projects. I didn't run benchmarks because it was about the lifespan / wear of SSD not performance. Remember a SSD is much faster than the IDE or even old SATA interface of Retro PCs, so it can easily handle additional read/write cycles.
@@philscomputerlab I might be biased on lifespan since I'm living in the US these days (instead of Adelaide)
120 gig Kingston SSD's are $19 US. They're so cheap I put them in absolutely everything just out of habit now
I think you can use Defraggler on XP for trim. Click optimize instead of defrag
Not on XP but works in 10.
@@philscomputerlab yea I'm thinking it relies on the ability of the OS to determine drive type vs trying to figure it out itself
it work on my pc thx bro vеry much
I have a 2014 gateway 8 gigs ram.. last window update disconnected my drive and removed my Firefox data, deleted window movie maker and screwed up my machine bad.
Can KernelEX on Windows 98 able to run Windows XP Version Partition Wizard?
Hmm doubt it to be honest as it reboots and then runs before booting into OS. But if your machine can run a portable XP from CD, like Hirens Boot CD, maybe that lets you run Partition Wizard...
@@philscomputerlabI asked because I have dual boot Retro Gaming PC with Win98 SE and Win XP SP3 (98 20GB and XP 100 GB), I have confused what to do, do I treat both partitions separately or can do both.
Helpful video. What's about lifespan of SD cards in SD Adapter to IDE on Win98 SE / Win2000 ?
Any NAND storage device is affected! I align SD cards in card reader in windows 10.
@@philscomputerlab Ok, thanks.
There are many partition tools that can check and realign partitions without loss of data.
Yes! Which ones do you use?
@PhilsComputerLab I've had great success with paragon's alignment tool, though it is windows exclusive afaik. Alternatively gparted can be used to nondestructively realign partitions manually. Another thing I would highly recommend for any retro windows machine is to disable last access time stamps on files, as they cause a lot of unnecessary small writes, which can also impact performance on ide/pata flash devices or if using other slow flash storage like cf cards, SD cards, emmc flash etc. Similarly, last modified time stamps and the creation of 8.3 filenames can also be disabled to further minimize disk utilization and overhead if you don't need those.
But as far im concern only old versions are free. MiniTool Partition Manager and AOMEI Partition Manager, EseUS Partition Manager had this function in free versions 8.0 (each one of these) but not anymore Marcium Reflect can do it during restore operation.
So far I have not needed to use SSDs on anything older than Windows 7. I have enough old era drives to install those operating systems on. Windows XP and Windows 98 runs quite fast on era specific hard drives and they can actually manage the space and maintenance of the drives quite well on their own.
You mention Win98, but all parts in the video shows NTFS filesystem being aligned. Can you come back to this topic and look into aligning FAT16 and FAT32 partitions? It's not that straight forward with those, as the filesystem is really weird and has some variable-sized data in front of the partition start offset and whatnot. Is there any chance to align FAT16/FAT32?
Do you have any recommendations for older Macintosh systems, especially the PowerPC and 68k pre-OSX variety?
Another option is to format the drive from within a modern OS then tell the older Windows installer to use the existing partition without formatting.
Yup this works great for Windows XP especially. When installing choose the option "keep existing file system" or something like that.
Is there's a partition wizard for windows 98/ME ? And if there is, could you please provide a download link???
I have a problem with backing up and restoring a dual boot win 98/2k. The system boots both into win98 and win2k on a 1TB SSD connected through a PCI raid card flawlessly. Then I made a backup using AOMEI Backupper. I am trying to restore to a 120GB SSD (both OSs use maybe 1GB each so the partition sizes are adjusted automatically) just to test the integrity of the backup. After the restore, when I boot up I am greeted with NTLDR is missing. So then I used the Mini Tool to rebuild the MBR. And to my surprise I am greeted with the win98/win2k boot menu. Win2k boots fine, but if I choose win98 I get the black screen and blinking cursor, no boot. I'm wondering if I missed a step somewhere to ensure win98 boots fine. Any help is welcome.
I don't have help but these issues why I gave up on dual or multi booting. I now prefer drive bays and just swap SSDs. Some bays have power buttons so you can select between 4 drives...
@@philscomputerlab Ya I'm to the point where I think it's impossible with current backup software to capture what is needed to restore a dual boot that involves win 98. It would be cool to have a software switch, but hardware seems to be the way to go. I might just backup for save files and keep the dual boot operational, but I'll think about it. I'm so close to the perfect system. Would love to get a Gigabyte GA-6VTXD to max everything while having an ISA for my AWE 32 CT3990. Might even go for a AWE 64 Gold, but man prices are so high for the coolest stuff. Anyways thanks for all your great content!
We have a hp PC at work that we use for our CNC. The disk is audible starting to fail.
I have 2 sata to usb adapters.(with power adapter) Should I connect both drives to my new PC to clone the mechanical xp drive to a SSD?
Should work fine, but seeing it's a production machine, best to take a backup and be careful!
@@philscomputerlab , yeah I know. The machine is 12 years or older. A upgrade for the pc and controller cost 16k (euros) I was also thinking to buy the same refurbished pc if the mainboard fails. 😅🤣
Do you need to align if you are on Windows 10? Does it make a difference if i do it anyway in Partition Wizard?
Nope! Anything Vista SP1 and newer knows how to "handle" SSD correctly.
Any links to articles stating Vista SP1 was optimized for SSDs ? All I can find is the first winOS able to detect and optimize for SSDs was windows 7
www.seagate.com/au/en/tech-insights/advanced-format-4k-sector-hard-drives-master-ti/
"Consequently, they released 4K-sector-compatible software beginning with Windows Vista Service Pack 1. Software that creates partitions of Alignment 0 (those that work well with the Advanced Format standard) is referred to as “4K aware”. Table 2 describes the situation relative to current generations of the Microsoft Windows OS."
So if I want to install Windows 98, do I install that first and then connect the drive to a modern PC and align the partition? Or do I align the partition first and then install Windows 98?
"Only use 1/2 or a 3rd of the drive" Will creating a small partition work, or don't use more than 1/2 of the full drive size?
I want to know this too.
Same thing to a SSD. Remember, a SSD doesn't think of data in terms of sectors, partitions, it's all the same. Basically make sure it's not full close to capacity. If you use a 1TB SSD, partition it to 120 GB for Windows 98, that's excellent, the SSD will have so much empty cells it can use to wear balance data.
@@philscomputerlab Got it, thanks for the info.
Is there a way to start with an aligned partition, a modified FDISK or something, formatting on a later system, or with a Linux live CD?
Yes. And it actually makes more sense to do it that way. Installing to a misaligned partition and aligning it afterwards is a waste of time and SSD write cycles.
Use any modern partitioning tool from a boot CD or USB stick to create your partitions before installing the OS, and you're good.
It depends a bit, with XP that works, but I had limited success with DOS and FAT, FAT32.
this apply to sdcards in sd to ide adapter too?
Will this work with an SSD dual booting both MacOS 9 and 10.3? I was planning replacing the drive in a 500mhz iMac g3.
Did the image creation and alignment using AOMEI (great for making backups too) and the Win98SE 8GB CF card works perfectly fine afterwards, feels nice and fast but don't remember if it was much slower before.
BUT the DOS 6.22 4GB CF with 2GB DOS partition won't boot with "Verifying DMI Pool Data... Missing operating system" after using the SSD alignment option. FDISK see the partition and it is also still set as the active partition. When writing the image without SSD alignment, it boots perfectly fine.
Also tried a MicroSD to CF adapter card. Without alignment DOS boots fine, with alignment it hangs after "Verifying Pool Data...", not even showing "Missing operating system" but FDISK still recognises it and the partition.
Also tried aligning a working one with the MiniTool instead but it always says that the partition has a problem. Scans of the partition didn't find any errors though.
AOMEI doesn't recognise my Amiga formatted 4GB CF as formatted. Need to test if creating an image and writing it back will work at all and if so, if the alignment option works.
Update: Writing the image back didn't work, the Amiga didn't recognize it, even without the alignment option.
Seems it doesn't work in all situations. I've also tried formatting SD card in camera with mixed results. Sometimes it works perfect, sometimes the Windows 98 installation fails at some point. With SD cards what I found worked best was pop SD card in card reader and run the Mini Partition Tool. I did this when benchmarking SD cards under Windows 98 for example.
Minitool Partition Wizard (v9.1) and AS SSD say my partitions are aligned but when I check manually (partition starting offset divided by 4096. Dividing by 512 results in a whole number, but 1024, 2048, 4096 don't) it comes out misaligned...
Hmm not sure what's going on. Partition Wizard should also tell you if it's already alligned, at least I remember seeing such a message.
@@philscomputerlab Partition Wizard says they're aligned... it's just the 'manual' method where it comes out misaligned (decimal number). I think I somehow ended up using 512sectors instead of 4096... (Partitioned the drive in Win10)
So is there a recommended SSD for retro computers or do we just look after alignment and trim as you describe here?
I have a Crucial Bx 120 GB on a Socket 939 windows xp set up that I am worried about since it’s getting quite full I am starting to see system freezing on intense gaming scenes. I’m going to clone the drive to a Crucial MX 500GB to see if more space fixes this issue, but if we have out of the box SSD’s designed for retro computers this would be a great solution.
The OG ones with Single Level Nand. Later MLC and now we have TLC or 3D Nand. I would just keep backups and not worry too much. If it fails, well then it fails and buy a new one.
I have Win98 on a 128GB SSD and wanted to make a copy to another 128GB SSD as a backup with AOMEI backupper but with no luck. I either get a "searching for boot record from ide-0 ok" or sector not found with "vswp.vxd" missing. What am I doing wrong?
Or any suggestions for another program that lets you easily copy an SSD with in 98 on it? Preferably on a Win 10 system.
The FAT file system is so simple that there's really no need for disk imaging software. You can just hook up your Win9x SSD to a modern system and copy all files to another location. I sometimes make backups just by compressing all files to a 7z archive. Just make sure that you actually see and grab ALL files. Windows Explorer does not show hidden files and system files by default. Also, this will obviously not backup your MBR and partition boot sectors, but that doesn't matter, as those can be recreated anytime with a few clicks using BootICE. Make sure you know how to use this excellent tool.
Have to think that booting a Linux image to partition the drive with correct alignment first might be a quicker way to do it. Then boot into the Windows install and just format the existing (and correctly aligned) partition, rather than creating a new one.
There are MANY ways to do it! I share a few that I think are easy and straight forward for most 🙂
I've found a lot of issues with different systems and Windows 95 or 98 getting installed to a pre-created partition. Notably, 286 to Pentium 1 era motherboards have given me problems as far back as DOS. Rather, creating it with the OS installer and later re-aligning has worked in almost all cases. Two systems I gave up on - weird controller issues.
@@philscomputerlab how many write cycles would it cost to align the ssd after partitions have been created?
@@masejoer I remember there was a method of creating an offset(to manually align) by using a programme(Intel I think) prior to creating the partitions.
@@longdang2681 I would guess it depends how much data is on it?
I have heard that using an M.2 SSD with a DRAM cache (vs. an SLC cache) will double the durability of the drive. What is your opinion on that? Teamgroup's MP34 series of M.2's use DRAM cache, and they're very affordable. Thanks and greetings from Alaska.
I would have to look into that technology, but yes, manufacturers come up with new ways to extend cell life.
We are talking XP here and there are only few chipsets with full or partial M.2 support. Intel H97 and Z97 are not officially XP-supported but work quite happily with 8-series drivers. On the AMD side, only series 9 chipsets have native M.2 support. Having said that, not all motherboards with these chipsets come with M.2 socket(s) installed.
@@sirfoggy7682 Chinese X79 and X99 boards are the best. M.2 AND XP support!
@@philscomputerlab 2 or 3 yrs ago I've purchased Huanazhi X79 -Deluxe and it is a rather nice motherboard. For one reason or another, AliExpress no longer accepts orders from my country :(
Intel never had XP support for X99 chipset. Hacked version do exist, Fernando over at Win-Raid forums has created sets of chipset drivers all the way up to the latest 500-series.
@@sirfoggy7682 Check out Snappy Driver Installer Origin. It's a massive torrent download, but the progrma is brilliant. It IDs your devices and has all the drivers ready to install. I let it do all drivers apart form sound and graphics, those I do seperately as it depends a bit on what card and what driver is a good fit.
so if you FDISK a CF card and install MSDOS... is all that alignment done for you? or do you have to prepare the SD/CF card before you do any FDISK stuff to install MSDOS?
thanks for good video.
easiest way to align a partition from my experience is to connect the hard drive to a PC that can run either a modern windows like 7 or alternatively liveboot into a linux distro of some kind, and partition the drive there, then go back to win9x/2K/XP and start installing on that partition. For Win9x at that point of the partition creation its also convenient to copy the win9x dir from the install CD to C:, so you can straight up launch the installation from it afterwards, can also at that point add useful apps like nusb36.exe, patchmem or bhdd31.zip
Every time I’ve tried this with my Dos 6.2 install it it's no longer recognised in the PC.
If I create an image of the entire disk using Norton Ghost after I aligned everything, will it still be aligned when I restore the image again? Maybe I should test this. Would save me some hassle.
Not necessarily, only if Ghost is modern enough to understand alignment and 4k sectors and all of that.
I just tried to install the newest version of the minitool program on my XP machine (12.06), and it won't load. There is also no legacy versions listened on the minitool website. Do you happen to host version 9 on your website Phil?
Done! Check the video description!
@@philscomputerlab Thank you, I will be adding it to my retro tool kit.
Does it also affect retro hardware with a modern os installed? Example, Q6600 gt 1030 with windows 10
No. Win10 creates aligned partitions.
Both Version 9 & 10 have frozen 9 seconds in during alignment. Any idea why? XP on 500GB PNY SATA SSD.
Oh no that's unfortunate. You could try cloning it onto another drive.
Thanks Phil. Using the USB to IDE/SATA adapter I have, do you think it would work to hook the XP SSD up to that and run the Partition Wizard from my modern W10 machine?
Worked like a charm, thanks again for the info Phil!
Every time retro channels show these ide to sd/cf card adapters my stomach turns. Great for a quick test but nothing more. The media was never foreseen for that kind of use and filesystems.
Many cameras that use SD cards, use FAT32 🤔
Prior to sata being commonplace (and even awhile after) compact flash was used to run dos and windows on a lot of embedded systems like thin clients. Considering how much more robust modern sd cards are (being designed to be hit with high bitrate video for long periods of time) then you don't need to worry about ms dos even starting to wear them out. Just don't keep anything important on them if you're worried about losing them.
@@philscomputerlab Sure but there is a difference between a few photos being written from time to time or a Windows 95 swap file constantly changing data.
@@chadmasta5 I work for a company that makes embedded systems. The OS is specifically adapted to write as less as possible to the sd/cf. Even log files are written to ram drives and sporadically written away to sd/cd. The SBC forums are also full of story's of corrupt SD's and many of the OSes are trying to prevent excessive writing as much as possible. It's one of the reasons why many SBC board manufacturers are now offering M.2 because of the known issues. Also with SD there is a wide variety in quality...
@@g412bb SBCs are also a completely different use case with a lot of projects running them 24/7. Nobody is running their retro gaming pc that long and it's realistically not going to be an issue even with a cheapo card. Even with a swap file moving stuff around. The worst thing that can happen is it dies and you buy another cheap one. Oh well. Just keep an image of your OS install handy to write to the new one and you're off like nothing happened.
What happens if you’re dual booting XP and 7?
Excellent job ：）