m11x r2 Boot up

I recently purchased a alienware m11x r2 i5 520um, 8gb ram, 320gb hard drive, Nvida 355 GT. I overclocked my laptop to 158mhz, and updated all the necessary drivers. However, I notice my boot time was rather pathetic it took around 1min and 16 seconds to boot straight to the desktop I by passed the log in screen. I was wondering if you guys could help me with making my m11x boot faster. If it matters I'm using high performance on the battery. Thanks.

 

For what it's worth, mine takes about the same time to boot as well. I want to blame the Alienware backlight control panel (forgot what it's called) as it seems to take up a fair amount of resources, but I'm not sure.

 

1:16 sounds about right. If you want a faster boot, you can try tweaking some of the Windows Startup items (Start --> Run --> type "msconfig" hit Enter --> Startup tab) as well to shave off a few seconds.

But if you want significantly faster boots, you'll need an SSD. I made three videos on this topic.

1. Alienware M11x R2 - 17 Second Boot - POST to Desktop
2. Booting Windows 7 + Loading 27 applications at startup in about 1 minute.
3. Direct head-to-head comparison of SSD vs HDD boot times - Windows 7 + loading a few common apps.

 

My total boot has always been around 1 minute according to soluto. I don't have a lot of things turned off because 1 minute isn't a big deal to me. However, if you want to optimize an SSD would be your best bet. Failing that the momentus xt.

Soluto is a decent solution to pull things out of your boot.

 

As has been said already, SSDs will allow for a faster boot at greater expense and likely smaller capacity.

I wouldn't worry about boot times too much though, what is the experience like when Windows has loaded?

 

Multitasking heaven.

SSD's are not about load times of a single application. There is very little difference between loading Mozilla Firefox in 0.5sec vs. 0.2 sec. The benefit of an SSD is when you multitask.

When you throw multiple read requests at a mechanical hard drive, the throughput of the drive doesn't really scale up beyond what the drive could do with one read request. Mechanical hard drives top out at around NCQs of 1 or 2. A mechanical drive handling NCQ=16 (16 simultaneous read requests) performs about the same as a mechanical drive handling NCQ=2 (2 simultaneous read requests). The bottleneck is often your computer waiting for your hard drive to respond to the read request.

Meanwhile, throwing multiple read requests at an SSD scales the throughput of the SSD in a linear fashion. An SSD handling NCQ=16 is almost exactly 8x faster than an SSD handling NCQ=2. The bottleneck here is the rest of the computer... the SSD is so fast, it has to wait for the computer to give it more read requests to handle.

What does that mean? An SSD system is always responsive, always fast. You never have that painfully sluggish moment where your system is slow, because your hard drive is thrashing away trying to keep up with the data requests. With an SSD, it doesn't matter what else is going on with your machine - you press a button, your system responds nearly instantly.

For an extreme example, check out my 2nd video in my post above (or in my signature) - where I boot Windows 7 + load 27 applications in about 1 minute. How long would something like that take on a mechanical hard drive? And more importantly, how unusable would the system be if a mechanical hard drive was trying to do all of that while thrashing away?

 

Hi Kent, you're preaching to the converted, my question was to the OP. I don't think boot time is that important really, with modern OS's I don't need to boot that often, and will rely on standby/sleep with a notebook during the day anyway. Also, if you're reducing the boot time by removing pre-loads of apps that you'd use most of the time, then it may degrade your experience using the machine. There's a balance to be had.

I personally think it's more important to concentrate on how a machine runs when you're using it, not how quickly it boots. But that's just my opinion.

All my machines have SSDs (most of the desktops in RAID0) except the servers, even including an Eee 1000 where it's bottlenecked by the SATA interface - it's still much better than the 7,200 HD it came with though

 

i know it's an extreme example, designed to magnify the difference between an SSD and HDD. i do think it's a really cool video as well; thanks for demonstrating it. it makes me want an SSD.

however, is this sort of use case really applicable to 99% of people? who loads 27 applications at a time? who even loads more than 3 or 4 at a time? i'm not arguing that an SSD doesn't have its advantages, but i'm merely questioning the necessity of having one in the first place for the regular joe schmoe. i think in general, people aren't executing scripts to open up 10+ apps at a time. they open up chrome, check the news. they open up outlook, check their mail. they open up a messaging client, and communicate with others. they open up a spreadsheet to do some work. repeat for additional tasks, but in the end, people don't usually have more than 7 or 8 applications open at a single time, do they (and even then, it's more of a RAM issue than a storage disk issue)? in that typical scenario, a 7200 RPM HDD is going to be sufficient, and the linear scalability argument doesn't really apply, nor is the $ amount and reduced capacity worth it, IMO. as a previous poster stated, an app opening in 0.2 sec vs 0.5 sec isn't really going to be that noticeable, and if you're incrementally opening apps as most people do, doesn't that keep the playing field more level between 7200RPM HDD and an SSD?

i suppose a similar example would be: why does anyone need a 370 horsepower car that can go 175 MPH when the speed limits in the USA are like 65-75 MPH tops? why does anyone need to go 0-60 in 3.8 seconds? even like 6 seconds is plenty quick for basically any purpose (i.e. merging onto a fast moving highway).

thoughts?

 

You are correct that the extreme example of multitasking never happens in real-life.

But here is a real-life example: You're doing something that maxes out your mechanical HDD in the background, and decide to do something else while you're waiting. Any disk access needed by that "something else" will be affected, because your HDD is already thrashing away and maxed out trying to keep up with the read/write requests.

Examples:

* You're installing an application, and decide to browse the web while you're waiting. Even web browsing will be slowed down, because it requires you to read/write to the browser cache.
* You're copying files, and decide to do "something else" (like play a game) while you're waiting.
* You're encoding video, and decide to do "something else" while you're waiting (like browse the web).
* You're booting a Virtual Machine, and do something else while you're waiting for that VM to finish booting.
* You're running a test database on your laptop, and don't want your system slowed down by read/writes to that database.

You are correct that a 7200rpm is much cheaper and has higher capacity, and often has performance that is "good enough" for what people typically do.

There are really two kinds of people who buy SSDs:

(1) People who can arguably make a case for why an SSD increases their productivity, to the point where the productivity gains cover the cost of the SSD. Examples of this are people who run VMs or databases for work, and have their computers crippled by a thrashing mechanical HDD to the point where they can't get work done. This is a very rare, but valid case.

(2) People who like fast toys, and are willing to pay for it. An SSD is the Ferrari to a 7200rpm drive's Toyota Camry. To play off of your example, nobody NEEDS to go 0mph-60mph (0kph-100kph for our European friends) in 3.8 seconds. But it sure is a lot of fun to drive a car that can do that.

 

Absolutely. And once you've driven the Ferrari you don't want to go back to the Camry How many people spend money on top of the line graphics cards. Do they need that extra 10FPS too? What makes me smile is that on other forums I've seen these same people shirk at the idea of buying an SSD because of the cost, yet overall it would give them a better experience than the graphics card they have no hesitation in buying!

 

I've also seen:

(1) People who advocate buying ridiculous amounts of RAM, when they don't ever run into the risk of paging to disk, and don't even come close to using all of the RAM that they currently own.

(2) People who are still convinced that CPU's determine performance. They will ask whether a processor upgrade that costs several $100's is worth the price premium.

But when you suggest skipping the RAM / CPU (which gives them zero real-world benefit), and putting that money instead towards an SSD (which would show a significant performance return for their money), what is the first response you hear? "Too expensive, not worth the money."

 

yeah, i agree with most of what you're saying. however, when i'm installing a program or something, i tend to want to keep other computer use to a minimum during that time. maybe i'm just being unnecessarily careful, but it's what i do. also, when encoding a video or something, aren't the CPU and GPU really the things being taxed, compared to the disk?

 

Not sure about the context but regarding the CPU - games like SC2 and NFS: Hot Pursuit on my M11x would have me believe otherwise. (faster CPU = better performance)

 

The CPU is often the limiting factor, yes. But the constant stream of I/O writes still hammers a hard drive to the point where performance while doing "other" stuff on your computer can be compromised.

Not an issue for you, if you tend to let your computer just focus on one task at a time. It was mentioned as one of several real-world scenarios where an SSD would show benefits over a mechanical HDD.

Yes, faster CPU = better performance when you're talking about CPU-dependent applications. I'm not debating that. But what I am saying is that in many cases, people with money to spend on upgrades would get a better return for their money if they bought an SSD.


The conversation that I often see around CPUs is:

Q: Should I upgrade to CPU_Model_A (+5% higher clock speeds, +$200 price tag)?
A: No. The small performance gain you get will be practically unnoticeable. If you're looking for a performance gain, you'd be much better off spending that money elsewhere, like on an SSD.
Reply: What? No way! SSD's are too expensive! But the +$200 CPU upgrade instead!

... and that makes no sense to me. $200 is $200. You can spend it on a CPU for a tiny bump in performance in very specific situations, or you can spend that same $200 on an SSD that will benefit you in just about every area of your computer (except gaming framerates). You get a much higher return for your $200 by buying an SSD, versus a small incremental clock speed boost on a CPU.

 

I see. I think what also scares people from upgrading to an SSD is that they'll have to sacrifice storage space as well. While not much of a problem for desktops and notebooks that support 2 HDDs, installing one into smaller notebooks like the M11x may not be worth the trade off to some people.

 

Yes. The smaller storage space is a huge negative of SSD's.

I think that it has a lot to do with how people just took massive HDD storage for granted over the past few years. Because of the limited storage space, an SSD forces you to sit and think about what data you really NEED to have with you at all times, and what data is simply nice-to-have with you at all times. I mean, does someone really NEED every single MP3 or ripped DVD that they ever owned with them at all times?

The people who have chosen to buy an SSD often manage the limited space by putting their non-critical files on an external USB enclosure. Most of the time, the content that really eats up storage space is media (music, videos, pictures, ), and that stuff won't benefit from SSD speeds to begin with. It's far less convenient than just throwing everythign on one massive drive, but it gets you access to SSD speeds.

 

That's very true, but even with the biggest HD's available I'd still have to compromise in the way Kent suggests, if I wanted all my Steam games, media etc. I just have to compromise a little bit more because of the SSD.

I've put a 256GB SSD in the M11x that I had lying about spare, and carry a 2.5" external 500GB drive with me. I've also the option to VPN into home and access my server if I've missed anything. I just need to think about how long I'll be away and what I'm likely to need. I've always more than I need with me

But the smaller the SSD the bigger the compromise, and the hassle might not be worth it for many, when coupled with the cost.

 

The first few boots I had were about 1:10...I killed some unnecessary start processes and kept most all of the Alienware stuff (besides Command Center) and now it's closer to 45 seconds. I will probably upgrade to a Momentus XT sooner or later though and then we'll be looking around 30 I'm guessing.

 

on my R1 with absolutely nothing starting up when windows boots, plus some windows tweaks and mods, im getting about 49 seconds from post to desktop.
and thats on the 160gb sata II thats stock