Windows 7 on iMac

Trojans said:

Just installed a clean copy of windows 7, and the system is ******* slow because of 5400 rpm HDD. If fusion drive doesn't work in windows, I'm gonna change my 1 TB fusion drive to SDD. I can't take this freaking slow speed of HDD anymore.

Click to expand...

Can you let me know how gaming works? I heard the HDD shouldn't make a difference in-game? Personally I won't have another use for windows in bootcamp.

If you're using windows 7 for other purposes than gaming, look into installing it on an external ssd, I think I read somewhere that it's possible, but honestly I'm not sure.

75 seconds is not normal, even for a 5400 rpm drive. It should be nearer 20-25 sec for a clean Windows 7 install.

Windows 7 has problems with picking correct partition alignment on the brand new 4k sector drives.

If you can, I would find a copy of Windows 7 SP1 (or Windows 8) and install from that, as the installer in SP1 is intelligent enough to correctly align your disk partition to 4k sectors. Note: installing win7 SP1 on top of your current setup WILL NOT fix this. You need to do a clean install from a newer OS that knows about 4k drives, or align the partitions manually. You'll need to re-partition the disk.


Or locate a guide (google) on Windows 7 partition alignment.


The problem isn't 100% due to your hard drive, you are seeing WAY worse performance than you should due to the win7 installer not knowing about 4k sectors. If the partition is misaligned - every single read or write operation you do will be multiplied - a write requires 2 sector reads and a write, a read requires 2 reads.

I just spent a couple of days sorting this problem out at work...

Why wouldn't fusion drive work with windows? Are you using bootcamp or parallels?

May I ask how you installed windows on your imac ?

see here:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1156654/seans-windows-7-install-optimization-guide-for-ssds-hdds


not sure how boot camp will affect this.

You may be able to realign your existing boot camp partition by running a third party partitioning tool, such as a gparted liveCD.

I haven't run one on a mac and am not sure if it will work, but it may be worth a try. Back up your machine first obviously.

Realigning will take several hours, as every sector within the partition needs to be read and re-written to disk.


Also, see here for more info: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2888


4k alignment isn't only an SSD problem. Newer hard drives use 4k sectors these days as well.

CoreyLahey said:

Can you let me know how gaming works? I heard the HDD shouldn't make a difference in-game? Personally I won't have another use for windows in bootcamp.

If you're using windows 7 for other purposes than gaming, look into installing it on an external ssd, I think I read somewhere that it's possible, but honestly I'm not sure.

Click to expand...

+1
Have you played any games yet??