Windows 7 on iMac

[Trojans]

Just installed a clean copy of windows 7, and the system is freaking 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. From push power button to desktop, it takes 75 seconds, and then open Spotify, it takes me 30 seconds. Totally, it takes me almost 2 minutes. My MBP has a SDD. All of above I mentioned, it just takes less than 30 seconds. Damn it, Why don't Apple make every iMac SDD standard?

[CoreyLahey]

Originally Posted by Trojans

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.

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.

[throAU]

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...

[Aluminum213]

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

[Jay9495]

May I ask how you installed windows on your imac ?

[Trojans]

Originally Posted by Jay9495

May I ask how you installed windows on your imac ?

I downloaded a copy of Win 7 and followed Boot camp instruction.

----------

Originally Posted by Aluminum213

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

I'm using bootcamp because some softwares are not working in parallel

[throAU]

see here:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1156654/s...-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.

[HBen]

Originally Posted by CoreyLahey

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.

+1
Have you played any games yet??