Windows 7 - To InStall Or Not - Dat is the ?

[Magna]

Quote from Scataphagos:

Haven't "upgrades" been dodgy historically... such that you'd really want to do a fresh install instead? W7 going to be any different? Doubt it.

Never found them a problem from 32bit to 32bit. Ran NT for a number of years, upgraded to Win2000 without incident. Years later upgraded that to XP without incident. And like I said, Microsoft is providing a simple upgrade path from Vista to Windows 7. It's not the clean installation of the O/S that bothers me, it's the re-installation of all my (many years) accumulated software that is a royal pain in the keister. And not just the re-installation (assuming I can even find all of it), but the endless re-configuring to get it back to where I had it.

 

[thstart]

Quote from swtrader:

i'll go to 7 from xp when someone can answer one simply question

WHY

so far, MS is notorious for introducing massive bloat for useless 'dazzle' and new places with new names to look for old things you used to do

it's it's simple, doesnt crash, runs faster and turns on and off like a television, i'll consider

otherwise, i'll pass

It is faster; saves energy; works very stable on a range of computers - I am using in house a cheap 1999 year computer for a server as well as brand new Dell Workstation, Lenovo Workstation, others too; many new technologies - DirectX11, Direct2D is scalable and fast - works with GPU graphics accelerators as well as with less powerful graphic cards; native mode; many new technologies - BUT needs new programs to be used fully. We rewrote all our apps in native C++, got rid from .NET and all bloated software based on it.

Bottom line - it is superior than anything else currently available BUT needs new applications specifically written to use its features.

 

[cstfx]

Quote from Magna:

Aside from the wait-for-the-1st-Service-Pack (a normally wise philosophy with new Windows versions) there's the main issue that there is no upgrade path from XP. If you have Vista you can upgrade straight to Windows 7 and maintain your programs and settings. But if you have XP (as the majority of people do) you can't upgrade, period. You have to back up all your various data files from all your various folders to an external drive, re-format your disc, do a totally new installation of Windows 7, restore your various data files, re-install all your old software (assuming you still have the installation CDs + serial no), and re-configure all your newly installed old software.

It's not just all the time that will take (which is considerable), it's also the tracking down and gathering of all the old software that you will need to reinstall. I'm sorry Microsoft didn't see fit to provide an upgrade path from XP, and that means I'm in absolutely no rush to bother with the time and expense even though I would like to eventually end up with Windows 7 on my computers. XP will do quite well for now and the foreseeable future, thankyouverymuch.

The OS istallation I believe you will find EXTREMELY easy compared with previous versions of windows if the RC is any indication of the actual shipped product. Took less than 15 minutes to do a clean install from format. I have been using the RC since March and am very happy with it's functionality. Took a while to get used to "libraries" instead of "folders", but had the same problem when it went from directories top folders. Easier networking with older OS's too compared to Vista.

 

[thstart]

Quote from Magna:

Never found them a problem from 32bit to 32bit. Ran NT for a number of years, upgraded to Win2000 without incident. Years later upgraded that to XP without incident. And like I said, Microsoft is providing a simple upgrade path from Vista to Windows 7. It's not the clean installation of the O/S that bothers me, it's the re-installation of all my (many years) accumulated software that is a royal pain in the keister. And not just the re-installation (assuming I can even find all of it), but the endless re-configuring to get it back to where I had it.

yes, this is always that way with new installations.

 

[jprad]

Quote from swtrader:

i'll go to 7 from xp when someone can answer one simple question

WHY

so far, MS is notorious for introducing massive bloatware for useless 'dazzle' and new places with new names to look for old things you used to do - bloat that REDUCES the performance of your computer - that was vista, in a nutshell. crapware from clueless h-1bs and indian outsourcers

if it's simple, doesnt crash or freeze, runs faster and turns on and off like a television, i'll consider

otherwise, i'll pass

Everything you say is completely accurate.

Every version of Windows after NT 5 (what Windows 2000 really was) has been slower, more bloated and fraught with more and more security problems.

In the end, you'll face the same dismal reality that Win2K/Office2K customers had to face -- sunsetting.

Once they turn off updates you're sunk for good.

 

[jprad]

Quote from thstart:

yes, this is always that way with new installations.

I'm a UNIX person by profession.

Always told my Windows counterparts that Windows was a rock solid OS, up until the first application is installed.

 

[EdgeHunter]

Quote from Scataphagos:

Always back up, surely. But to "4"? Acronis is more reliable than that.

Oh Yeah... at least... we almost... almost loss a major dBase one time for a ecommerce client and i had the Seppuku Sword out and was starting the death ritual when my partner recovered it from one of our sources... saved by the external...

at least 4 ... :eek:

 

[thstart]

Quote from Scataphagos:

What is "interleave optimized"?

My mistake I mistyped the term - not "interleave optimized" - it is a little more complicated.

First you have to create a partition at an explicit disk offset for required cylinder alignment using diskpart.exe

=======================
For example:
=======================
Diskpart> select disk 4
Diskpart> list partition

Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 4094 MB 31 KB
Partition 2 Extended 4581 MB 4094 MB
Partition 3 Logical 2047 MB 4094 MB
Partition 4 Logical 2533 MB 6142 MB
=======================


The Offset 31KB has to be 32KB to be aligned for optimized disk read/write.

Also you have to format with a suitable sector size. Usually sector size is 2KB, I am using 64KB.

With these two measures you can ensure:
1) the OS is reading disk sectors from aligned address
2) the OS is reading bigger chunks from the disk at a time.

That way the slowest operations - I/O work faster.

Make sure Windows 7 is supporting your disk drive directly.

You have to create a bootable CDROM with Windows AIK and execute diskpart.exe from there.

It takes a lot of work but is worth the efforts. The speed gains can be in order of ~50%-100%.

 

[GTS]

Quote from thstart:

It takes a lot of work but is worth the efforts. The speed gains can be in order of ~50%-100%.

Can you provide a reference for this claim? I've heard about tweaking partitions for SSD's but not for hard drives. I have a difficult time believing that this is a good idea and/or that you could achieve those type of gains by doing this.

 

[thstart]

Quote from GTS:

Can you provide a reference for this claim? I've heard about tweaking partitions for SSD's but not for hard drives. I have a difficult time believing that this is a good idea and/or that you could achieve those type of gains by doing this.

The only way to know is to try it yourself and make a lot of benchmarks. The partition alignment is a common sense when you understand how it works - it is the same with CPU memory. The other factors - it depends.

It is a part of our research for what can be achieved from available hardware to create something like a not expensive dedicated appliance for financial database.

This speed gain is valid for particular very narrowly defined circumstances. You can format and align the hard drive as described and still do not get significant speed gain.

It depends from the combination of sector size, data, database and machine configuration- they have to fit each other. ~50% gain is most common. We reached 100% for particular cases with big (GB) data.

I am getting this speed gain because this machine is used as a dedicated database server for specific kind of data (financial) and NOTHING else.

Our custom developed in house database reads and writes in chunks compatible with the sector size. We made the following tests - read/write in increasing data chunk sizes beginning with 2KB, increments of 2KB up to 10GB. We ran these tests several weeks and made a graph to find the optimal permutation for this particular machine configuration. Then tuned the database accordingly. For every machine these is a range of optimal parameters which you can get only doing a real world tests with your own data you will use actually - you cannot get this from the official specs and the official benchmarks.