[OldNewb]

I am planning to move an upto-date xp64 installation (courtesy of Kurt Aust and 5eraph's awesome contributions on the process) onto an SSD and install it into my old rig as a boot drive.

I run mostly Office, Photoshop and some games. Have done a lot of reading but have got myself confused by AHCI, Trim and Garbage collection when an SSD is running under xp64.

System board is an Asus A8N-Sli Premium board (I know it belongs in a museum but it runs fine and I am waiting until Ivy Bridge is out before retiring it)

How does my board not having AHCI support (ACPI only) and only being SATA 2 affect my choice of SSD?

How does Trim and Garbage work under xp64? Is it software that comes with the drive or is a 64bit driver needed? Or does it not work at all?

I would appreciate any recommendations for a suitable SSD between 64Gb and 160Gb in size.

Thanks in advance

[dencorso]

Of course it has AHCI! Just set Extended IDE Mode to "None" in the BIOS config, and it'll be in AHCI mode. BTW, AHCI and ACPI are totally diferent animals...
SSD? RunCore Rules!

[cdob]

OldNewb, on 12 January 2012 - 04:03 PM, said:

How does my board not having AHCI support (ACPI only) and only being SATA 2 affect my choice of SSD?

Trim won't work at a nForce 4 chipset running XP/2003.

Use a SSD with medium garbage collection.

I recommend a Samsung 470 at given hardware.
Or use a Intel 320.