FBWF - speed up your ssd like hell! (how to)

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Le Tigre

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most of us xp - kids encounter the same problem:

the litle devil is fucking slow / unusable, as soon, as it is tryn to write to the ssd.

the rest works quite fine... now, we see: the problem is the writing to disk! and as lang as there are no acurate drivers, it seems like it will stay that way...
one fucking fast work around is to use the windows embedded "file based write filter" - which will get your "litle devil" one stepp closer to a regular
windows embedded device...


NOTICE: that has positive and negative effects:

cons:

- to change something in your configuration takes very much time! you will have to turn the "fbwf" off, reboot, and install enable reboot


pros:

- you can install (smaller!!!) programms in kind off a trial mode: they will be gone after the first reboot!
(you can set exceptions in fbwf so as to ignore changes to \program files or \windows, but that will take quite much of the advantages of the fbwf!)
- your prog. files are next to untouchable by viruses (due to all changes beeing written to a "virtual drive")
- no more waiting for the aao to write something to the disk...


due to the working of fbwf, you will only "protect" one disk - you can still use your sd cards as "my folder"

______________

so you see - i did not tell the whole truth: the thing does not speed up your hdd - it simpy prevents the os from using it :)

if you are willing to "pre - setup" your aao completly (!!!) and install enough ram for this to work out,
this is realy the best way i found so far, of dealing with its ssd problems! (you can't imagine, how fast it is!)

all the progs i posted allready where kind a prefetch progs (ebooster for instance) and normally only speed the reading up. due to the set up of multi level ssd's
thats affecting writing as well (afaik!), due to the inability to read and write at the same time. but its not directly influencing the writing speed!

so i decided to write this post / how to in three stepps:

(All credits go to craptree i more or less simply followed his instruction on mp3car.com - writing only stepp one and two myself... the rest is copied (stepp3))
 
STEPP ONE

Stepp one

1. set up your computer completly! including all win xp tweaks you need, etc...

disable system restore / data prefetching / turn off trash bin / etc...

set the system internal TMP/TEMP dir (right click on my compter/ properties / extended (?) / (?) environmental variables (?!!!!) - box just above the "ok" box of the window
to one of the sd cards (it will eat up your fbwf if not)

set the other temps of progs (like one note for instance) to that folder as well (for instance d:/temp)

2. put your "my files" on the extended storage disk (move it using the properties with right click on "my folders")

outsource the paths of email progs etc. to another "disk" (for instance where you have stored "my folders" now)

3. run a good xp cleaner / registry cleaner /xp antispy (i even defragmented my ssd - but it is still discussed, if that makes any sense - the arguments beeing: next to no response time /vs/ small files beeing read considerably slower...)

4. reboot

STEPP TWO
 
STEPP TWO

Stepp Two

download the "Windows XP Embedded Service Pack 2 Feature Pack 2007 Evaluation" from ms

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en

it is an iso file, which you can usually open with a regulay archiving prog (i used winrar)

in the main directorry, you will find a file called: XPEFP2007.exe

open it with a archive prog., thats capable of opening self extracting cab archives (SFX CAB) - win rar / 7zip should do

copy the following files in a dir on your desktop:

fbwf.sys
fbwfdll.dll
fbwflib.dll
fbwfmgr.exe
 
STEPP THREE

*** from here on, this is simply a copy of craptree from the mp3car.com forum ***

LINK

~ hope, its ok to post it here ~

**** copied text *****

You will need the following files from the XPe feature pack 2007 trial.

fbwf.sys fbwfdll.dll fbwflib.dll fbwfmgr.exe

If you're not sure how to extract these files, please see the "New EWF + MinLogon and CF instructions" thread by SFiorito.

1.Copy fbwf.sys to \WINDOWS\system32\drivers
2.Copy all other files to \WINDOWS\system32\
3.Add the following to your registry (it's probably easiest to copy it into an empty txt file, rename it to fbwf.reg, and load)

Code starts below the "---"
------------------------------

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\FBWF]
"Start"=dword:00000000
"Type"=dword:00000002
"ErrorControl"=dword:00000001
"ImagePath"=hex(2):73,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,00,44,00,\
52,00,49,00,56,00,45,00,52,00,53,00,5c,00,66,00,62,00,77,00,66,00,2e,00,73,\
00,79,00,73,00,00,00
"Group"="FSFilter System Recovery"
"DisplayName"="File-Based Write Filter"
"Description"="File-Based Write Filter driver"
"DependOnService"=hex(7):46,00,6c,00,74,00,4d,00,67,00,72,00,00,00,00,00
"DebugFlags"=dword:00000000
"EnabledOnAllSkus"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\FBWF\FBA]
"EnablePostFBA"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\FBWF\Instances]
"DefaultInstance"="Fbwf Instance"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\FBWF\Instances\Fbwf Instance]
"Flags"=dword:00000000
"Altitude"="226000"

---------------------------
(Code ends above the "---")

4.Reboot
5.Go to your command prompt, and type in the following commands.

fbwfmgr /enable
fbwfmgr /addvolume X:
fbwfmgr /setthreshold S

X is the drive you want to protect (most will want to protect c. S is the size you want your ram drive to be in MB(mine is 256).

6. Reboot, and your done!


There are 4 other commands in fbwfmgr you may want to play with. /setpreallocation 1 reserves the ram space (I.E does not dynamically change with the amount of actual used space). /setcompression 1 compresses the date to save more ram space, but at the cost of CPU time. /overlaydetail tells you what files are being stored in ram, and how much ram space is being used. /addexclusion X: "\persistent\folder" enables write through on the folder X:\persistent\folder.

For those used to EWF, unfortunately there is no way to commit all data, and each file has to be committed manually with the following command /commit X: "\windows\file.exe"
 
anyone any experiences?

i personally love it! its realy fuckin great...

it does not affect boot up time but like this it is possible to work unter windows...

this can be handeld by minilogon and other programms from the embedded sector (heard about a 9 sec
boot ub in mp3car...) but once it has booted up, you can work with it. nearly as soon, as you see your desk top

(no "pre boot up lags and so on)

for any of u, having dared to take that thing appart to install one further gb ram - try it out!!! it is fucking great!
 
don't for get to disabling the indexing services and the last access time stamp on NTFS, and I move the page file to my SDHC card.

I used FAT32 and disabled more services and it's running lighting fast....

I'm going to do more testing tonight and convert FAT32 to NTFS. Will post the result later.
 
hope, i'm not considered to authistic but:

there are news at the "fbwf"front...

new trends are: commit live

commiting data means: all changes are written to the ssd/hdd. like this, you dont have to reebot before you change the set up of your xp: you simply tell windows: ok, write everything to disk...


the script can be found here:

http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/winnt-b ... pro-2.html

written by "nomam"

im still trying to get this in a form, that gives you the chance to do that on the fly...

best would be a good programmer that is able to write something, that uses fbwf as a tool, to handle data streams to the disk. means: write only, if the disk is not accessed. that would amount to something like having a realy big write cache for the disk itself...

but im surely not able to do that myself :(
 
hey mklo, i'm using fat32

i'm not a super geek in fbwf, but as far as i know, this should be better, due to the filter
only filtering "files", the journalling should still work under fbwf, so that takes:

ssd capacities

im not sure if writing too much to disk is realy killing it, due to the many write cycles a modern ssd
can take and so on, but i thought the mtf file space (the space your where the information about your
hdd data is stored (not the data itself) is situated in quite regular spaces, that means:

the regular way to count: hey i have 8 gb of storage in XXX cells with soandsomany clusters,
i will never be able to kill the disk, due to the unbelivable number of spaces where can be written
to....

but if mtf is situated in the same area, you are mostly not writing to different cells but to the ones
the mtf is situated in... dont know, but that mirht wear things out. afaik, ext3 is much better, concerning
write weariness

the prob with ssd is, that once a few cells are killed, the whole thing gets (afaik - please correct me if wrong)
unusable


hope that helped...

so my advice is fat32 for now hope that helps :)
 
how much ram have you got installed on your system? i know ram is cheap, but i'm scared opening this new toy and make thr warranty invalid :-)
 
I have a very serious problem with this fbwf setup. Everything is working fine but I can't disable it or commit any changes. Anytime I use the fbwfmgr command line utility, I get a bluescreen of death referencing an error with ntfs.sys. Anyone else?
 
smacman said:
I have a very serious problem with this fbwf setup. Everything is working fine but I can't disable it or commit any changes. Anytime I use the fbwfmgr command line utility, I get a bluescreen of death referencing an error with ntfs.sys. Anyone else?
Click to expand...


hey, thats to bad. sry - dont have any experiences with commiting to disk.

the script posted above seem to cause problems with my system, so usually i:

put my private folders to a sd card

temp and backup (and my be swap) to the second sd card.

both having different device paths from my protected drives, so i dont have to commit to them...

installing or reworking my os, i use the disable function and reboot... then i install
the antivirus path i excluded... and haven't encountered any probs jet.
____________________________________

if i got your point right, the bluescreen might be due to two different reasons:

1. commiting data that has been moved between protected and unprotected drives
(if i got the ms embedded site correctly, from the protected to the unprotected, something
that was saved to the protected before)

2. commiting with fbwf has two great disadvantages compared to ewf: it can't commit all
(something very practical, if you want to competly save your set up :) ) and

it is unable to create folders!!! thats why i tend, not to use it... if you install a prog like this,
only the registry settings will be saved (due to the structure beeing allready there C:\...\...) while the programm
itself (exept the drivers, beeing copied to the windows / drivers / etc ) wont be there (due to the folder, that does
not exist)

i will try to find a work around. for instance vista should have a fbwf. my prob is, that i only have 64bit vista.
but i will have a look. maybe there is a never version of the prog. to be found...


by the way: i wrote a small .bat file to "automate" the process of enabling fbwf, like that, i only have to klick
on the file.:

but take care, this is written for:

1,5g ram
avast as antivirus
c: as windows dir

enable:
-----------------------

@echo off


rem --- Starting fbwf ---
fbwfmgr /enable

rem --- Setting monitored volume to c ---
fbwfmgr /addvolume C:

rem --- setting size to 500 mb ---
fbwfmgr /setthreshold 500

rem --- Excluding Virus Scanner ---
fbwfmgr /addexclusion C: "\Programme\Alwil Software"

-------------------
end enabling

to try if it works, start from the command line the firs time you use it



disabling:
__________________
@echo off

fbwfmgr /disable
_____


write a file with the editor (new .txt file)
and rename it to ***.bat


_____________________________________________

to use fbwf, i think you should have 1g of ram... if you only have say 500 mb, you could try to:

1. use a pagefile on one a sd card... buy you might get error messages due to the cards beeing mounted
relativly late... dont know, didn't work for me - when i tried. but i gave up quite early...

2. use very little space with a ultra small win xp version... / xp embedded version


my recommendations for now are:

1,5 gb (my config...): 500 mb (but i guess thats way to much... maybe 230mb should be fine as well, even less)

1 gb: 100-150 mb

500 mb: good luck :)

hope that helped a bit... if you have skype / icq - pm me, maybe we find a way
 
smacman said:
I have a very serious problem with this fbwf setup. Everything is working fine but I can't disable it or commit any changes. Anytime I use the fbwfmgr command line utility, I get a bluescreen of death referencing an error with ntfs.sys. Anyone else?
Click to expand...

but you know (sry for asking) that you have to reboot after you disabled ?
 
if i find the time, i will try to write an automated installer...

but i'm not very much into scripting, so that might just be an empty promise...
 
Re: STEPP ONE

Le Tigre said:
(i even defragmented my ssd - but it is still discussed, if that makes any sense - the arguments beeing: next to no response time /vs/ small files beeing read considerably slower...)
Click to expand...

Thx 4 the guide but just so you know. You should never defragment an SSD. It reduces life time and doesn't increase speed.

Would b great if someone could just host those 4 files so we can get rid of the first few steps.

One odd thing I've noticed is that my firefox tabs don't close after this mod.
 
Re: STEPP ONE

ineedaname said:
Le Tigre said:
(i even defragmented my ssd - but it is still discussed, if that makes any sense - the arguments beeing: next to no response time /vs/ small files beeing read considerably slower...)
Click to expand...

Thx 4 the guide but just so you know. You should never defragment an SSD. It reduces life time and doesn't increase speed.
Click to expand...

defrag: yes, theoretically defrag an ssd is kinda killing it (maybe just a first revenge on that fuckin slow piece of shit!) and due to short access times wont help you any further...

but: (this is an open question...) normal (say not aao) ssds have a quite equal reading speed. the intel "thing" we suffer from in the aao is much slower with smaller files. so i'm not sure, if defrag does not help a bit... but i'm not an ssd nerd, so nothing granted.

i allready have written an short install script for win xp - but i'm not sure, if it is ok to kinda link a torrent to it :) - due to copyright issues, most moderators get pissed, finding those...

i'm off for a few days now, as soon as i'm back, i'll find a way.
 
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