Another solution for SSD: EWF?

[acifuentes]

Has anyone tried this tool?

http://www.computa.co.uk/staff/dan/?p=5

Seems usefull in this case

Regards,
Alejandro.

[protovision]

I did last night for my first attempt at EWF, and its working great, along with the EWF toolbar gadget.

I tried 2of its 3 options, 'Install EWF' & 'Optimize hard drive writes'. I'm gonna try the 'HORM' (Hybernate Once/Read Many) stuff this weekend, once I get my system nice and config'd.

p.

[ddlooping]

protovision, I'd suggest you try minlogon as well, for fast boot-ups and shutdowns.

[protovision]

protovision, I'd suggest you try minlogon as well, for fast boot-ups and shutdowns.

Thanks, I tried it last night as well, and it does speed up bootup a lot, I didn't like it using the system account constantly, and skipping the login screen. Its very good depending on your needs, but too limited for me.

(Those mp3car guys know their stuff )

[madisonman]

Has anyone tried this tool?

http://www.computa.co.uk/staff/dan/?p=5

Seems usefull in this case

Regards,
Alejandro.

That tool is awesome. Would have saved us many pages.

[protovision]

(FWIW, for all the great info I've learned here...)

I'm currently running my system with 'no_cmd' (no commit) but for those times when I want to save something I just cleanly installed, I have a .bat file on my desktop:

CommitAndReboot.bat:

Code: Select all

EWFMgr C: -Commit
shutdown -r -t 1
pause


to get all the shutdown options type 'shutdown /?', there's some pretty cool ones, like other pc's on your network . The 'pause' is to display any error messages.

[trismegistosh]

Speed Up & WriteProtect WindowsXP by Embedding for a Long SSD Life

First, the warning...I cant over-emphasize so much the importance of doing an imaging of your system first as any lost data, time, jobs, relationships and self-confidence is the sole responsibility of the experimenter. He he
See the links for the imaging programs...

We need to embedd Windows XP by using Enhanced Write Filter-EWF-to speed up and protect us from file corruption.

Embedding or the making use of ewf <Enhanced Write Filter> redirects writes that would usually go to your hard drive to RAM. By reducing the number of writes, you can make solid state drives or any type of flash drives last longer. As we all know, flash based memory drives or cards, SSD, MMC, CF or sd card, thumbdrives have limited number of write cycle capacity.

So let's say, you make a file or install a program and write filter is enabled in that particular partition you protected, if you save that file on that protected partition since all writes will go to this RAM overlay, it is gone the moment the power is gone. That is essentially what is embedding. You make your partition write protected. Very much like cdrom <read only> like linux live cd. But, if you save that file on another partition which is not protected by ewf. Then, it will be saved to that unprotected partition. If you make an installation of new programs or games, save various files, made configuration changes, tweakings, etc... to make those changes imprint on your drive or partition, just disable the write protection. Again if you have downloaded and installed a suspected malware or spyware with ewf enabled, then it is gone the moment the power is gone. So, that's the beauty of it. And since everything is in RAM much like a ramdrive, it is faster than that of the spinning hard drive. Therefore, our operating system, the opening of files and folders and apllications will be faster and snappier. Also the booting time is greatly decreased esp. if minlogon is also installed besides ewf.

Thus, you can make your operating system LIGHTNING FAST despite the modest specs of your system, especially if you also the do the supertweaks http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/supertweaks.htm and http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=37047&p=1 i.e. killing prefetching, disabling unneeded services like indexing etc... http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm , removing system restore, hibernation and paging files, disabling write behind disk caching<impt.for FAT32>, reducing journalling<NTFS> like thumbnail caching, disabling timestamp for last access to a file, disabling the NTFS Change Journal etc...

THE TRIED AND TEST MANUAL METHOD:

1>Where to find the XP Embedded files for EWF, MinLogon, FBWF, etc
http://granturing.blogspot.com/2007/12/ ... r-ewf.html
2>OPTIONAL:Installing MinLogon
http://granturing.blogspot.com/2006/09/ ... logon.html
3>Installing EWF
http://granturing.blogspot.com/2007/12/ ... l-ewf.html
Note:
a>disable windows file protection using xplite free trial
http://www.litepc.com/download/xplitetr ... _trial.zip
b>delete bootstat.dat as instructed


SIMPLIFIED SEMI-AUTOMATED METHOD OF INSTALLING EWF:

1> download EWFtool from here http://www.btinternet.com/~danieldsmith ... 0_BETA.zip . Use winrar to unzip the file you downloaded http://www.rarlab.com/rar/wrar371.exe
2> disable windows file protection using xplite free trial
http://www.litepc.com/download/xplitetr ... _trial.zip
run xplite, then go to windows file protection tab, then click disabled. Go to C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache and remove or delete all the contents of that folder dllcache. Delete also the ‘bootstat.dat’ file under the Windows directory. You can reenable windows file protection later on...
3> at the same folder or directory as the downloaded EWFtool.exe, place ewf.sys, ewfmgr.exe, ewfntldr <these files you can get from me but first PM me or follow downloading instructions from here >> http://granturing.blogspot.com/
4> double click EWFtool.exe, click Minimize diskwrites then click Install EWF support, also click <other ways to increase performance and reduce diskwrites>

Important:Before you do so, make sure you disable the Paging File by right-clicking on ‘My Computer’, clicking the ‘Advanced’ tab, clicking the ‘Performance’ button, clicking the ‘Change’ button in the ‘Virtual memory’ section, and selecting ‘No paging file’. You’ll also want to disable System Restore, again by right-clicking on ‘My Computer’, selecting the ‘System Restore’ tab, and checking ‘Turn off System Restore’.
One bug is that booting with EWF, XP always brings up the recovery options at boot up. We can disable this by deleting the ‘bootstat.dat’ file under the Windows directory.

Here are two important commands to remember:

ewfmgr c: -commitanddisable –live
This will immediately disable EWF and commit all changes to the volume.

ewfmgr c: -enable
This will enable EWF on the next boot up.

The typical process for making persistent changes to your volume is to run the commitanddisable command, make your changes, run the enable command, and restart.

To simpliy the above process, create a batch file to disable and another batch file to enable ewf:

Open notepad or right click at desktop then create new text document file, edit or type 'ewfmgr c: -commitanddisable –live' without quotes, then
'save as' textfile in desktop named as 'disable', then rename it by right clicking the text document file saved at desktop then select 'rename', retype to 'disable.bat' without quotes.
Likewise for enable, type or edit 'ewfmgr c: -enable' without quotes, then
'save as' text document file in desktop named as 'enable', then rename it by right clicking the text document file saved at desktop then select 'rename', retype to 'enable.bat' without quotes.

So whenever you want to enable or disable, just doubleclick the corresponding batchfile you saved at your desktop.

The default partition protected is the C: drive. To change the partition to be protected...
Start>Run... type regedit. press enter. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ewf\Parameters\Protected\Volume0
double click ArcName, edit the partition, with 1 as the first partition, 2 the next...

OPTIONAL: SPEEDING UP BOOTING: INSTALLING MINLOGON THE SAFER WAY

Download minlogon.exe here http://thuun.boot-land.net/pub/pebldr-p ... nlogon.cab . Extract/unzip minlogon.cab using winrar http://www.rarlab.com/rar/wrar371.exe . As well as download minlogon.reg by right-clicking this download link http://victor8314.myweb.hinet.net/pcuse ... nlogon.reg then select 'save link as' or 'save target as' to the desired destination folder for e.g. desktop.

1. Disable first ewf as described above if you have already installed it. Disable windows file protection using xplite free trial
http://www.litepc.com/download/xplitetr ... _trial.zip
run xplite, then go to windows file protection tab, then click disabled. Go to C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache and remove or delete all the contents of that folder dllcache, if they are still there. You can reenable windows file protection later on...
2. Then, go to your Windows\System32 directory and rename the file winlogon.exe to winlogon.exe.bak.
3. Copy the minlogon.exe file to the Windows\System32 directory renaming it winlogon.exe.
4. Double click the downloaded minlogon.reg to merge it into the registry.
5. Reboot the system.

As long as you entered everything properly the system will boot into XP using the System account. The first time you boot up it’ll prepare the user settings for the System account so it’ll take a bit longer than usual. Once that is done, go ahead and reboot again to make sure everything is working properly. If you find that it doesn’t fit your needs then just restore the original WinLogon.

Note: Do back up with an imaging program using preferably on a recovery cd like acronis true image
OR Live Windows USB's or BartPE's Drivesnaphot imaging program.
Please, make sure you can restore successfully by testing it first.

Even multiple drives or partitions can be protected such as your MMC or SD card or usb thumbdrives together with your SSD, by configuring multiple EWF volumes as described here http://granturing.blogspot.com/

ACPI stand by and hibernate do not work on removable drives unfortunately. Also, Hibernate Once Resume Many feature or HORM for short <the one which could make your windows boot up in a snap aside from minlogon>, there is a problem of ACPI lock up on removable drives. In my case I dont use HORM because my nlited windows is already snappy with minlogon and ewf.

Therefore, the solution is convert it to fixed drive by the use of Hitachi microdrive filter or use Lexar BootIt utility which is able to flip removable media bit in order to physically transform some UFDs as Fixed Disks<if you are lucky>
>>> http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=21850

Search the forum http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/ as others have figure it out the problem of ACPI.

This is not only useful in very specialized situations and would be practical even for a regular desktop system not just the very obvious of making your ssd immortal...he he. Imagine surfing the net like a breeze as if your whole system is in ramdisk drive in fact your whole system works in this ram overlay. Protections from trojans and malwares: you can test install known malwares containing softwares without getting affected just like in vista's steady state or making use of virtual machine or deepfreeze. You can still save your work in another partition not protected and of course you can make persistent changes to the protected partition/s with your tweakings, customizations, and new program installations etc. by disabling the enhanced write filter.

Couple points:
-Can't reiterate the importance of a backup. While playing with ewf some got a BSOD on boot which he was able to get out of by loading "last good configuration". Alternatively booting in with a bootdisk and deleting ewf.sys might help you, or removing the refrences with an offline registry editor.

-Regardless of the amount of system RAM ewf will cause the system to crash after caching ~512MB. You can check how much is being cached by typing "ewfmgr c:"
That's why I monitor my memory usage. I dont do extensive memory depleting tasks when this is enabled. To do that I have to disable.

For this reason, some don't recommend using it on their standard PCs with hard drives. Steady state, Returnil, and the like are better suited.

If you type "ewfmgr c: -commit" It will commit the changes at shutdown, and ewf will be enabled at startup. Place this command in your startup folder if you wish to always save changes. "ewfmgr c: -nocmd" will cancel a previously issued -commit so changes will be lost at shutdown.

Some tried minlogon but didn't gain substantial boot time. Some however also lose the ability to lock the machine and MS networking. Mine give substantial improvement in boot time though.

This is experimental and not supported of course, the experimenter is on his own. That's why he has to devote the experimenting to another partition, or another machine. If he's sure he can live with the following limitations enumerated, good for him, he'll be working in a lightning fast live cd effect environment.

Thanks.

[ddlooping]

Thanks for this very detailed post, trismegistosh.

[capactus]

This question has been asked a couple of times, but will this work with the stock 512 MB RAM?

I only use the AAO for internet and some office programs, but I would like to get rid of Linpus

[ddlooping]

Welcome to the forums, capactus.

You should be fine with 512mb.

A little tool that might be useful in your case:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4393