Test system
In the following the hardware as well as the software used for the test system is described.
Hardware
- Mainboard: ASUS Striker II Formula
- CPU: E8400 @ 3.16GHz
- Memory: 4GB @ 800MHz
- Test disk: ST3250820AS 250GB (HD-Tune Benchmark)
- Data disk: ST3250820AS 250GB
- Graphics card: ATi Radeon HD 5750 1GB
Software
Program installations and modifications to the system are performed in the following order:
Installation and configuration
- For the test system, a 50GB partition is created at the beginning of the disk (plus the 100MB boot partition for Windows 7). After setting up the system, the disk is filled to 66%.
- Installation of Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 x64.
- Deactivation of the Windows Search service to avoid indexing during the test.
- Disabling the Defragmentation service, as the system will be tested in an unoptimized state.
- A file is placed just behind the MFT so that it is forced to fragment.
A reserved area behind the MFT usually prevents that the latter is getting fragmented. But a non-fragmented MFT would be useless for this test. - A first set of user files is created with FC-Test (mp3-Pattern: 270 files, 1GB total, approximately 2-5MB per file) in the "My Music" directory (simulating a music collection). The files have the extension ".mp3".
Drivers, updates und programs
- Drivers (nForce 15.58 x64, HDAudio 1.00.00.59, SoundMAX AD1988B 6.10.2.6585, ATK0110, AMD Catalyst Suite 12.10)
- All available Windows updates until December 2012
- 7-Zip 9.20 x64
- Mozilla Firefox 12.0 + update 17.0.1
- Adobe Reader 10.1.3 + update 10.1.4
- Adobe Flash-Player (IE + FF) 11.5.502.135
- Microsoft Security Essentials 4.1.522.0 x64
- Oracle Java 1.6 Update 37 (x86 & x64) + update 38
- LibreOffice 3.6.3 + Update 3.6.4 (Quickstarter deactivated)
- The GIMP 2.8.2
- Notepad++ 6.1.8 + update 6.2.2
- VLC Player 2.0.4 x64
- TV-Browser 3.2.1 with 25 channels
- A second set of user files is created with the FC-Test mp3 pattern in the "My Pictures" directory (simulation of a images collection). The files have the extension ".jpg".
- CCleaner 3.26
Finish
- Not needed files are removed with CCleaner (Default settings).
- The benchmarks are performed five times, to update the Prefetch files.
- "rundll32 advapi32.dll, ProcessIdleTasks" is executed, to create an updated layout.ini file.
- An image of the system partition is created with DriveImage XML v2.23. Thereby the structure of the file system is maintained.