New to SSDs? Read this first before asking questions! (UPDATED 07/17/2011)

[taltamir]

What if you don't have AHCI? I have an abit IP35-E and am pretty sure I don't have AHCI.

yes, googling shows you have ICH9 (base) which according to wikipedia has neither AHCI nor RAID support

So you would just have to use it without AHCI. it is not an ideal situation and the drive will perform lower then it can.
AHCI enables NCQ which helps speed a lot.
Also very few drivers which add TRIM support to IDE controllers exist (but they do exist, there is no theoretical reason for IDE not to support TRIM except that its old enough that most don't bother adding it, they want you to buy their newest stuff after all)

... actually that would be silly, if you are spending all this money might as well get one of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...115072&cm_re=ahci_sata-_-16-115-072-_-Product

 

[LuluTheMonk]

Well, only spent $100 on the vertex 2 60GB so didn't spend a ton of money This would be a good excuse to upgrade to sandy bridge though. Thanks for the helpful and informative reply.

 

[LuluTheMonk]

... actually that would be silly, if you are spending all this money might as well get one of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-072-_-Product

Oi, I only have one PCI-E slot, so that is no dice. Maybe I will just go without AHCI until I get a new SB system, and then do a reformat with AHCI when I get new components.

 

[LiuKangBakinPie]

Ok so SSD's do not speed up boot time, I understand that. What will cause reduced boot times?

Take a look at this screenshot of AS SSD and tell me if the numbers look ok.

I don't know if this affects the numbers or not but I did have a few fixefox tabs and programs open.

Zap, did you find out anything about the wait time at startup option in CrystalDiskInfo? I was just curious what this is and should it even be changed.

1. Press Win + R to open “Run” dialog window.
2. Type MSConfig into the text box after “Open”.
3. Go to Boot tab.
4. For dual-boot or multi-boot system, make sure that the operating system to make the change is selected.
5. Click on Advanced options button.
6. Tick the check box for Number of processors, and then select the maximum number count of CPU core processors value from the drop down list.
7. Click OK twice to exit System Configuration.
8. Restart computer.

 

[ShadowVVL]

I have not bought a ssd yet but I plan on getting on this year.
So I’m wondering does w7 trim or vistas garbage collection have any error margin where it somtimes it may delete important blocks of data that you did not want erased?

 

[taltamir]

I have not bought a ssd yet but I plan on getting on this year.
So I’m wondering does w7 trim or vistas garbage collection have any error margin where it somtimes it may delete important blocks of data that you did not want erased?

there is no such thing as vista's garbage collection.
Garbage collection is where the drive scans its own contents while idle looking for files that has been deleted. This is something some drives do internally in their firmware and has nothing to do with the OS.
TRIM is when the OS lets the drive know as soon as a file has been deleted (emptied from recycle bin). This is supported by windows 7, linux, solaris, and BSD. (macos does not support TRIM)

suggested reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM

 

[Zap]

Garbage collection is innate to the drive's firmware and has nothing to do with Vista. Trim (in Win7) just tells the drive "it is okay to do your stuff now."

If the file is in the file system, Trim/GC won't touch it. If the file is no longer in your file system (as in you've deleted it from Recycle Bin) then Trim/GC will wipe it. Simple as that. If it is important, don't delete it.

 

[ShadowVVL]

ok I get it,sorry I kept thinking it scanned everything on the drive and tried to determine if it might be junk and delete it with maybe a rare 1-2% chance it might pick something important.

so basically trim/gc is just clearing a space where data was deleted by the user so nothing is left behind from a block or several blocks to make sure they are completely free and ready to be reused.

 

[Zap]

so basically trim/gc is just clearing a space where data was deleted by the user so nothing is left behind from a block or several blocks to make sure they are completely free and ready to be reused.

Yes. Due to the nature of how NAND memory works, if there is deleted data on it the controller has to free it up before writing to it. Trim/GC just does that when the drive is idle, thus keeping write speeds high.

Magnetic HDDs don't have that write penalty so it was never an issue before.

 

[ShadowVVL]

Thank you for clarifying this,It had me a bit worried about buying a ssd.

 

[Rubycon]

Thank you for clarifying this,It had me a bit worried about buying a ssd.

The only worry (aside from buying OCZ hehe) is a form of upgrade fever particularly if you have several pcs. The ones without SSDs will make you mad and your wallet thin - when you upgrade those too! :biggrin:

 

[ShadowVVL]

yeah i only plan on upgrading 1 of my machines at the moment so hopfuly i dont get to angry with my others.

Is intel the only company that makes GC for vista?

 

[MagickMan]

The only worry (aside from buying OCZ hehe) is a form of upgrade fever particularly if you have several pcs. The ones without SSDs will make you mad and your wallet thin - when you upgrade those too! :biggrin:

I've gotten worse about this. Recently I even bought a SSD for my parents' machine, it was that Newegg Kingston deal a while back. I drove over, installed it, copied their stuff back over, and away they went. Dad called me the next day, "Damn, what the hell did you do to this thing? It's just crazy fast now!"

 

[Zap]

Is intel the only company that makes GC for vista?

No, in fact they aren't even the best. I think Kingston's V+100 (not V+ or V100, but V+100 model) has better garbage collection. Coincidentally this reduces lifespan, but it should still last a number of years.

All modern SSDs do internal garbage collection to some degree. Some just do it better than others. Read the first sections in this thread about SSDs recommended for operating systems without Trim.

"Damn, what the hell did you do to this thing? It's just crazy fast now!"

The real "crazy" part is that some people still won't believe it.

 

[taltamir]

The real "crazy" part is that some people still won't believe it.

what thing?

 

[Zap]

what thing?

That SSDs are crazy fast enough.

 

[taltamir]

That SSDs are crazy fast enough.

but he said, and I quote:

"Damn, what the hell did you do to this thing? It's just crazy fast now!"

So its something you, ZAP, did to "this thing" to make it crazy fast. What is the thing you did to make it crazy fast?

 

[Zap]

So its something you, ZAP, did to "this thing" to make it crazy fast. What is the thing you did to make it crazy fast?

Ancient Chinese secret! ()

 

[Aristotelian]

So, I recently finished my latest build and things seem to be going alright.

It's my first SSD build, with 2x Crucial C300 256gb drives, so I ran AS SSD as soon as I installed Windows 7 and scored something like a 570 total score on the boot drive. I compared this to others' scores online and found this to be in the same ballpark.

Yet when I ran Windows Experience Index (I did this because the drive doesn't seem to be...snappy). I got a 5.9 score on the hard drive portion, which seems to be significantly lower than what I should be getting (a score in the 7s).

I'm not sure what to conclude from this. AS SSD's score seems right, but Windows doesn't seem to be able to make use of that speed?

I didn't think this deserved it's own thread.

 

[Zap]

What exactly makes up the WEI score? It isn't purely based on performance, as obviously AS SSD proved. What are you running that doesn't feel "snappy?" SSDs can only improve on tasks that are storage limited. Also, what controller do you have the drives hooked up to? SSDs seem to get the best performance on Intel chipset controllers.

 

[taltamir]

I'm not sure what to conclude from this. AS SSD's score seems right, but Windows doesn't seem to be able to make use of that speed?

WEI is not a measure of "what windows can use". It is a benchmarking tool from MS, that is all. WEI is the worst benchmarking tool on the market, by far. Feel safe to ignore it completely. If AS score matches what you should be getting then you are all good.

Also, to read a WEI score:
X.Y means
X = class, determined mostly by features. (ram amount, GB size of drive, arbitrary limitations such as "is it an SSD or spindle drive", DX version supported, etc)
Y = performance measured, mostly via secret undisclosed method (a few specifics have been given out).

Also note that WEI has gone through several versions that get different results and you are not told which version you have. I am not just talking about windows vista capping at 5.9 and win7 at 7.9... I mean that within each OS you have had MS change WEI methodology via patches distributed via windows update.

 

[Aristotelian]

Thanks for the explanation Taltamir.

Zap: They are both plugged into the p67 chipset controlled SATA3 ports on a p67-ud7.

Maybe this is all in my head. I installed some programs just now and the installations are faster than on my old computer but I suppose I had an unrealistic preconceived notion of what the performance of this SSD would be like.

 

[taltamir]

Maybe this is all in my head. I installed some programs just now and the installations are faster than on my old computer but I suppose I had an unrealistic preconceived notion of what the performance of this SSD would be like.

Its real easy to get spoiled by SSD and used to its speed. such that it seems "normal" and not especially fast... until you try using a spindle drive again.

 

[DannyLove]

I have a general question. I haven't built a new rig for a while and the method I used back then was using RAPTOR HDD's for a faster file access as my main bootable drive. SSD is very new to me and I did my best to read all the major posts here.

My question is, is SSD mainly used for an OS bootup drive only? I read "Do NOT endlessly run anything that writes huge amounts of useless data to your SSD." and it got me thinking. Is it wise to use a SSD for both the OS and programs. Basically I need to know if I should be installing/running programs on the SSD.?

I ask this because I record music and want to know if my records should be written on other HDDs rather than SSD. Thanks

 

[taltamir]

i have programs on mine, i have my swap file on it, i have my temp dirs, my saved games, my browser cache, I have indexing ON, hibernate ON, etc etc...
the only thing I don't have on it is torrents and even though should really be fine.
The write endlessly thing refers to:
1. Special server applications where it really does write endlessly
2. Burn in tests / benchmarks that write endlessly.

How many gigs of data do you record a day? @ 100MB/s write, endless writing gets you:
100 MB/s * 60s/min * 60 min/hr * 24 hr/day = 8640000MB/day * GB/1024MB * TB/1024GB = 8.24TB/day
So, yea, that is way too much. But even though I put everything I have on it, mine has gone down 4% of its lifespan (it measures and reports that btw) in a year and a half of use.
Also, my intel G2 has exhibited a write amplification of 1.84x (I calculated, see link in my sig; and actually read all my posts in that thread if you are interested). here is an easier link http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2141970