So I just bought my first SSD; OCZ Vertex LE 100g

[H20cooled]

Installed the updated drivers and it did a little better then before

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Well I haven't done any benches and I'm on Win 7 Pro 64 but things are smoother. I wouldn't say instant but they are nice. On the install, I didn't choose format because I was under a big illusion that the Win7 install was this new magical mythical hybrid format & installer combined; don't ask me why, I should of formatted :/ Anyways, there is 100mb reserved and possibly, this is a 128Gb drive that reserves 30g for something er other. I've heard that about the new OCZ Force 100g drive that use the SF1200 controller, but don't quote me.

Once passed the bios load, the boot time is much faster and the starting apps seem to load quicker, but then again this is a fresh/new install.

 

[H20cooled]

Yes the SF controller keeps like 20% of the space in reserve to keep the drive optimal. These were designed as enterprise drives.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I installed an app by FSPro and it added 25 seconds to my boot time - no lie

EDIT: found out it wasn't the app but changing the desktop theme to a solid color.

 

[1921Photoelectric]

I haven't posted in a long time, but with my bonus check this year plus Newegg had owed me a discount, (on one of them) I bought two. Some Benches from a few days ago, no optimizations just the basics..

I'm happy so far....

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I'm happy so far....

Did you install the latest: Intel Rapid Storage Technology 9.6.0.1014 driver?

http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/

 

[1921Photoelectric]

Did you install the latest: Intel Rapid Storage Technology 9.6.0.1014 driver?

http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/

Yes and for those who want to know Trim is supported in Raid 0 with the Vertex LE (sandforce)

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

There is a new FW for the Sandforce 1500 controller; 1.05; link

I also picked up my second OCZ Vertex 100g LE - I love these. I figure by the time I want a third for my AVCHD machine, I can just RAID-0 these :thumbsup:

 

[hclarkjr]

question for those of you with SSD, say i buy a 40gb SSD and fill 30gb with my install, will that hurt performance it being that full? i know with mechanical drives they slow down the fuller they get. does this apply to SSD?

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

question for those of you with SSD, say i buy a 40gb SSD and fill 30gb with my install, will that hurt performance it being that full? i know with mechanical drives they slow down the fuller they get. does this apply to SSD?

As far as I know, no.

 

[=Wendy=]

Yes and for those who want to know Trim is supported in Raid 0 with the Vertex LE (sandforce)

Sorry but TRIM is not supported with these drivers on RAID0 or any other RAID volume. TRIM will work with (non member RAID) drives when the system is set to RAID in the BIOS, but you will not have TRIM support on any drive in a RAID array.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Yes and for those who want to know Trim is supported in Raid 0 with the Vertex LE (sandforce)

Sorry but TRIM is not supported with these drivers on RAID0 or any other RAID volume. TRIM will work with (non member RAID) drives when the system is set to RAID in the BIOS, but you will not have TRIM support on any drive in a RAID array.

So even though they have trim support that is triggered, and then passed down from Win7 with these drives in an individual state... That would make all non Intel SSD drives not able to get Win7 trim support through the Intel ICH chip to the SSD drive sorta making it a monopoly. No?

 

[=Wendy=]

So even though they have trim support that is triggered, and then passed down from Win7 with these drives in an individual state... That would make all non Intel SSD drives not able to get Win7 trim support through the Intel ICH chip to the SSD drive sorta making it a monopoly. No?

It doesn't matter if it's 2x Intel G2 in RAID0/1/5 or 2x Sandforce based drives in RAID0/1/5. As soon as you build a RAID0/1/5 array from the 2 or more SSDs, TRIM is not passed by the RST drivers to the SSDs in the RAID0/1/5 array, the TRIM command is blocked by the RST driver.

However, using the RST driver, it is possible to still use RAID mode in the BIOS for ICHxxR and have TRIM support, as long as any SSD that you want to have TRIM support on is not part of a RAID0/1/5 array. In other words, any drive you wish to have TRIM support on, must be set to non member RAID in the BIOS.

You can also use the RST driver in ACHI mode and have TRIM support.
TRIM is just not passed by the RST driver for any SSD in a RAID0/1/5 array, and i personally have serious doubts if this will ever be possible in the near future with any reasonable level of safety for a RAID array.

 

[HendrixFan]

It doesn't matter if it's 2x Intel G2 in RAID0/1/5 or 2x Sandforce based drives in RAID0/1/5. As soon as you build a RAID0/1/5 array from the 2 or more SSDs, TRIM is not passed by the RST drivers to the SSDs in the RAID0/1/5 array, the TRIM command is blocked by the RST driver.

However, using the RST driver, it is possible to still use RAID mode in the BIOS for ICHxxR and have TRIM support, as long as any SSD that you want to have TRIM support on is not part of a RAID0/1/5 array. In other words, any drive you wish to have TRIM support on, must be set to non member RAID in the BIOS.

You can also use the RST driver in ACHI mode and have TRIM support.
TRIM is just not passed by the RST driver for any SSD in a RAID0/1/5 array, and i personally have serious doubts if this will ever be possible in the near future with any reasonable level of safety for a RAID array.

The sandforce drives have garbage collection that runs independent of TRIM. It doesn't rely on orders from the OS like TRIM does, it runs through the firmware. The garbage collection will run in RAID.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

So it has garbage collection & TRIM support?
Whats the difference?
The OCZ sight says it supports TRIM link

 

[Meghan54]

The drive does support TRIM, but TRIM doesn't function in RAID.

 

[HendrixFan]

I'm a little bit fuzzy on the difference between garbage collection and TRIM, maybe someone else can explain it for us.

Garbage collection sees blocks on the drive that are partially full and joins them with other blocks that are partially full so it "frees" up space for the drive to write to. Not doing so is why write speeds degrade over time. Garbage collection also wear levels the drive so different parts the the drive get written to equally so the drive doesn't wear out.

TRIM is when the OS tells the drive to delete a file, and tells it to cache the information that isn't being deleted from the block so the entire block can be erased and loaded with the information that is being kept. Without TRIM the block keeps the old data in it after it is deleted.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I'm a little bit fuzzy on the difference between garbage collection and TRIM, maybe someone else can explain it for us.

Garbage collection sees blocks on the drive that are partially full and joins them with other blocks that are partially full so it "frees" up space for the drive to write to. Not doing so is why write speeds degrade over time. Garbage collection also wear levels the drive so different parts the the drive get written to equally so the drive doesn't wear out.

TRIM is when the OS tells the drive to delete a file, and tells it to cache the information that isn't being deleted from the block so the entire block can be erased and loaded with the information that is being kept. Without TRIM the block keeps the old data in it after it is deleted.

Ah, very nice :thumbsup: Thank You

 

[HendrixFan]

Ah, very nice :thumbsup: Thank You

That is what I know about it, someone else may know more or be able to point out errors of mine. A drive will function best with both, but one or the other should work ok. Supposedly the Sandforce GC is very good, but we will see over time if people are able to keep their performance over time in RAID since TRIM won't be running.

 

[H20cooled]

As far as I know, no.

Actually flash drives are known to get slow when they start to get full. The Vertex LE is only 100gb because it keeps 20% of the space is reserve to keep performance up as the drive ages and as it gets full

 

[jimhsu]

Actually flash drives are known to get slow when they start to get full. The Vertex LE is only 100gb because it keeps 20% of the space is reserve to keep performance up as the drive ages and as it gets full

It is well known that SSDs get slower the more full they are. In fact this behavior for any particular drive is really quite predictable (more so than hard drives, which also depend on logical-level fragmentation, mounting orientation (?), ambient noise (!), etc). See the X25-V article: http://anandtech.com/show/3618/intel-x25v-in-raid0-faster-than-x25m-g2-for-250. In particular, the Intel drives in my experience suffer from this more than those of other manufacturers.

I quote (this is with Windows 7 AHCI drivers):

Here is exactly how much free space matters:

SSD Toolbox "optimization" was run prior to each bench. No other system settings were changed.

17.2 GB free:



25.8 GB free:



Pay particular attention to the write speeds.

Subjectively, there is also far less stalling when a large seq write is taking place, and the results are also more stable.

As far as Intel drives are concerned, they should be sold as 60GB drives for all practical (performance) purposes. This is basically a known fault of Intel's write combining algorithm - it works fast and beats the pants off of anything else with under high queue lengths, but needs plenty of free space. (anand discussed this in one of the articles).

 

[hclarkjr]

thank you for that info, i was going to get 40gb SSD now i am going to get the 80 instead.

 

[jimhsu]

thank you for that info, i was going to get 40gb SSD now i am going to get the 80 instead.

If you have more than 30GB to store, that or 2 x 40GB in raid 0 are both good ideas. Depends which deal is better at this specific time and if you want to deal with raid or not.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

50g version of the Vertex LE

 

[Hacp]

Trim needs garbage collection to work. If your drive has trim but no garbage collection, nothing is accomplished. If your drive knows about the deleted data but doesn't have a way to clear it, what good is that?