ssd decisions

[Arcanedeath]

Crucial Sells the C300 and the M225 series drives the C300 is a marvel chipset and the M225 is indilinx w/ the barefoot controler. those are the only 2 series of drives they currently offer. So nothing with Sandforce atm.

 

[adamantinepiggy]

OK, So I hear people talk about about manually over-provisioning to ensuer they don't slow down as they fill up. Since Crucial/Micron C300's were brought up along some point, I ran some benches. As to the particular benches I use here, it's because they are easy to run and don't take a long to time (as I hate sitting around waiting for benches to finish). As to whether these are the best benches to run or otherwise, I don't really care, interpret the numbers as you will..

This test was run with a Micron/Crucial C300 128GB, standard Win7 partitioned and formatted to max normal size (119GB). This was run on a ICH10R Intel SATA port (hence the speeds top out at SATA2 speeds. AND FYI: I have never actually tried a test of this sort in the manner I did it.

Testing methodology:
1. Partition and format, run 1st benchmark (0% full).
2. Copy over a bunch of movies and other junk to fill it to 50%, run 2nd benchmark.
3. Copy more crap to 70% full and run benchmark.
4. Finally copy even more garbage onto disk to fill it to 90% (actually 91% because I overshot a little)

I did not do anything special between data copy, or benches. I simply did each in fast order (didn't want to take all night). Bench, copy crap to fill drive, bench, copy more, etc, etc, one after another. Seems to me that the numbers aren't showing much of a slowdown. Crystaldiskmark verifies how full it thinks the SSD is at the top right of the window.

0% full

50% full

70% full

90% (actually 91%) full

 

[FishAk]

Crucial sells drives with SF controllers?

Sorry, I misspoke. I meant Corsair (Force drives) , and not Crucial.

 

[FishAk]

My understanding is that when an SSD is left to work with a small amount of free space, that is when write amplification takes effect. Due to the nature of write amplification, performance is effected over time. It's not something you can see by simply writing sequential data to the disk.

I think a more valid test would be to leave the drive filled, and work with it normally for a few weeks. Than run the benchmark.

 

[adamantinepiggy]

One last test! 99% full Crucial/Micron C300 SSD. Just wanted to see what would happen. AS SSD wouldn't even fully run because the disk was too full. The files it created pushed it to 100% full and hung the benchmark each time. This was run about a hour after the initial benchmark tests post. Only CrystalDDiskMark and ATTO were run because of AS SSD getting hung-up each try since the disk space ran out.

While these might not be the end-all-be-all of SSD benchmarks to run... it seems to me the SSD did just fine. Maybe some other SSD test benchmark might show the "drastic" slowdowns that are supposed to occur past 60-70% full? Anyone?

99% full C300 128GB test:

 

[adamantinepiggy]

My understanding is that when an SSD is left to work with a small amount of free space, that is when write amplification takes effect. Due to the nature of write amplification, performance is effected over time. It's not something you can see by simply writing sequential data to the disk.

I think a more valid test would be to leave the drive filled, and work with it normally for a few weeks. Than run the benchmark.

Well, I'll leave it full and point the Windows swap file to it and re-bench in a week. According to some people's lore, the swap file ought to KILL the SSD's performance, just like going over 60-70% full would....

My point being that everyone says "Oh noes, don't fill up your drive past 60ish percent or the SSD will take an instant crap in performance" or "You need to over-provision by 25+% or once it hit's 60% filled it'll turn snail-slow on you" or "you cant put the swap file on an SSD or it'll die!" and many similar lines of thought, but I never see any benches to back the BS with proof.

 

[FishAk]

I'm very interested to see what would happen if you backed that off to 90 percent or so- so you have enough room to work normally- and just let it go for a couple weeks. If you notice it starting to get sluggish, hit it with the benchmarks, and remove some files so it's not an inconvenience. Trim should bring it back in relatively short order.

Edit:

Well, I'll leave it full and point the Windows swap file to it and re-bench in a week.

Yes, I appreciate that. A test is always much better than theory.

 

[flamenko]

I did just that with the OWC testing and realized they were dead on in their claims that the OWC does not slow whatsoever (available in reviews od both the OWC Pro and Pro RE. The funy thing was that regardless of the drive (7% or 28% over provisioning, they have exactly the same performance results.

 

[celestialgrave]

With all your guys' help I had narrowed down to the Crucial C300 and OCZ Vertex 2 over the last couple days and now I think I'm going to go with the Vertex 2, although I'm going to contact buy.com about their price matching because amazon has cheaper prices without rebates, cheap enough that if buy.com will match them I'm going to go with the 120gb version over the 90gb. Think the extra space will come in handy especially if in a year or two this thing ends up in my laptop.

 

[LokutusofBorg]

Well, I'll leave it full and point the Windows swap file to it and re-bench in a week. According to some people's lore, the swap file ought to KILL the SSD's performance, just like going over 60-70% full would....

My point being that everyone says "Oh noes, don't fill up your drive past 60ish percent or the SSD will take an instant crap in performance" or "You need to over-provision by 25+% or once it hit's 60% filled it'll turn snail-slow on you" or "you cant put the swap file on an SSD or it'll die!" and many similar lines of thought, but I never see any benches to back the BS with proof.

The read/write profile of the Windows swap file is something SSDs handle quite well, actually. Scroll down to the FAQ "Should the pagefile be placed on SSDs?":

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx

The "lore" you're referring to is a bunch of BS, so don't believe it. There are, of course, extremes in anything, and really small drives, or early generation drives, are going to have more problems than any of the bigger/newer stuff. Or if you're running RAID then there are different considerations. But... buy a modern drive and you can safely ignore the stuff you're referring to.

 

[celestialgrave]

Well went with the 120gb vertex 2 buy.com said they'll match amazon's price

 

[LokutusofBorg]

I've been running a Vertex 2 at work for months now and couldn't be happier. I'm sure you'll love your new drive.

 

[bad_monkey]

Well went with the 120gb vertex 2 buy.com said they'll match amazon's price

Congrats! Good luck with it. Let us know how it performs. I'm sure it will be killer but it's always nice to see some real-world results.

 

[celestialgrave]

So my drive shipped quickly, a little quicker than expected. So quick question. I'm going to do a clean install of Win7 64-bit on it. From what I've read
Install Win7
Install Intel Rapid Storage Technology 9.6
Install Intel chipset drivers
Enable God Mode: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
*change power mode to High Performance
*change option to never turn off Drives
*Enable Writing Cache <- haven't experienced many power outtages so I think I'll take the chance of data loss it could incur.

Disable Indexing
Disable Defrag
Disable System Restore
Disable Superfetch
Disable Prefetch

All seem correct/reasonable? Anything other suggestions? Plan on probably installing the drive this weekend.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

So my drive shipped quickly, a little quicker than expected. So quick question. I'm going to do a clean install of Win7 64-bit on it. From what I've read
Install Win7
Install Intel Rapid Storage Technology 9.6
Install Intel chipset drivers
Enable God Mode: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
*change power mode to High Performance
*change option to never turn off Drives
*Enable Writing Cache <- haven't experienced many power outtages so I think I'll take the chance of data loss it could incur.

Disable Indexing
Disable Defrag
Disable System Restore
Disable Superfetch
Disable Prefetch

All seem correct/reasonable? Anything other suggestions? Plan on probably installing the drive this weekend.

interesting - god mode.. the rest still is interesting

 

[FishAk]

You will likely find that you can get to your tools faster from the search command in the Start menu than with God Mode. I have it in my Right click context menu, but never actually use it.

System Restore is useful, and you can control the maximum storage size. I would advise keeping a couple restore points. If you simply can't afford the space, at least make sure you have a valid image stored on your HDD that you can fall back on.

If you don't use hibernation, you can save the amount of space equal to your system memory capacity. Unless you really like hibernation, this is a better sacrifice than restore points in my view.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

If you don't use hibernation, you can save the amount of space equal to your system memory capacity. Unless you really like hibernation, this is a better sacrifice than restore points in my view.

How do you disable Hibernation?

 

[FishAk]

Try this.

 

[bad_monkey]

Try this.

I prefer this one.

 

[FishAk]

I prefer this one.

There are days when I've been smoking too much crack also. I didn't want to be too sarcastic.

 

[bad_monkey]

Too true. I try not to ask questions that I can find the answers for but I am sure that it happens. I really like that site and I couldn't resist.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

oddly one of my computers doesn't have Hibernation and the other does.

 

[celestialgrave]

so after OS installation, I'm trying to figure out what apps to put on the SSD and what to leave on a HDD. Any sites that show a quick and dirty list of applications that benefit from a SSD and those not recommended to be on a SSD due to heavy writes/deletes?
Some of my typical apps are Winamp 2.80a, Avast AV, Malware bytes, Opera, Media player classic, Steam (HL, CSS, etc.), MS Office, Diablo II.

 

[FishAk]

Any sites that show a quick and dirty list of applications that benefit from a SSD and those not recommended to be on a SSD due to heavy writes/deletes?

Apps that do heavy writes/deletes are precicely the ones that will bennifit most from your SSD. Don't worry about wearing out the nand. You will want to replace the drive with a bigger, cheeper, and faster drive long before that one is toast due to wear. If I read your post right, it's a 120Gb drive. Put all your programs, swap file, hibernation- the whole bit on there.

If you have several games, and they don't all fit, you can install them on the HDD without taking a bit hit. Or you can simply load the game to the SSD, the game you intend to play, and remove the one you're not, when you intend to play it. Keep everyting else on the SSD. Remember that the smaller the file/write/read, the larger the advantage of the SSD over the HDD.

 

[celestialgrave]

Now I'm feeling stupid even asking the next question but want a 2nd opinion anyhow due to past issues. So I have had my SSD for almost a week now but have not hooked it up yet. The issue is when I installed it in the case I ran into the problem that my psu only has 4 sata pwr connectors. I have 5 devices now that use sata pwr connectors, one being the lone optical drive. Now normally I'd just go ahead and plug in the SSD, the HDD with install files and where I'll point my documents at and leave the last two HDD for later when my pwr adapter gets here.
Now the question is is it advisable to go about it this way or wait for the adapter so when I install Win7 all the hardware will be present? I ask because of data loss issues and drive letter assignment problems I've had in the past for adding HDD's after the fact even though it may have just been coicendental in some of the cases. Again, I'm feeling stupid to ask but better to be safe and stupid than lose .5-1TB of data.