Useful SSD Articles - Part 2

[tecmo34]

Last Updated on April 23, 2013

A look at the NAND itself. How an SSD works at the lowest levels:

• ■The Brave New World of SSDs
  ■SSDs: A Look Inside
  ■SF-1200 Client SSD Processors

Write caching, wear levelling and the importance of partition alignment:

• ■Brave New World of SSDs: Part II
  ■Understanding SF1200 drives, TRIM, OP area use and Life write throttle

A broad overview of everything SSD (including TRIM):

• ■The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ
  ■SSD ABC Guide - OCZ Technology
  ■The SSD Relapse: Understanding and Choosing the Best SSD (A follow-up of the previous Anandtech article. Touches on a few more details, but it's more of a review of OCZ drives than a good overview of SSDs. Worth reading if your SSD has an Indillinx controller.)
  ■Understanding TLC NAND
  ■Secure Erase, TRIM, and anything else Sandforce
  ■SandForce Announces Next-Gen SSDs, SF-2000 Capable of 500MB/s and 60K IOPS
  ■AS SSD - Uncompressable Sequential Speeds
  ■OCZ Vertex 3 Pro Preview: The First SF-2500 SSD
  ■Corsair: How to Check That TRIM is active
  ■Corsair: How to Enable Support for TRIM
  ■JohnnyLucky's SOLID STATE DRIVE DATABASE
  ■SSD Tracker - Tracking the price of SSDs
  ■AnandTech Bench - SSD Product Benchmarks
  ■Intel® Rapid Storage Technology - User Guide
  ■Intel Smart Response Technology and Intel SSDs: an Overview
  ■Marvell 88SE9128/9120/9125 Product Overview
  ■Understanding SSD over-provisioning

Tweaks / Optimization

• ■Switching IDE to AHCI
  ■Solid State Drive (SSD) Tweaks for Windows 7
  ■* Windows 7 Ultimate Tweaks & Utilities *
  ■The SSD Optimization Guide Ultimate Windows 8 (And Win7) Edition
  ■The SSD Optimization Guide
  ■Support and Q&A for Solid-State Drives
  ■Windows 7 - User Folders - Change Default Location
  ■Windows 7 - Program Files Directory - Change Default for Installs
  ■Tips for SSD Users
  ■9 Quality Tweaks to Speed Up SSD & Optimize it For Performance
  ■Triple Your Speed: How to Install an mSATA SSD Boot Drive in Your Laptop
  ■Guide: Move software/games to another drive without reinstalling

Storage Review

• ■SSD Reference Guide
  ■Leaderboard - Best Hard Drive, SSD and Storage Solutions
  ■SSD vs HDD
  ■How to Upgrade SSD Firmware
  ■How To: Enable TRIM with Non-Apple SSD
  ■Media Management in Solid State Drives: Multistep WRITE Operations

The SSD Review - An SSD Primer

• ■Understanding SSD Advertised Performance and Its Purchase Implications
  ■Benefits Of A Solid State Drive
  ■SSD Components and Make Up
  ■SSD Types and Form Factors
  ■Garbage Collection and TRIM in SSDs Explained
  ■SSD Migration or Fresh System Installation – An SSD Primer

Tom's Hardware Articles

• ■Can You Get More Space Or Speed From Your SSD?
  ■Is A SATA 3Gb/s Platform Still Worth Upgrading With An SSD?
  ■Does Your SSD's File System Affect Performance?
  ■Freeing Up Capacity On An SSD With NTFS Compression
  ■Should You Upgrade? From A Hard Drive To An SSD
  ■SSD Performance In Crysis 2, World Of Warcraft, And Civilization V
  ■Exploring SSD Performance In Battlefield 3, F1 2011, And Rift
  ■2011 Flash Memory Summit Recap: Tom's Hardware Represents
  ■Could An SSD Be The Best Upgrade For Your Old PC?
  ■Investigation: Is Your SSD More Reliable Than A Hard Drive?
  ■SSDs In RAID: A Performance Scaling Analysis
  ■The OCZ Vertex 2 Conspiracy: Lost Space, Lost Speed?
  ■SSD Performance: TRIM And Firmware Updates Tested
  ■SSD RAID: Do You Want A Cheap Array Or One Larger Drive?
  ■How Do SSDs Redefine Storage Performance?
  ■SSD 102: The Ins And Outs Of Solid State Storage
  ■Freeing Up Capacity On An SSD With NTFS Compression
  ■SSD Performance In The Office: Nine Applications Benchmarked
  ■Upgrade Advice: Does Your Fast SSD Really Need SATA 6Gb/s?
  ■Install A Hard Drive Or SSD In Your Notebook's Optical Bay
  ■Workstation Storage: Modeling, CAD, Programming, And Virtualization

Original thread created by Randomizer: Useful SSD Articles

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Wow, very nice.Tons of info for all members!

 

[das_stig]

Don't use the guide for changing default folder locations, I use this all the time for multi hdd/partitions.

1. Once setup and at the desktop, don't bother doing any customisation, but start up Computer Management via Control Panel\System and Security\Administrative Tools.

2. Local Users And Groups\Users, select Administrator and enable the account.

3. Reboot.

4. Logon as Administrator, no password, go into normal User Account management and delete the account created during setup and any and all files.

5. Startup Regedit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

6. Change the ProfilesDirectory from %SystemDrive%\Users to for example D:\Users.

7. Close down regedit and reboot.

8. Logon as Administrator and create a user account with admin privileges.

9. Logoff and logon using new account and let system create profile, which is now on your D: drive which of course now the default location for all your personal files.

10. Start up Computer Management via Control Panel\System and Security\Administrative Tools.

11. Local Users And Groups\Users, select Administrator and disable the account. Leaving this enabled is a big security risk !!!

Viola.

 

[kathywordolf]

I have seen these words the other day~~~

Based on the information Anand has given in his articles about Intel's technology, Diskeeper's "whitepaper" sounds like crap advertising by a company who's afraid their technology might be considered not only useless but detrimental to use with SSDs.

I'm inclined to agree since Diskeeper's own results show a 4x write loss by just *one* "optimization" while Anand's article clearly suggests that the proper design (which he says Intel has accomplished) eliminates the need for Diskeeper's service.

 

[kathywordolf]

Things like automatic drive defragmentation with Vista does nothing for SSDs except to slow them down.

Properly optimized, even low cost 2007 generation SSDs test out as equivalent to a 7200 rpm consumer grade drive, and typical SSDs made in 2008 or later tend to outperform mechanical hard drives.

The tests done here have done nothing to "tweak" the OS to remove design hindrances to SSD performance, and thus, have no validity or technical merit.

 

[Hotobu]

What's the current state of Raid0 and trim? I'm thinking of saving a little bit of money by buying two SATA II drives and putting them in RAID, but I don't want to lose trim support.

 

[tecmo34]

Currently, TRIM is still not supported by RAID between two SSD. It is supported with 1 - SSD (non-RAID) & 2 - HDD's in RAID. There is talk that Intel is working on a updated RST to give TRIM support in RAID. Until than, you would have to rely on the firmware's Garbage Collection to do the job.

 

[Hotobu]

Is there a non sponsored site that keeps track of failure rates i.e. a Consumer Reports type deal? I'm currently in the market for an SSD, and one of my concerns are the failure rates on these things. I can look at benchmarks and product details, and of course there's no guarantee that any product will work right out of the box, but wading through the drives that are least likely to give issues is like a minefield.

I understand that consumers may be partially to blame by not doing simple things like RTFM, but not all of the problems are with tech novices. What companies/drivers should I be looking at that are least likely to give me problems?

 

[tecmo34]

Here is an article on this subject on failure rates by PCWorld, which shows they are very close to the same rate as mechanical drives. http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/213442/solid_state_drives_no_better_than_others_survey_says.html

The article references this French site which breaks the numbers down more... http://www.hardware.fr/articles/810-6/taux-pannes-composants.html

 

[Hotobu]

I know that this is a difficult question to answer, but when I see a lot of people complaining on vendor sites, and at manufacturer forums how much of that should I disregard?

Is it truly just people who don't know how to RTFM/ don't know that there's more to these than mechanical drives, or are there vendors and drivers that I need to avoid? A lot of the complaints seem to be against the newer Sandforce drivers, and that article looks like it's taking data from >13 months ago. I realize that this is a technology in its relative infancy in the consumer market, but besides pure speed would you suggest anything else to look for?

 

[alluri]

Simply one work - Vow & thank q

This Tip : " Solid State Drive (SSD) Tweaks for Windows 7" has answered my question i posted a week ago on this form -

My SSD OCZ Vertex 2 - windows rating (WEI) was dropped from 7.4 to 5.9. all of sudden my disk tranfer rate was 5.9, i mean WTF - i din know what happened. tried to check everthing from scrath and its not working - following some tips there and i re ran my test and is back to 7.4 again ---

Thanks u TOM - ur the best

 

[greeta3]

I have two link about SSD.
Difference between HDD and SDD : http://www.warepin.com/hdd-vs-ssd/
Imation SSD available: http://www.warepin.com/imation-ssds-available/

 

[turboturtle187]

I just got my first SSD coming from an HDD and it's amazing for booting up. That alone makes it worth it, even if you get a small one.


here's my review with some demos on loadtimes for my sata II ocz vertex plus which is 190mb write (6x faster than average HDD ) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeyQCSSXnXU

 

[lewza]

Excellent article, helped a lot!

 

[comvigo]

Nice article, thank for posting knowledgeable information and overview.

 

[dumpystig]

Don't use the guide for changing default folder locations, I use this all the time for multi hdd/partitions...

...Viola.

Brilliant guide!!! Been looking for something simpler than the Win 7 method and this seems to be that something. Win 7 doesn't allow the original Admin account to be deleted so I had to create a second Admin with a different name then log in to that acccount and delete the original Admin account. Thanks

 

[deejayburnout]

Nice guides.

My SSD is getting sorted tonight.

Thanks

 

[Mfusick]

This is a very excellent resource !!! Thank you to all.

 

[offtrack]

http://ssd.mooo.com

the SSD and the HDD are not even related (except the i/o port (SATA III and AHCI/IDE)

one is rotating memory. (imagine the head moving from track 0 to track max to access the swap file , slowly.....100 times more so.)

the SSD is a EEPROM FLASH memory , made up of 960gig , Floating gate, EEPROM Flash transistors. (120GB SSD) the gates are charged or uncharged.
reading the gates on Flash transistors has always been fast, but discharging them ,, in the early days , causes damage, the first EEPROM only lasted 100 writes and died.

Windows prior to Vista and W7 do not protect the SSD at all. so dont run XP. (sure it runs, but dont run RIGHT !)
But W7 still thrashes the HDD, or things like Antivirus, and csrss.exe(w7) ,etc.

i use this prog to see this effect easy. free. (im sure there are better progs(apps)...)

http://www.itsth.com/en/produkte/Whats-my-computer-doing.php?fromwmcd

another great monitor program is famous, security task manager , that shows all processes, not blind like windows, task manager does. (i have a full license)

The OS uses the HDD for many reasons , and some are to over come the horrible slowness of HDD . It is slow... (im on SSD as i type, and FF loads FAST !)
Many of the killer processes are not even windows caused, AV/skype/FreeDNS tracker/Firefox / COMODO ,etc....
Be sure to stop all processes you added to the system to see what windows really does by its lonesome.... do not assume.... (run msconfig)

The What needs to be done in W7, (IMHO) is have an agent that allows me to set up a ram disk in memory that lets windows thrash away there.
I have that now, for the swap page (pagefile.sys) see my sig. url for links to that free software .
Put the internet cache there, and lots of other things, that are not needing permanent storage on SSD. (lots of ways to tune there are, do not give up)

The windows OS , knows the HDD is slow and has , fast load drivers setup and other things (caches) to overcome HDD latencies. (gross it is)
Using a SSD , many of those Ideas, are not valid, and in fact harmful to a SSD. 1,000,000 hits, is the spec. so avoid that. ( do you leave PC on when at sleep?)

I am sure that soon, there will be vast improvement in this area, W8? and will have a wizard to let you decide. ( i can only hope, MS are listening? hah)
Life or convenience? (eg: do you want to store history permanently here... or do you want max SSD life. it asks....)

See the 18 steps for tuning on my page (i just have a link to the best page , not mine, on tuning....)
my page is to cover , how to install SSD, the hard way. (adding easy way soon, besides, boot , install, take nap, run)
a fresh install is easy, childs play if you mobo is not an antique and if it is , i have solution for that . (there are only 2 solutions)

I was a system integrator. and certified ET, and am retired now. If you have questions, ask. I worked Intel for 6 years, testing , yes, memories.
cheers

 

[thessdreview]

Just received linkback from this thread at our site and wanted to check it out. Nice work and way to get the SSD word out there!

Les Tokar
The SSD Review

 

[tecmo34]

Just received linkback from this thread at our site and wanted to check it out. Nice work and way to get the SSD word out there!

Les Tokar
The SSD Review

Thanks for the feedback Les...

I just added your new story on "Garbage Collection and TRIM in SSDs Explained – An SSD Primer" today, which would be very useful for readers.

 

[americanherosandwich]

I found this guy's stuff helpful as well, if you wanted to add it to the list:
http://computerhardwareupgrades.blogspot.com/2012/04/debunking-rumor-about-clean-installs-on.html
http://computerhardwareupgrades.blogspot.com/2012/03/quick-look-at-ssds-and-how-to-pick-one.html

 

[uugamestore]

Wow, very nice.Tons of info for all members!

 

[flyordie]

Amazing info OP, thank you!!!!!!!

 

[chris123uk_99]

Great info - very useful - thanks very much