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SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 4:16 pm
by churin
I checked that TRIM is enabled and the disk is aligned(I am aware disk alignment is nothing special for SSD). Is there anything else?

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 5:34 pm
by Flying Fox
For what? Is this going to be an OS drive? Are you reinstalling from new or are you "cloning" the old OS drive to it? Or are you just plugging it in as cache? May need you to be a bit more specific to give you useful answer.

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 5:49 pm
by flip-mode
Search the internet for "optimize ssd". The TR forums could use a sticky on the subject. The current New Hard Drive sticky is a bit out of date and doesn't mention any SSD optimizations.

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 6:38 pm
by Flying Fox
Unless we are talking about pre-Windows 7 OS (or prior than "whatever modern enough" Linux), what is there to optimize? If it is a brand new install, newer OSes will take care of things. There's no weird stuff like partitioning on CHS borders like the good old days. :o

If there is anything, I would say there is a rather important user note of don't stress the SSD too much with super-frequent writes/rewrites (unless the SSD is used as a scratch drive, meant to be written very often) and jamming it full.

So without knowing the purpose of the SSD to get some context, I am not too sure what "special" things I can tell. :oops:

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 7:37 pm
by flip-mode
Flying Fox wrote:
Unless we are talking about pre-Windows 7 OS (or prior than "whatever modern enough" Linux), what is there to optimize?


According to what you read around the Internet, there are a number of things. Have you read any optimization guides? And yes, they apply to Windows 7 and 8 too. Some of the suggestions are "controversial", such as turning off the pagefile, and then there are other optimizations that are not so controversial (tuning powercfg.exe, drive indexing, superfetch, prefetch, defrag, disk sleep, etc.)

Also, you can provide additional spare area if you have the space by leave an extra portion of the disk un-partitioned. I have 200 GB of my 256 GB disk partitioned and have left the rest to spare area. This isn't hurting me at all since I am only using 25 gigs worth of the disk at the moment :D

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 7:56 pm
by JustAnEngineer
flip-mode wrote:
According to what you read around the Internet...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmx4twCK3_I&t=00m09s
Take what you read with a grain of salt.

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 8:53 pm
by Flying Fox
flip-mode wrote:
Flying Fox wrote:
Unless we are talking about pre-Windows 7 OS (or prior than "whatever modern enough" Linux), what is there to optimize?


According to what you read around the Internet, there are a number of things. Have you read any optimization guides? And yes, they apply to Windows 7 and 8 too. Some of the suggestions are "controversial", such as turning off the pagefile, and then there are other optimizations that are not so controversial (tuning powercfg.exe, drive indexing, superfetch, prefetch, defrag, disk sleep, etc.)
I am going to channel a bit of Ryu using his post here:
- Turning off pagefile - Don't kill the cute pandas please. SSD makes the pagefile fly which is good. I have plenty of free space in my X25-M for more than 2 years with a pagefile and my media wear count was unchanged. Granted I don't really run out of RAM myself.
- SuperFetch, prefetch, defrag, etc - presumably once Windows detect the SSD they will be turned off (from the linked post). Enabling Superfetch is still OK as files in RAM is are still going to be faster than an SSD; in fact Windows 8 turns it back on.
- Tuning powercfg.exe is mostly about turning off the hibernate file. I did that with my 120GB X25-M because: a) the SSD was small, b) I am behind a UPS so I have time to take the risk of power loss. This one may be worth looking into if you don't have enough money to get a large enough SSD. Then again, what is the context? We don't need all that tuning if the SSD is being put as the cache disk, no?

So assuming the OS in question is modern enough, most of the stuff is automatic already. Trying to tweak further seems too much trouble for gains (perceived or otherwise) that may not even matter to the user.

Also, you can provide additional spare area if you have the space by leave an extra portion of the disk un-partitioned. I have 200 GB of my 256 GB disk partitioned and have left the rest to spare area. This isn't hurting me at all since I am only using 25 gigs worth of the disk at the moment :D
May I ask what will that accomplish? Unless you have a Samsung SSD and you can actually under-provision space for reallocation, the empty space is going to be wasted?

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 9:14 pm
by flip-mode
Flying Fox wrote:
flip-mode wrote:
Flying Fox wrote:
Unless we are talking about pre-Windows 7 OS (or prior than "whatever modern enough" Linux), what is there to optimize?


According to what you read around the Internet, there are a number of things. Have you read any optimization guides? And yes, they apply to Windows 7 and 8 too. Some of the suggestions are "controversial", such as turning off the pagefile, and then there are other optimizations that are not so controversial (tuning powercfg.exe, drive indexing, superfetch, prefetch, defrag, disk sleep, etc.)
I am going to channel a bit of Ryu using his post here:
- Turning off pagefile - Don't kill the cute pandas please. SSD makes the pagefile fly which is good. I have plenty of free space in my X25-M for more than 2 years with a pagefile and my media wear count was unchanged. Granted I don't really run out of RAM myself.
- SuperFetch, prefetch, defrag, etc - presumably once Windows detect the SSD they will be turned off (from the linked post). Enabling Superfetch is still OK as files in RAM is are still going to be faster than an SSD; in fact Windows 8 turns it back on.
- Tuning powercfg.exe is mostly about turning off the hibernate file. I did that with my 120GB X25-M because: a) the SSD was small, b) I am behind a UPS so I have time to take the risk of power loss. This one may be worth looking into if you don't have enough money to get a large enough SSD. Then again, what is the context? We don't need all that tuning if the SSD is being put as the cache disk, no?

So assuming the OS in question is modern enough, most of the stuff is automatic already. Trying to tweak further seems too much trouble for gains (perceived or otherwise) that may not even matter to the user.

Also, you can provide additional spare area if you have the space by leave an extra portion of the disk un-partitioned. I have 200 GB of my 256 GB disk partitioned and have left the rest to spare area. This isn't hurting me at all since I am only using 25 gigs worth of the disk at the moment :D
May I ask what will that accomplish? Unless you have a Samsung SSD and you can actually under-provision space for reallocation, the empty space is going to be wasted?


Turning off page file: Ryu has an opinion on the matter, and the rest of us are free to choose. Regardless, no pandas are harmed in the process. Rather than turn mine off, I tune it down to 1 GB min and max. I've read this so I feel fine.

Superfetch, prefetch, defrag: turned off automatically? Um, not according to my registry. Unless Windows ignores it's own registry (could be, I dunno) I had to change those settings in the registry and in services.

Turning of the hibernate file with powercfg: yeah, exactly!

Regarding over-provisioning: http://www.matrix44.net/cms/wp-content/ ... ioning.pdf
I don't know if there are some disks that benefit and some that don't. I also don't know if there are different ways to configure it for different disks. I thought all that was necessary was to under-partition the disk, but maybe that's inaccurate. I suppose it's something each person has to look into for their specific disk.

Edit: the last paragraph here says this:
At least Samsung's SSD Magician software makes downloading and installing firmware updates a snap. This application can secure-erase drives and perform various system optimizations. It also features an overprovisioning tool that can increase the amount of NAND capacity used as "spare area" by the controller. Other SSDs allow their overprovisioning to be tweaked simply by creating a partition smaller than the total size of the drive, but kudos to Samsung for wrapping up this and other functionality in a tidy little app.

So it seems that some drives can be over-provisioned just by under-partitioning, but not my Samsung, I guess. :shrug:

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 9:26 pm
by flip-mode
JustAnEngineer wrote:
flip-mode wrote:
According to what you read around the Internet...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmx4twCK3_I&t=00m09s
Take what you read with a grain of salt.


Gee, that's just swell. Big problem though: IT'S ALL ON THE INTERNET :wink: The good, the bad, the ugly. You're on the Internet, Ryu is on the Internet. Samsung, Intel, etc are on the Internet. TechReport is on the Internet. So I'll take your comment with a grain of salt :D

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 9:34 pm
by Forge
flip-mode wrote:
Regarding over-provisioning: http://www.matrix44.net/cms/wp-content/ ... ioning.pdf
I don't know if there are some disks that benefit and some that don't. I also don't know if there are different ways to configure it for different disks. I thought all that was necessary was to under-partition the disk, but maybe that's inaccurate. I suppose it's something each person has to look into for their specific disk.

Edit: the last paragraph here says this:
At least Samsung's SSD Magician software makes downloading and installing firmware updates a snap. This application can secure-erase drives and perform various system optimizations. It also features an overprovisioning tool that can increase the amount of NAND capacity used as "spare area" by the controller. Other SSDs allow their overprovisioning to be tweaked simply by creating a partition smaller than the total size of the drive, but kudos to Samsung for wrapping up this and other functionality in a tidy little app.

So it seems that some drives can be over-provisioned just by under-partitioning, but not my Samsung, I guess. :shrug:

Interesting, since my Samsung is overprovisioned exactly by not running my partitions out to disk end. The Samsung Magician software has NEVER allowed me to "adjust overprovisioning", since the last partition is EXT4 and Samsung Magician doesn't grok that. On my desktop I tried the same thing, just one big NTFS partition there. It refused to run because the OS lives on that disk.

When I finally jury-rigged to a situation where the Samsung "Magician" agreed to run (Desktop SSD [single large NTFS] wired to laptop as an external disk), all the "Overprovisioning Wizard" did was resize my partition. Nothing changed the total displayed space at any time.

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 10:03 pm
by churin
Sorry for late response.
It is used as Windows 7 boot drive. I got two 120GB SSDs or Microcenter 120GB 2.5" SATA III and Kingston Hyper X 120GB SH103S3/120G. The former is used on my HTPC(Phenom II x3 720 + 16GB RAM) and the latter is used on my main desktop PC(Phenom II x4 980 + 16GB RAM). I installed the OSes on the SSDs by restoring their images created from hdd partitions on which W7s were originally installed.
I have bought still another 120GB SSD to install on Dell Laptop C840(P4 2.4GHz + 2GB RAM) as W7 boot drive.
Flying Fox wrote:
So assuming the OS in question is modern enough, most of the stuff is automatic already.

It appears that there is nothing to worry about. But having stated as above how I am using or going to use SSDs, is there anything I should do for SSDs?

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 10:25 pm
by LostCat
I don't really tune much of anything myself. Turned hibernate off, turned defrag off, turned System Restore off since it's useless and junks up your drive with writes, rewrites, and fragments.

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 10:37 pm
by Rand
flip-mode wrote:

Superfetch, prefetch, defrag: turned off automatically? Um, not according to my registry. Unless Windows ignores it's own registry (could be, I dunno) I had to change those settings in the registry and in services.

Turning of the hibernate file with powercfg: yeah, exactly!


With Win7 Defrag Windows should automatically disable defragging for SSD's. If it isn't doing that then Windows isn't recognizing that you even have a SSD enabled for some reason.
Prefatch, and Superfetch remain enabled but go into an 'idle' mode and effectively stop working. So manually disabling it won't make any difference.

The only change I made (and recommend) is disabling file indexing. SSD access times are sufficiently fast that the benefit of indexing the files is vanishingly small in search times, and the process of updating the index thrashes the drive with tons of small file writes.

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 11:49 pm
by Ryu Connor
Rand wrote:
Prefatch, and Superfetch remain enabled but go into an 'idle' mode and effectively stop working. So manually disabling it won't make any difference.


Still works if you have an SSD if you don't cut off the service. As noted it's in your best interest to turn it on or leave it turned on. Windows 8 no longer disables SuperFetch for SSDs.

Rand wrote:


The only change I made (and recommend) is disabling file indexing. SSD access times are sufficiently fast that the benefit of indexing the files is vanishingly small in search times, and the process of updating the index thrashes the drive with tons of small file writes.


Negative.

Link

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2012 12:21 am
by just brew it!
Flying Fox wrote:
flip-mode wrote:
Also, you can provide additional spare area if you have the space by leave an extra portion of the disk un-partitioned. I have 200 GB of my 256 GB disk partitioned and have left the rest to spare area. This isn't hurting me at all since I am only using 25 gigs worth of the disk at the moment :D

May I ask what will that accomplish? Unless you have a Samsung SSD and you can actually under-provision space for reallocation, the empty space is going to be wasted?

Due to wear leveling, the partitions you create have no actual correspondence to locations in the physical flash array. If that space never gets "touched" by the OS, the wear leveling algorithm should effectively treat it as spare cells.

Whether or not this will make a meaningful difference in SSD lifetime in actual use is a separate discussion.

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2012 12:24 am
by just brew it!
flip-mode wrote:
Edit: the last paragraph here says this:
At least Samsung's SSD Magician software makes downloading and installing firmware updates a snap. This application can secure-erase drives and perform various system optimizations. It also features an overprovisioning tool that can increase the amount of NAND capacity used as "spare area" by the controller. Other SSDs allow their overprovisioning to be tweaked simply by creating a partition smaller than the total size of the drive, but kudos to Samsung for wrapping up this and other functionality in a tidy little app.

So it seems that some drives can be over-provisioned just by under-partitioning, but not my Samsung, I guess. :shrug:

Seems to me it doesn't say that under-partitioning won't work, they just have a cleaner way of doing it if you choose to use their tool.

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2012 1:08 am
by LostCat
just brew it! wrote:
Due to wear leveling, the partitions you create have no actual correspondence to locations in the physical flash array. If that space never gets "touched" by the OS, the wear leveling algorithm should effectively treat it as spare cells.

Whether or not this will make a meaningful difference in SSD lifetime in actual use is a separate discussion.

Last I heard it can help the GC algorithm...It isn't really necessary with drives with TRIM, but can make a difference on older drives (like my first gen Revo)

not that I'm going to do it heh

mind you I read about the stuff a while ago so I might be somewhat talking crap

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2012 1:16 am
by yogibbear
I just turn hibernate off in the advanced power settings in control panel.

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2013 3:35 pm
by CB5000
Rand wrote:
flip-mode wrote:

Superfetch, prefetch, defrag: turned off automatically? Um, not according to my registry. Unless Windows ignores it's own registry (could be, I dunno) I had to change those settings in the registry and in services.

Turning of the hibernate file with powercfg: yeah, exactly!


With Win7 Defrag Windows should automatically disable defragging for SSD's. If it isn't doing that then Windows isn't recognizing that you even have a SSD enabled for some reason.
Prefatch, and Superfetch remain enabled but go into an 'idle' mode and effectively stop working. So manually disabling it won't make any difference.

The only change I made (and recommend) is disabling file indexing. SSD access times are sufficiently fast that the benefit of indexing the files is vanishingly small in search times, and the process of updating the index thrashes the drive with tons of small file writes.


For my samsung 840 pro defrag wasn't disabled automatically on windows 7. It still had defrag scheduled by default... It probably depends on the SSD. I did disable superfetch, indexing, and defrag though since they were samsung's reccomendations, and the 840 pro is fast enough that superfetch barely makes a difference.

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2013 3:54 pm
by Ryu Connor
CB5000 wrote:
For my samsung 840 pro defrag wasn't disabled automatically on windows 7. It still had defrag scheduled by default... It probably depends on the SSD. I did disable superfetch, indexing, and defrag though since they were samsung's reccomendations, and the 840 pro is fast enough that superfetch barely makes a difference.


It being on isn't a problem. It sees the SSD and then doesn't run. It leaves itself on just incase you add a mechanical drive at some point.

In Windows 8 defrag is what runs the TRIM operations! (Link)

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2013 9:25 am
by DPete27
I didn't read through every comment but:
1) Before installing the SSD, make sure your mobo storage controller is set to AHCI (follow these instructions if you forgot to do this).
2) Right-click "My Computer" => Properties => Run Windows Experience Index when you first install the SSD. I've read that this is how W7 detects the SSD to do it's automatic settings like turning off defrag.
3) I also turn off hibernate (explanation in linked article above) since boot times are so fast on SSDs.

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2013 10:02 am
by churin
DPete27 wrote:
I didn't read through every comment but:
1) Before installing the SSD, make sure your mobo storage controller is set to AHCI (follow these instructions if you forgot to do this).
2) Right-click "My Computer" => Properties => Run Windows Experience Index when you first install the SSD. I've read that this is how W7 detects the SSD to do it's automatic settings like turning off defrag.
3) I also turn off hibernate (explanation in linked article above) since boot times are so fast on SSDs.

Thank you very much for your reply.
The storage controllers for my main desktop pc and HTPC mentioned in my earlier post are set to AHCI, but the Dell Latitude C840 I am going to install SDD on has IDE only. I assume that SSD still works with IDE but not as efficiently with AHCI.

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2013 10:07 am
by just brew it!
churin wrote:
Thank you very much for your reply.
The storage controllers for my main desktop pc and HTPC mentioned in my earlier post are set to AHCI, but the Dell Latitude C840 I am going to install SDD on has IDE only. I assume that SSD still works with IDE but not as efficiently with AHCI.

That's a complete non-starter. The C840 is EIDE only; SATA SSDs are not physically (connectors) or electrically (disk controller interface) compatible with it.

Edit: You might be able to get a SATA drive adapter to go into one of the laptop's expansion bays; but even with this you probably won't have TRIM support.

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2013 10:51 am
by churin
just brew it! wrote:
That's a complete non-starter. The C840 is EIDE only; SATA SSDs are not physically (connectors) or electrically (disk controller interface) compatible with it.

Edit: You might be able to get a SATA drive adapter to go into one of the laptop's expansion bays; but even with this you probably won't have TRIM support.

Yes, I am going to use the SATA drive adapter. I wonder in what extent no TRIM support shortens the life of the SSD. Note that I know what I am doing may not make much economic sense.

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2013 5:37 pm
by CB5000
Seems like you should just save up for a new laptop with at least SATA 3G capability with a decent processor and memory capacity. 1GB memory just seems like no where not enough, and the pentium 4M processor is just slow... The C840 is pretty ancient now.

You can get a halfway decent one for about 500-800$ with a SSD included.

Not sure what you are using the laptop for...

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2013 9:51 pm
by DPete27
If you can't enable AHCI mode (and therefore can't enable TRIM) it would be best to get a sandforce SSD IMO. They make use of on-the-fly compression to lower write amplification which should not be affected by the storage controller on the mobo. Also, (IIRC) the sandforce controller has it's own internal form of garbage collection that operates independently of TRIM. Win, Win

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2013 10:58 pm
by churin
DPete27 wrote:
If you can't enable AHCI mode (and therefore can't enable TRIM) it would be best to get a sandforce SSD IMO. They make use of on-the-fly compression to lower write amplification which should not be affected by the storage controller on the mobo. Also, (IIRC) the sandforce controller has it's own internal form of garbage collection that operates independently of TRIM. Win, Win

The SSD I am now trying to use on the Latitude C840 is SanDisk Extreme SSD, SDSSDX-120G-G25. Is this it?

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2013 12:10 am
by just brew it!
Yes, the SanDisk Extreme series SSDs are SandForce-based.

(Note: Despite the similar names, there's no connection between SanDisk and SandForce, other than the fact that some of SanDisk's SSDs do indeed use SandForce controller chips. So you can't assume that all SanDisk SSDs are SandForce-based.)

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2013 12:37 am
by Flying Fox
Can you even fit the adapter physically inside the laptop chassis?

The WEI thing should be automatic, I may have a data point about that soon.

Re: SSD - Anything special to do for?

Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2013 9:25 am
by just brew it!
Flying Fox wrote:
Can you even fit the adapter physically inside the laptop chassis?

I think you can get ones that are designed to fit in the large bay that the CD drive goes in. I doubt an adapter would fit in the internal bay.