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Dafyd
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2 SSD usage questions

Sun Jun 23, 2013 5:14 pm

I've got 2 SSD questions for those that know more than me.

1) I'm running an application from an SSD and I just noticed it is frequently writing small bits of text to a log file. Sometimes it is a few minutes between entries and others it is multiple per second. As a programmer I know they could have done it in many different ways (everything from no buffering, buffered, write caches...) - it doesn't affect if the problem exists, just how big/fast it will occur. If I understand how SSD's handle writes, this can be bad - in the worse case it is multiple separate writes per second for hours at a time ... wouldn't this somewhat quickly dirty up the whole SSD? And, if left unchecked it could lead to the write performance issues and a lot of wear and tear on the SSD due to excess erase cycles (along with a lot of heat). Or am I misunderstanding things?

2) I'm still using an old vista system with the SSD (a corsair force 3). So, no trim support. I just found Corsair's SSD toolbox but a lot of its functionality doesn't work for me because of my old motherboard not supporting something. Given that, how can I restore my SSD to a clean state? Would formatting it?

Thanks
 
jmc2
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Re: 2 SSD usage questions

Thu Jun 27, 2013 1:06 pm

Even if you don't have TRIM some SSDs have built in "garbage collection" that will
clean up your SSD over time while idle. You will have to look up specs on yours.

Will have to look up the tool needed to "secure erase". Format will not do it.
You may run into a slow "dirty" SSD condition but wearing them out is hard to do.

jmc2
 
Ryu Connor
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Re: 2 SSD usage questions

Thu Jun 27, 2013 1:24 pm

You can do a secure erase using DiskPart from the command line of Windows or Windows PE.

select disk #
clean all

Link

Microsoft wrote:
clean all

Specifies that each and every sector on the disk is zeroed, which completely deletes all data contained on the disk.
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