Posted: 9/16/2012 9:32:41 AM EDT
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My Win7 box is a few years old and its about that time to nuke it from orbit and re-install everything.
I'm considering taking this opportunity to upgrade to an SSD. I've read a lot of articles, and am still worried about wear on the device. As it sits right now, my system thrashes the hard drive a lot. Its been defragged, and I've got about 40% free space. Still, during certain time and operations, the hard disk churns for sometimes minutes at a time. How are today's modern SSDs at taking this kind of use, as it pertains to their overall life span? Thanks. |
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Quoted:
Disk thrashing is due to SuperFetch, which you should disable when running an SSD. Or swapping, which should also be taken care of via a ram upgrade. Intel drives need tens of gigabytes or more written per day, EVERY DAY, for FIVE YEARS to wear them out. The real warning is this: Once you use an SSD,, you will be ruined, and going back to spinners will be write painful. |
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I can easily write 10GB daily, but I'll be happy if it lasts five years.
So is Intel the accepted standard in brands, or are there others to consider? I'm upgrading from a Samsung Spinpoint F4, so I don't think I need the $500 ultra righteous fastest drive ever SSD, just something in the 250GB range that is going to be trouble free and reliable. From what I've been reading, even a slower SSD is going to knock my socks off. |
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Let me ask another question.
I know a lot of guys are running an SSD as their primary and a spinner for file and application storage. Is anyone here running a mixed environment like that? With all of the indexing and crap Windows does to all drives in the system, I'm wondering about a spinner still slowing things down a bit (indexing service etc). I know I can turn a lot of that stuff off, but if I'm using the system interactively when it automatically defrags, or Security Essentials runs a scan, etc,. is the system gonna bog? My goal is to map "My Documents" to my unraid server, and put everything there including my Google Earth files and Outlook PST files, but for apps I want to install but not regularly use, I figure I'll keep a 200-500GB disk in there alongside the SSD. Finally, I have 8GB RAM, which I actually use most of (5-7GB used at any given time). Should I turn swap off altogether, or have a swap file on my spinner? And how will that affect performance? Comments? |
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Quoted:
Let me ask another question. I know a lot of guys are running an SSD as their primary and a spinner for file and application storage. Is anyone here running a mixed environment like that? With all of the indexing and crap Windows does to all drives in the system, I'm wondering about a spinner still slowing things down a bit (indexing service etc). I know I can turn a lot of that stuff off, but if I'm using the system interactively when it automatically defrags, or Security Essentials runs a scan, etc,. is the system gonna bog? Comments? I think you are a little higher speed than my setup. My PC is 5 years old, with a newer video card. Win 7 Ultimate edition was installed on the day it came out, with no rebuild done ever. I added a 32 Gig sandisk readycache SSD, 32 GB. Fifty bucks on Amazon It does NOT have the OS installed on the SSD, and the files on a spinner. The readycache software decides which files are accessed the most, and places them on the SSD. I am amazed at how much faster my system boots, and how much faster my most-used applications fire up and run. It probably extended the life of my machine a year or so before I get the itch to build a new one. |
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Quoted:
I can easily write 10GB daily, but I'll be happy if it lasts five years. So is Intel the accepted standard in brands, or are there others to consider? I'm upgrading from a Samsung Spinpoint F4, so I don't think I need the $500 ultra righteous fastest drive ever SSD, just something in the 250GB range that is going to be trouble free and reliable. From what I've been reading, even a slower SSD is going to knock my socks off. http://www.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-2-5-Inch-Internal-MZ-7PC256B-WW/dp/B0077CR66A/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1347843711&sr=8-2&keywords=samsung+830 If you plan on running a HDD as well, you may want to consider using intel's smart response technology, instead of getting a dedicated ssd drive. |
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Quoted:
I can easily write 10GB daily, but I'll be happy if it lasts five years. Intel's official numbers are something like twenty gigs per day for five years, but a product manager for their SSD line told me at VMWorld that depending on how it is done, realistically, it could be as much as writing the equivalent of entire capacity of the drive every day. The nice thing about Intel (and surely some others) is that you can look at a SMART attribute and see exactly how far you are into the rated usage. I used an Intel 510 in my laptop for around 18 months with windows XP, and wasn't able to go even 1% into the wear indicator. |
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Another vote for Cruicial. I've got one of the old nova series ones and its still kicking great. Its used on a computer that records video surveillance. The feed is saved to the SSD during motion, does analysis for face and license plate detection, then moves to the HDD if it thinks its important enough to save. So there is tons of read/write going on in addition to still using it as a typical computer.
Avoid OCZ like the plague... multiple drives failed multiple times before I got one that worked. Still don't trust it. |
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Quoted:
................................ The real warning is this: Once you use an SSD,, you will be ruined, and going back to spinners will be write painful. This. You will end up putting SSD's in all your systems because you will have lost the ability to wait. |
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Quoted:
Let me ask another question. I know a lot of guys are running an SSD as their primary and a spinner for file and application storage. Is anyone here running a mixed environment like that? With all of the indexing and crap Windows does to all drives in the system, I'm wondering about a spinner still slowing things down a bit (indexing service etc). I know I can turn a lot of that stuff off, but if I'm using the system interactively when it automatically defrags, or Security Essentials runs a scan, etc,. is the system gonna bog? My goal is to map "My Documents" to my unraid server, and put everything there including my Google Earth files and Outlook PST files, but for apps I want to install but not regularly use, I figure I'll keep a 200-500GB disk in there alongside the SSD. Finally, I have 8GB RAM, which I actually use most of (5-7GB used at any given time). Should I turn swap off altogether, or have a swap file on my spinner? And how will that affect performance? Comments? That's how I run my setup, and I don't have any problems. I primarily game on my system, and I put the SSD in to get enough performance to run Arma II (my old platter drive just couldn't pump out the 1's and 0's fast enough). I've got my Windows installation, and my Arma II installations on the SSD, and everything else on my spinner drive. You need to be sure to disable defragging on your SSD, as all that does is kill it's life expectancy. You should also move your swap space to your spinner, since it's always being written to it'll just add to the wear and tear, and eat up valuable space. I would not turn off swap space totally. I forget where I read it, but some windows applications still rely on swap space, even with RAM available. I remember seeing in a separate article about min/maxing windows performance, to hard set your swap space to roughly twice as much RAM as you have installed. I'll see if I can dig up those references later, as I'm at work right now. |
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I appreciate all of the replies guys.
Rather than go for a cache or spinner/SSD combo (like the Seagate unit I've seen), I'd rather get a straight up SSD for my system drive and do it right the first time. I realize the ideal solution would be a complete re-install of Windows, but that's not gonna happen right now. Can anyone recommend an SSD that comes with (good) cloning software? |
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Quoted:
I appreciate all of the replies guys. Rather than go for a cache or spinner/SSD combo (like the Seagate unit I've seen), I'd rather get a straight up SSD for my system drive and do it right the first time. I realize the ideal solution would be a complete re-install of Windows, but that's not gonna happen right now. Can anyone recommend an SSD that comes with (good) cloning software? Intel provides a copy of acronis, it works well. |
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Quoted: Quoted: The Crucial M4s seem good too. At least mine hasn't given me any problems  I second the Crucial M4. I also have a crucial M4 and have been very pleased with the performance. I did however, run into a nasty bug - caused a BSOD about every hour. Release Date: 01/13/2012 Change Log:
This firmware update is STRONGLY RECOMMENDED for drives in the field. Although the failure mode due to the SMART Power On Hours counter poses no risk to saved user data, the failure mode can become repetitive, and pose a nuisance to the end user. If the end user has not yet observed this failure mode, this update is required to prevent it from happening. If you are using a SAS Expander please do not download this Firmware. As soon as we have a Firmware Update that will work in these applications we will release it. I had to upgrade the firmware. Also, the instructions for the windows software firmware update are not correct, you have to extract the files to the root of your drive, not just the desktop. http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-State-Drives-SSD/Firmware-Update-Notifications/td-p/57854 http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-State-Drives-SSD/M4-Firmware-000f-is-now-available/td-p/93526 |