HDDs vs SSDs

Discussion in 'hardware' started by ams963, Jul 3, 2012.

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  1. Keatah

    Keatah Registered Member

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    With consumer drives in consumer environments.. It is recommended to take the AVAILABLE CAPACITY number from the right-click Properties pie chart and times it by 0.75 -- that's the max data you should be putting on an SSD.

    So if you have a 120GB advertised-on-the-box capacity. And a formatted and available capacity of 111GB, according to windows. Then you should only fill it to 83GB. 111GB X 75% = 83GB

    83 GB, that's your max capacity, your working space, do this and TRIM and IGC should keep your disk healthy and happy for a long time to come.
     
  2. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Keatah,

    Thanks for that. So with a 20 GB partition, I'd have a minimum of 5 GB of free space.
     
  3. aladdin

    aladdin Registered Member

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    With a 111GB formatted SSD, it is better to keep it at one partition only. With too many partitions, you are likely to run into TRIM issues.

    Best regards,
     
  4. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    That won't suit me. I think I'll be fine as long as each partition has more than 25% free space.

    Edit... a 110 GB partition with just 9 GB of data wouldn't be cost effective. That's my XP partition.
     
  5. Keatah

    Keatah Registered Member

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    Think about it. It still works out the same.

    Assume your disk comes to be 110GB prior getting things partitioned and we apply the 75% rule we get 82.5GB as your recommended max space. Right? Right..

    Now, if you do the partitioning you get:
    80GB * 75% = 60GB recommended usable
    30GB * 75% = 22.5GB recommended usable
    This is a total of 82.5GB spread between the two, and equal to the first example. Both situations are leaving 27.5GB of slack to the disk.

    But, if you partition the disk to the recommended 60GB and 22.5GB for both partitions then you may fill each partition to the last byte! You're still leaving 27.5GB slack to the disk. Or more properly the flash pool.

    The flash memory in today's SSD's know nothing of the partition structure. Absolutely nothing. If you were to take out one chip and read the data you might find several hundred files' from multiple partitions intertwined and split and fragmented all over.
     
  6. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    I didn't know that. Many thanks. That makes my partitioning even easier.
     
  7. Keatah

    Keatah Registered Member

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    Let me simplify it further. How do you want to beef up IGC & TRIM, Lifespan & IOPS?

    1- Partition the disk in such a way so as to set size limit at the outset?
    OR
    2- Maximize the space available to the user initially, and then trust yourself to not pack the partitions fully?

    The 1st way you're setting a limit right away that you know can't exceed.
    The 2nd way requires a little diligence.

    The Flash chips in the SSD know nothing of what you are doing, they only see reads and writes. Partitioning is like the spray painted lines on a football field. The SDD doesn't see those lines whatsoever. But windows does!

    Windows will stay nicely in bounds. The SSD roams the entire stadium, and the parking lot while its at it!
     
  8. aladdin

    aladdin Registered Member

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    Therefore, you might leave 111GB x 25% = 28GB unassigned and it will take care of everything.

    Best regards,
     
  9. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    I've been using partitions for long enough to use "a little diligence". I already mentioned I have 30 primary partitions on my old HD. The SSD will soon have 5 or 6 primary partitions, each containing an OS. And I'll still have space for more.
     
  10. Keatah

    Keatah Registered Member

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  11. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    I haven't read your links yet but you have explained it clearly. I can have say 20 partitions but as long as my total amount of data is less than 82.5 GB I am fine.
     
  12. Keatah

    Keatah Registered Member

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    And this is one reason why you never defragment SSD's. The logical arrangement is more complex than a hard disk. And to an SSD, a defrag run is simply a ton of reads and writes to the drive.

    This even applies to the the so-called free space consolidators which are part of Disk Keeper and Perfect Disk. All they do is "trigger" the IGC and TRIM commands. Something that the o/s and disk would do if left to itself. At least on the newer SSD's anyways. I can't say the same thing about the old ones.

    Now,
    A very simplistic explanation I gave to a 7 year old about TRIM and IGC AND SSD.

    TRIM is a chart on the wall made by mommy and daddy (NTFS MFT). A guy in the garage reads the chart and makes stickers that say what is trash and what stays. Soon enough the garage is a mess and trash is all over. Sometimes we might carry it to the curb if it gets to be too much.

    But when Wednesday rolls around, the truck comes by and Internal Garbage Collection happens. The stuff that's been marked as trash all goes out. And since these are special garbage men, they will come through and organize things in the garage and house from time to time. Now we have clean space. One big mostly empty garage. One area were anything will quickly fit with ease.

    We don't have to get out of the car and move stuff around every time we park there.

    Do you want to actually pay money to have a consultant come in and organize this for you when the TRIM guy and IGC garbage men will do it for you for free? The kid's like noooooooo!
     
  13. Keatah

    Keatah Registered Member

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    Yes of course. It isn't a hard fast rule. But intel approves the idea. And several other conversations I've ran through keep saying the same thing.

    Somebody suggested a full 33% of the disk be "saved". That's probably too conservative on newer drives. I would suggest 18-25% as a nice margin.
     
  14. Keatah

    Keatah Registered Member

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    One more thing, about intel and cherryville. Intel has a special contract with Sandforce to use their controller. But intel, knowing more about Flash wanted to make some patches. Sandforce and intel, made a deal, to write firmware (and mod it) togeter, for Sandforce Driven intel disks.

    Much has to do with lowering write amplification, IGC, and data de-duplication.

    The cherryville improvements will eventually make their way into other Sandforce Driven disks as time goes on. For now, this SuperFirmware is an intel exclusive. And as far as SSD's go, I would only recommend intel right now.
     
    Last edited: Jul 19, 2012
  15. treehouse786

    treehouse786 Registered Member

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    well i have read alot of strange posts on here (no offence).

    i have a 1st Gen intel SSD which i have been running at 98%~ capacity for many years and its doing better than the other SSD's which have never been more than 50% full.

    use the SSD how you wish brian, even if you use the SSD to full capacity then there will still be extra space for garbage collection etc, we never have access to those parts of the disk in the first place.
     
  16. aladdin

    aladdin Registered Member

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    Here I disagree. The price of Intel are twice as much as the newer SSDs. With SSDs pricing dropping on a daily basis and becoming so cheap, there is not need to pay this premium.

    I have six SSDs, including Intel 520 (120GB) and Crucial M4 (128GB), the Crucial I bought for $125 about 2 months ago, today they are selling for $90. The Crucial is bigger in size than Intel.

    No need to pay this premium for little longer life.

    All my six SSDs are from 1 and half years to 2 months old, and they are all 100% healthy, and the difference in speed between them is not noticeable for the SATA 3. However, the difference in speed is somewhat noticeable between SATA 2 and SATA 3. My earlier two SSDs are SATA 2, the ones I bought first.

    Best regards,
     
  17. Keatah

    Keatah Registered Member

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    Intel typically gives you 7% - 10% overprovisioning right off the bat. This is a good thing. Anything additional you provide (by not using) is all the much better. Ask an intel SSD engineer themselves.

    They make their disk, they rewrote part of sandforce's firmware, they know what they're doing.

    Furthermore, intel has the most rigorous validation process in town. I'd rather have my SSD made by an enterprise company as opposed to a gamer company like crucial and ocz. Especially OCZ. Crap. They have more than 65 drive models going. How can they devote time to test all these variants? They let the user test the product.
     
  18. treehouse786

    treehouse786 Registered Member

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    with that logic, the latest samsung SSD's must be better than intel ones as they make own controller, own firmware, own flash memory. intel does none of those things. the point of my post is that a blanket statement like yours which pretty much says intel SSD's are the best is simply not true/provable. it might have been the case with the 1st gen/2nd gen SSD's but it defo aint with the latest gen.

    also pretty sure crucial have been in the NAND game longer than intel. i agree OCZ need to mature more though
     
    Last edited: Jul 19, 2012
  19. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    I like this SSD. I only have 40 GB of data on the drive and I have....

    two WinXP
    Win7
    Win8
    DOS
    two Linux
    two WinPE

    Early days yet but the WinPE don't load any faster from the SSD than from a HD. The Windows OS certainly do load faster.
     
  20. Noob

    Noob Registered Member

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    So what you're saying guys is that to get the most out of an SSD it's better to keep it under 75% of it's capacity? :D :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
     
  21. Keatah

    Keatah Registered Member

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    Not under 75%, around 75%. Could be more or less depending on how much overprovisioning is done by the mfg. On my SSD's I like to leave about 20% free space.

    Lot's of room for garbage collection and wear leveling and all that good stuff that SSD's like to do when they're not loading and saving your files.
     
  22. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Keatah,

    Do you use Intel?

    Could I ask about your recommendations for the Windows page file and SSDs?
     
  23. Bill_Bright

    Bill_Bright Registered Member

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    SSDs are perfectly suited for your page file. I have moved (when necessary) the page file to SSDs on all systems that have SSDs.

    See the MSDN article, Support and Q&A for Solid-State Drives and note the 10th FAQ down (sorry, not numbered) paying particular attention to the last sentence,
    I disagree. I think this is just a another false rumor that has been floating around rampantly since SSDs came out and many, unfamiliar with SSD technologies tried to apply HD characteristics and tweaks to SSDs. Sadly, like many false rumors, they tend to keep resurfacing - often years after initially squashed.

    Ask an engineer? Come on! Got a link to some, any, official test or SSD maker's site that says to keep x% free? I cannot find even one SSD maker that says to keep space free for best performance. Not one! That is exactly why they overprovision.

    I say because drive makers overprovision by 7 - 10% (13% - 25% for some Sandforce SSDs), there is no need to keep space free on an SSD, except to save more data and/or to allow space for Page File expansion. The ONLY exception would be if the SSD is used for boot drive, and the default locations for Windows temporary files has not been changed. And then, I go by gigabytes, not percentage.

    Note there is a big difference between "heavy usage" and "filling up the disk". Heavy usage often results in deleted files not being cleared from the SSD immediately. And that can cause problems. Let's ensure we are not talking about that instead of simply filling up a disk.

    Also, for Intel SSDs specifically, note they do not have "garbage collection" to clear up "clearing" issues - hence the Intel SSD Optimization Tool.

    So for those reporting to leave x amount space, please provide a current link to a real review site, or better yet, to an SSD maker that says, "for best performance, leave x amount of space free." And a post on another forum from another anonymous poster does not count.
     
  24. treehouse786

    treehouse786 Registered Member

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    @Bill_Bright
    agree with everything you said, i have been using SSD's since they came to the retail market many years ago and i have put my page files on SSD's along with a disregard to keep any space free for over-provisioning. at one point my SSD was filled up to 99%~ capacity for many months without any issues whatsoever. £ per GB was very expensive when they were first released so i used all the space i paid for with no long term effects to my SSD.

    another quality post by Mr Bright as usual :thumb:
     
  25. MarcP

    MarcP Registered Member

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    To be honest, after months of contemplating moving to an SSD, reading and researching. This is the first time I read about this suggestion of keeping utilised space under %75. Never seen that written anywhere else.
     
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