Is it not better to leave SSD alone once installed?

Levirginien · 22 Oct 2010 at 22:17

I have been using a 60gb OCZ Agility for a little over a year now but had to RMA it due to various glitches including excessive disk checks, data corruption, weird errors, blue screens etc.
Several sanitary erase and firmware updates (from 1.3, to 1.4, 1.5 up to the recent 1.6) failed to cure the problem and worse, all those updating and cleaning took a big chunk out of the drive’s remaining life. After only a year of moderate use, its life expectancy fell to 63%.
I am therefore wondering if it is not better to leave SSD Drives alone once installed since windows 7 is optimised for these drives anyway.
Any thoughts on this?

Levirginien · 23 Oct 2010 at 12:04

anyone?

Eddie · 23 Oct 2010 at 12:39

I think you answered your own question really - the general consensus atm seems to be to just leave them alone and let Win7 do its thing.

I was reading something last night about some guy who stated he has had his SSD for over a year and never once HDDErased it despite reinstalling Win7 on it multiple times. He said that his drive hasn't lost any performance and is still giving the exact same speeds he was getting when the drive was new. Makes you wonder

There seems to be a lot of inaccurate stuff around as to what the crack is with SSD drives. It's quite hard to find actual solid evidence to support a particular theory as to the operation and maintenance of them. Over the last week or so I've read loads of things that sound like a good idea but then you read something else that contradicts what you previously read.

My theory (for the rest of today at least

) is to just leave it alone, unless you find you're having problems obviously, but if it's working alright and giving good speeds then just leave well alone and do something else instead.

Levirginien · 23 Oct 2010 at 22:34

shoot1st said:
I think you answered your own question really - the general consensus atm seems to be to just leave them alone and let Win7 do its thing.

I was reading something last night about some guy who stated he has had his SSD for over a year and never once HDDErased it despite reinstalling Win7 on it multiple times. He said that his drive hasn't lost any performance and is still giving the exact same speeds he was getting when the drive was new. Makes you wonder

There seems to be a lot of inaccurate stuff around as to what the crack is with SSD drives. It's quite hard to find actual solid evidence to support a particular theory as to the operation and maintenance of them. Over the last week or so I've read loads of things that sound like a good idea but then you read something else that contradicts what you previously read.

My theory (for the rest of today at least ) is to just leave it alone, unless you find you're having problems obviously, but if it's working alright and giving good speeds then just leave well alone and do something else instead.

Thanks for your input. I just need various views on the topic for self-persuasion as it is really hard not to poke around for that extra performance.

Metroid · 24 Oct 2010 at 11:52

It needs most maintenance only if you keep filling it with more than 80% of its full capacity every now and then. If you use it moderate then no need to worry, trim can be passed every month or so, GC works everyday while the computer is idle.

Azuse05 · 24 Oct 2010 at 12:03

I'm not sure if microsofts changed it yet, but the last time I was considering ssds one of the mods on ocz forum point out by default windows spins the disks down after 20 minute of inactivity. Problem being this function isn't disable when you use an ssds and thus interferes with trim.

Was several months back, but I haven't seen anything further on it so I would assume it's still relevant.

Levirginien · 24 Oct 2010 at 16:34

Azuse05 said:
I'm not sure if microsofts changed it yet, but the last time I was considering ssds one of the mods on ocz forum point out by default windows spins the disks down after 20 minute of inactivity. Problem being this function isn't disable when you use an ssds and thus interferes with trim.

Was several months back, but I haven't seen anything further on it so I would assume it's still relevant.

I have the Asus P5K Deluxe with the latest BIOS (1005).
There is an option to disable HDD spin down & I enable the high performance option in the windows control panel. Only my monitors are set to sleep after 30mns of inactivity.

Simon42 · 24 Oct 2010 at 21:21

I think that it's usually fine leaving Windows 7 to it, however its worth keeping an eye on the media life/wear rate from time to time as some software can make a lot of file writes especially if it installs services or runs all the time.

If the media life goes down faster than expected then running the Sysinternals Process Monitor application is a great way of tracking down any over zealous applications. Any issues found can then usually be worked around by relocating data using symlinks or application options.

Levirginien · 24 Oct 2010 at 22:25

Simon42 said:
I think that it's usually fine leaving Windows 7 to it, however its worth keeping an eye on the media life/wear rate from time to time as some software can make a lot of file writes especially if it installs services or runs all the time.

If the media life goes down faster than expected then running the Sysinternals Process Monitor application is a great way of tracking down any over zealous applications. Any issues found can then usually be worked around by relocating data using symlinks or application options.

My ssd was for windows7 x64 only plus some essentials such as office 2010, adobe reader, Antivirus ect. But all key user files such as documents, downloads, music, videos and photos are systematically moved and split across my other 2 samsung HD 103SJ in order to minimize access to the ssd.