SSD Question

Stuarts

Stuarts

Stuarts

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Right. An SSD question that is still bugging me.

I am speccing a build.

On the SSD front I am thinking about:

2 x G.Skill Falcon 128GB

One for operating system. One for programs. (With seperate other normal sata drives for storage)

The reason being that I install a ton of programs (well over 100). And every other PC I have owned has ended up crashing and buggy.

Now, as I understand it (I could be wrong). SSDs do not fragment in the same way as conventional hard drives.

So, if instead of 2 ssd drives, I just bought 1, and put BOTH the operating system AND all my hundreds of programs on it (and did the usual install, uninstall stuff if a program was rubbish). But still had the seperate sata drive for storage.

Then would the system get buggy?

Or it would it be ok because its an ssd and not a conventional hard drive, and still stay nice and fast?

Or am I better off with my original plan?
 
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You'll find your system gets slow and buggy due to programs changing settings, things installing and uninstalling or conflicting with each other. Sadly separating things onto different partitions will have no effect at all.

SSDs do not fragment in the same way as normal drives. They do however have their own form of fragmentation which can actually be a whole lot worse. In order to write to a cell after it's already been used before the cell needs to be erased. Eventually all cells on the drive will reach this state. An ATA command called TRIM (SCSI has DISCARD I think..) solves this problem. However no SSD at the moment has it. The Indilinx controller used in Vertex and some SuperTalent drives has it's own proprietry TRIM program called "Wiper" which quickly restores full performance. If you run single drives you can take advantage of it right out of the box.
 
Sorry, I should have pointed out that TRIM will sooner or later be available on most SSD devices, and supported by most RAID controllers.

Indilinx have confirmed they will implement W7 RC1 TRIM, hopefully this month.
Samsung have confirmed they will implement in time for W7 retail.
I don't know about Intel, however I'd be shocked if they didn't.

On the controller side a few companies have said they will support TRIM, Adaptec, Highpoint, Areca. I'm certain they all will eventually, the same goes for AMD and Intel. I would be stunned if nVidia did it for their RAID controllers, since they're so weak on chipsets these days.

The only real danger for TRIM would be if you had a drive or controller which did not get retrofitted with TRIM. Older RAID controllers might end up in this category, or 1st generation drives. Intel X-25, Indilinx (Vertex etc), 2nd gen Samsung (OCZ Summit, the 2nd gen branded Samsung OCZ sell) should get it.
 
Stuarts said:
SSDs do not fragment in the same way as conventional hard drives.
Click to expand...

well they do fragment but thats the way they are made so it hits as many flash cells it can in the SSD to improve read speeds (Turn off auto defrag on SSDs, Superfetch can be off as well as prefetchers as the SSD is that fast do not need to pre-load ram up with programs)

flash access times are very low compared to an HDD so lots of files can be accessed in far faster time then an HDD, 1 SSD will out perform any HDD be it in raid or not

most find that 128gb will do for OS, games, programs (and an HDD for like temp folder, download folder or any files), i had no issues with slow down on my corsair S128 (samsung), others seem to have had problems with vertex and falcon, but it depends what you do to them (like running some benchmarks that do full write tests from end to end, Full format or filling the drive so it has no space left seems the best way to mess up an SSD, keep 20% free space on an SSD), if you find that 128gb is to small just Buy an single 256gb SSD (if you was planning on getting up to 256gb of space any way and spending all that money :) ), only need raid if your useing JMicon based SSDs or messing with Big 5gb files (200MB/s it 2-3x faster then most hdds)

the the bigger the SSD the longer it should last as well (more blocks on the SSD to erase then an smaller SSD)

if using vista or 7 recommend you use AHCI in your BIOS so that all the options on your HDD and SSD are on
 
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Thanks Guys.

So basically my original plan is the winner.

Pity - Means I have to shell out for two x £275 instead of once :-)

I believe that the Falcons have the Indilinx chipset. The same as the Vertex drives. So hopefully this wiper program will be the answer.

Can it be automated? ie Say set to run once a week automatically? Or do I have to remember to do it every time? And does the wiping process damage the lifespan of the disk in any way?
 
The Wiper program is OCZ only. It can be automated see here. Gskill might have something similar, or they might not.

Wiper doesn't cause any extra wear, it skips over cells that don't need to be done.
 
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