Data on NTFS compression impact on SandForce SSD's expected life? Should I enable it?

[carancho]

Hello. It has been pointed out several times that enabling NTFS compression could reduce an SSD's expected life if the controller does native compression. However, drive endurance appears to be a non issue on most consumer drives, usually being underestimated (there were some articles in Anandtech that showed that usually the consumer SSD drives have more than enough endurance).

I have an Intel SSD 330, which uses a SandForce controller with native compression, and I'm trying to decide whether to enable NTFS compression. We now that it will affect the drive life, but will it do so in a major way? Has it been measured?

Thanks!

 

[F1shF4t]

Drive life is not something you should worry about unless you're planning to write the contents of the whole SSD numerous times a day.

Biggest effect will be on speed. Sandforce SSD is faster when reading/writing compressible data. Effectively you will be reducing performance to the in-compressible levels.

 

[code65536]

Effectively you will be reducing performance to the in-compressible levels.

Not really, because the data being written would be smaller. Sure, writing 1GB of compressed data will be slower than 1GB of uncompressed, but that's not a fair comparison if that 1GB of compressed data would've otherwise been, say, 1.5GB.

I expect the speed ultimately to be the same. The difference is that 1) the compression is moved from the SF controller to the CPU and 2) you'll get more usable space in the file system because any space savings from the controller's compression doesn't get passed along to the OS and file system.

 

[Dahak]

You also have to look at what you are going to compress.

OS and Program files, i would not as they have to be pretty much be uncompressed all the time, so it may be slower, may not (talking about probably lest the 10s of seconds)

videos, pictures. pretty well compressed already

about the only thing that would benefit would be documents, and most likely the amount of space gained from that may not be significant.

I would say try it for a week and see, if no benefit space wise, and speed is slower, may as well turn it off.

also it would try to compress the same stuff twice, once at os/file level and then again at controller level. not sure if that will affect speed or not as well

 

[hhhd1]

OS and Program files, i would not as they have to be pretty much be uncompressed all the time, so it may be slower, may not (talking about probably lest the 10s of seconds)

Actually, the OS and programs files are the best candidates to be compressed, ntfs compression is fast enough, and specially decompressing is really fast.

The os and programs is where you get a descent compression ratio, and get some extra free space.

 

[Sunburn74]

I wouldn't do it. Drive lifespan is a non issue. Running compression on the drive can save your some space, but at a performance cost. If you need more space, your SSD is too small.

 

[gbeirn]

Don't do it. It may even slow the computer down as the CPU overhead that is required to decompress and re-compress ever file as they are accessed, especially the Windows system files.

Edit: This is true of any storage device, HDD or SSD. Microsoft should just remove this feature. Every time I see an abnormally slow PC that isn't anything obvious (Malware, failing parts, etc. ) it is always disk compression.

 

[code65536]

Don't do it. It may even slow the computer down as the CPU overhead that is required to decompress and re-compress ever file as they are accessed, especially the Windows system files.

Edit: This is true of any storage device, HDD or SSD. Microsoft should just remove this feature. Every time I see an abnormally slow PC that isn't anything obvious (Malware, failing parts, etc. ) it is always disk compression.

It depends on what you're compressing. For non-compressible data, you're just incurring extra CPU costs for no good reason. For compressible data, you might actually improve performance.

Did you know that a large part of Firefox (all the bits that run atop the Gecko engine, like the entire UI) is packaged in a tightly-compressed zip file? (well, a jar file, but jar files are just renamed zip files) Mozilla does this because their tests show that it improves performance. Remember, relative to the CPU and memory disk access is very slow. SSDs are much better, but that's like going from a snail's pace to a turtle's pace, relative to the speeds at which CPU can read data. If you can trade in some CPU cycles for lower I/O costs, it can be worth it.

Personally, I do use NTFS compression, but on a limited basis. For example, the documentation in my ActivePerl install--lots of HTML files (so highly compressible) that I access very rarely.

 

[lamedude]

Tom's got mixed results when doing NTFS compression on a non Sandforce drive.

 

[tweakboy]

Once you have a SSD, use it properly. gl

 

[carancho]

I wouldn't do it. Drive lifespan is a non issue. Running compression on the drive can save your some space, but at a performance cost. If you need more space, your SSD is too small.

Or I partitioned it the wrong way when setting it up :\

Thanks to everyone who replied!