Is a 32gb SSD enough to hold W7 HP 64bit?

[boozie]

So if I go ahead and free my 120 GB from 100 GB used down to ~90 GB used, the TRIM will (maybe not 100% effectively) blank out the used up spots to help boost performance?

 

[groberts101]

"boost up performance"?.. probably not by much if any. The "performance stamina"?.. no doubt.

Simply put.. it's like this. Benchmark an empty drive and compare it to a full drive. Which one is faster?

Now do the same between one that's 50% full and one that's 90% full.

Most SSD controllers will drop speeds as they fill up and it's far easier to force an SSD that's 90% full into a read/write/modify(full dirty state) which only causes them to slow even more.

This is because the amount of free space is just the same as the amount of "margin" that the drive has until it's fully degraded and is forced to slow down as it try's to recover fresh blocks(through TRIM or Garbage collection) in an effort to maintain higher speeds.

It really boils down to your usage levels(particularly the amount of writes) and if you're using larger files(vid/picture edits, streaming HD media) then you certainly need larger amounts of free space to reduce speed degradation.

On the other hand.. if you're a lighter user and never have any notable speed reductions?.. don't worry about only having 20 gigs of free space and just enjoy it. It would still be advisable to allow some idle time recovery every week or two for garbage collection to keep on top of that more minimal amount of free space though.

So more free space = consistent speed/write stamina

 

[boozie]

It would still be advisable to allow some idle time recovery every week or two for garbage collection to keep on top of that more minimal amount of free space though.

With Win 7 and TRIM, do I need to do anything special for this?

 

[groberts101]

no.. not really. But you just need to keep in mind that GC and TRIM work at different levels/times.

TRIM commands are instantly sent to let the controller know what blocks it can recover when it decides to do it(not all are instantanious). More of an "on-the-fly" recovery method.

Garbage Collection(GC) is all about low activity states and has the ability to recover unneeded blocks(for all the currently released controller firmwares, AFAIK) based on data mapping between the OS(logical) and the controller(physical) itself. This is why most SSD's can be put into raid(or non-TRIM compliant) environments and will keep speeds up with only idle time recovery being implemented.

So one method is sort of a "holy crap!.. this dude is eating away at my reserves.. so I better hurry up and figure out which blocks to return to keep me from slowing down too much".

Whereas the other is more like.. "whew!.. time to take a break and assess the damage from that last write session. Since I have time.. I'll compare this map to that one and see what I can recover before the next session".

With GC time.. the drives have much more lattitude as to what type and degree of data consolidation, recovery, and rotation of static data to best optimize it's lifespan and internal structure.

 

[taltamir]

why should I not? Aren't SSDs fast enough to boot up processes without the need of Superfetch? Disabling it will save me some space also..

Lets go point by point.
Q: Aren't SSDs fast enough to boot up processes without the need of Superfetch?
A: No, superfetch still improves boot performance with SSD

Q: Disabling it will save me some space also..
A: No, superfetch caches to RAM and puts absolutely nothing on your SSD. It will not save you any space at all whatsoever to disable it. It will only slow you down.

Superfetch has multiple functions all of which are awesomely awesome and should never ever be disabled. According to an interview with MS engineer they considered having win7 disable superfetch if it detected an SSD because some of them thought the same as you (I have no idea why they would, it makes no sense based on how it and SSDs work) but in actual testing they found that disabling it just degraded performance so they decided to leave it on.

Intel SSD toolbox however will try to get you to "optimize" your system by disabling superfetch, which will sabotage your performance, but will do so to a significantly greater amount to HDDs then to their SSD, creating the illusion that the SSD is even better than it actually is.

Q: What is the difference between TRIM and GC?
A: It is quite simple.
with TRIM, every time you the user delete a file, the OS puts a filesystem tag on it that says "junk" and also goes "yo yo yo! I deleted this here file mr HDD/SSD" and the SSD knows and puts a "junk" tag on it so it knows to discard it when most efficiently possible; while the HDD just ignores it as an unrecognized/unsupported optional command.

without TRIM, when you delete the file the OS has the filesystem put a "junk" tag on it so it will discard when it thinks it would be most efficient for a spinning disk, but it never tells the SSD which thinks it is still valuable. And as a result from that it will cause horribad wastage of writes on your SSD. It will only find out that something is junk on a sector by sector basis when the FS tries to reuse it.

GC is, when the drive is idle, it has a little software inside the drive itself that actively scans its own content for filesystem "junk" tags (in file systems it recognizes, typically only NTFS and FAT) and if it finds any it goes "hey! This is junk" and marks it as junk in its own records. GC is completely useless if TRIM is working.