Looking for First SSD. Received SSD having a Concern...

[hennessy1]

My primary notebook hard drive is resulting in errors and I am interested in getting an ssd. This will be my first ssd and about the only thing I know about them is about the SLC and MLC memory types.

I am planning on connecting it via Sata2. I have no idea which drives support or even if I need trim or garbage collection. Also I don't know how long they are suppose to last compared to mechanical drives.

I would also like to know if their are programs from the different manufacturers that I can test and or zero fill the drives with. I usually do full reads and writes on a drive several times before using it.

These are the drives I have narrowed down to from newegg

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...D&PageSize=100

I was looking for atleast 300GB as I currently have a 320GB scorpio drive.

I appreciate any help that you can give me.

 

[Diogenes2]

Did you check this out ?

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2069761

 

[hennessy1]

Ok I have read the articles you have linked to. Thank you btw.

My one question about trim/garbage collection is they are the same thing correct?

Would the A-Data drive be the best one to get looking from Zap's list for best ssd to buy?

 

[alaricljs]

They accomplish the same goal differently. TRIM is an active command that the OS has to support and use. GC is automatically run by the SSD firmware during idle periods.

 

[hennessy1]

Ok thank you for that clarification. As for the testing and wiping of the ssd's. I looked on a-data's website but did not find a diagnostic utility. Would a program like hdtune be the only thing I can use for that. Also do regular hard drive wiping programs work the same on a ssd or does that mess up the trim command or have a negative effect on the drives performance.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

Buy a name brand (intel, ocz, corsair, patriot, etc) ssd of at least 120gb plug it in and enjoy. You'll need the 120gb for OS, a few games, other stuff. I can't go back to using laptops without them anymore. I recently was using a mechanical drive for my laptop after having had a ssd in there for awhile. It felt like a totally different machine. I put the ssd back in there and I'm happy once again.

 

[hennessy1]

So i ended up buying the 240gb patriot inferno. Does anyone have any experience with the drive in terms of overprovisioning?

 

[hennessy1]

Is this normal for an ssd? I downloaded the latest version of hd tune pro. I did a full error test and nothing came up but am still concerned.

Also does that performance look right

 

[hennessy1]

anyone know if this is ok or not?

 

[alaricljs]

You're going to have to wait for someone with a Patriot brand SSD to pop in here and see. It looks bad... but ALL the SMART values look bad, so it's probably just that the drive has crap for SMART support.

Your performance looks fine if that's the same drive you're running the OS from. Those dips are probably caused by windows accessing the pagefile or similar.

 

[hennessy1]

I installed it as a secondary drive and tested it. It was completely blank.

 

[alaricljs]

I wonder at the occasional dips in bandwidth but seeing as they are *very* periodic on the chart there's something going on with that. It may not be your drive though.

Do you know whether you've got that plugged into a SATA I or II port? It looks like you're htiting SATA I bandwidth limits (150MBps) which may be the cause of the periodic dips. Check with another cable (if this isn't in your laptop). Aging cables can degrade the signal path sometimes.

 

[hennessy1]

I do have it in sata 2 ports with the chipet/ahci drivers installed. It is in my laptop but it does have a dual hdd config available. Would installing windows on it and it being the primary drive make a difference in testing?

 

[alaricljs]

Having it be the OS drive would be an explanation for those performance drops. If anything accesses the disk while you're testing it would show as a performance dip. Since you don't have anything hitting that drive I don't see an explanation for those dips. I also wonder why it's performance has a ceiling at 150MBps. Do some research into your laptop and find out whether it's *really* SATA II capable. I know there's a Lenovo model that has all the hardware to do it but for whatever reason the BIOS limits the ports to SATA I.

The vertex 2 in my dell d820 gets ~128MBps whereas the one in my server on a PCI-X sil3124 gets ~180MBps. Both are running linux so I don't get that fancy graph or I'd post it.

 

[alaricljs]

Aha! and another thing on my laptop. I get the same BS sort of SMART crap off the vertex 2 in my laptop. I get real readings out of my server. I'm thinking this all boils down to how your laptop is put together.

 

[hennessy1]

So the smart readings is just the result of the laptop controller?

Here is my benchmark results with the os installed on that drive

This is what one website had gotten from their test.

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.p...sk=view&id=509&Itemid=60&limit=1&limitstart=5

 

[alaricljs]

Yes, the smart readings are farked due to the laptop controller.

If you have a desktop that you could run the performance tests on I'd bet that you would get identical readings to the bench you linked to.

Welcome to the world of inferior laptop chipsets. Fortunately the SSD is still going to be a noticeable improvement.

 

[hennessy1]

So I am ok with keeping this ssd and no need to rma it?

I am pretty certain on the answer for this question but the controller would'nt revert to sata1 speeds if there was a device on there that ran on that? Such as a usb hub that will do that when a lower speed device is present?

BTW the notebook I have is an asus g73jw. I did the test with a fresh OS install and latest chipset/ahci drivers.

 

[alaricljs]

SATA is normally point to point, there is no other device on it. Even when deployed with a multiplexer the device to device link is still PtP, just that the SATA port to multiplexer link will be sharing bandwidth when multiple devices are connected to the multiplexer. This is more similar to ethernet switch topology than USB hub.

I'd say you're good to go. The performance is consistent, even if it isn't up to par. The lack in performance is sure to be attributed to the laptop controller since some of the performance numbers are appropriate.

 

[hennessy1]

Ok thank you very much Alaricljs. I really couldn't say thank you enough for easing my first ssd ownership worries. One last question would there be anything else I need or can do to up the performance anymore. I know not to defrag the drive atleast.

 

[alaricljs]

Common things to do are in Zap's stickied thread. Here's a direct link to the post that pertains to you: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=29731860&postcount=4

Glad I could help

 

[hennessy1]

Thank you once again Alaricljs I really appreciate it.

 

[Zap]

hennessy1, you are trying too hard.

Just enjoy your SSD and don't worry about it at all unless you notice (not benchmark, but notice in day-to-day use) a problem.

Don't defrag, don't zero-wipe, don't endlessly benchmark and don't worry.

 

[hennessy1]

Ya I realize that now Zap sometimes the OCD kicks in high gear.

 

[Zap]

Speaking of OCD, my favorite webcomic character has OCD.