New to SSDs? Read this first before asking questions! (UPDATED 07/17/2011)

[jimhsu]

Great. This is sorely needed. Some recommendations:

#3: Give some examples of drives with "older JMicron and Samsung" controllers (also for the newer ones) so people know what to approach with caution. http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=736 may help.

#4: Note that scheduled defrag in Windows 7 is automatically excluded for SSDs even though the defrag service remains on. That means you don't have to manually disable defrag.

Give a link to the RST download page. It is not at all intuitive where the software is from a google search.

#5: Notes:

Vista - you have everything except for TRIM. Solution is to do manual trimming (i.e. link to the Intel SSD toolbox, Indilinx's manual TRIM utility)

XP - note about alignment. Maybe link to another thread with more details.

Others:

For a more "enterprise-y" take on SSDs, I recommend this site: http://www.storagesearch.com/ssd-buyers-guide.html

 

[jimhsu]

Although not yet thoroughly proved as fail-proof, I think you could add the SandForce controller based SSDs in the "Good SSDs to buy" section considering they're popping like mushrooms lately.

Personally I would put it under insufficient data. If in 3-6 months and there's no huge flame-out, I'd move it to "recommended". This is based on the whole firmware/OCZ fiasco and some reports of data loss for the earlier firmwares. Better wait for those units to be flushed out of the marketplace and guarantee that the drive you buy will contain the mainstream firmware. (the same thing also happened to Indilinx and even Intel, but now their firmware is stable).

 

[MagickMan]

I agree, until there's more information, recommending them as a reliable SSD would be foolish. Hell, right now there's no way I'd trust them with "mission critical" data.

 

[Zap]

Vista - you have everything except for TRIM. Solution is to do manual trimming (i.e. link to the Intel SSD toolbox, Indilinx's manual TRIM utility)

I thought Vista had Trim as well? :\

 

[taltamir]

I thought Vista had Trim as well? :\

nope... MS says if you want trim, buy win7. Manufacturers worked around that via their manual trim tools.

to be fair, that is exactly the kind of stuff a new OS should be providing... this isn't a security fix for what should have never been there in the first place, but a new feature that improves the OS.

 

[Zap]

BTW, thanks for the suggestions, jimhsu.

I've updated the sections:
Which SSD should I buy?
Proper care and feeding for SSDs.

 

[jimhsu]

For Linux, kernels > 2.6.33 support TRIM (http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_33#head-b9b8a40358aaef60a61fcf12e9055900709a1cfb). However, that does NOT mean that the OS itself will pass the TRIM command.

Honestly I'm not sure about which distros support it. Better wait for someone more experienced to contribute.

You may or may not want to add a blurb about system restore having negative effects on TRIM. I have confirmed this along with several other commentators: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2072259 . This is not a required tweak by any means.

 

[In2Photos]

Any chance for a section like "How large should I buy?"

I am planning to purchase an SSD for my i7 photo machine that I built Feb '09. I will also be installing Win 7. Currently I have a 640GB WD Black drive with 3 partitions, 60GB for OS and Apps, 60GB for Data (LR catalog, software downloads, manuals, word docs, etc) and the remaining ~470GB is for Photos.

I'm thinking that I need a 60-64GB drive (for Win 7, Lightroom, Photoshop, Office, FF, AVG and other small programs), but I read about everyone buying a 30GB drive and how they only have Win 7 and a couple other programs installed on it, then use another drive for other programs. Is this due to price?

Is there a good way to determine what programs are best used on an SSD over a traditional disc drive? Lightroom uses a catalog and preview files that I'm guessing would be better off on an SSD as it is constantly reading/writing to the drive. This catalog is presently stored on my "Data" drive and is fairly large (don't recall off hand how large).

 

[taltamir]

Any chance for a section like "How large should I buy?"

That depends on your wealth level, your propensity for spending, your intended use, the amount of space you need, etc...

generally the suggestion is "as small as possible while still fitting all the stuff you want to fit on it"

 

[Clocky]

I'm fairly new to SSDs, and I just read a review at myce of the OCZ Vertex 2 100GB. The whole review seems very extensive, with all sorts of graphs I don't know about. Do you guys have any idea what the reality suite of myce is? I want to know what the difference would be in the real world, and it seems like this 'suite' is testing this but I don't understand it, sorry for the n00b question

 

[Zap]

Clocky, welcome to Anandtech Forums.

I'm fairly new to SSDs, and I just read a review at myce of the OCZ Vertex 2 100GB. The whole review seems very extensive, with all sorts of graphs I don't know about. Do you guys have any idea what the reality suite of myce is? I want to know what the difference would be in the real world, and it seems like this 'suite' is testing this but I don't understand it, sorry for the n00b question

I'm not familiar with that site, nor how they do reviews.

You know that Anandtech started as a review site, right?

OCZ's Vertex 2, Special Sauce SF-1200 Reviewed

Not only are the typical synthetic benchmarks used, Anandtech Storage Bench is used. It is a custom "suite" of tasks. The tasks are described in the article, so you can see how close (or not) they match your computer usage patterns.

 

[shortylickens]

Well, it finally happened. Windows 7 thrashed my 1TB Hitachi to death. Would rather they just made it so 8GB of RAM was enough and it didnt need to tear up the hard drive constantly. I guess thats asking too much.
Posting from my netbook now.

Will probably get the bare minimum for installing the OS and most needed apps. All bulk storage will go on another 1TB drive. I cant afford bulk SSD.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820139162
According to Anandtech and this thread, that series and brand should be acceptable for good quality and reasonable performance. I am really getting tired of replacing burned out hard drives once a year. Am hoping this will end that nonsense.

Anyone think its a bad purchase? Wont need to order for a little while. My gaming rig and netbook can take care of most needs for now.

OR..............
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227393
Is this one more reliable?

 

[taltamir]

Who is they, how would they "make it so", and what exactly do you do that you have thrashing with 8GB of ram (and how is it MS's fault?)?

 

[ccubed]

Does anyone have links or their own tips and techniques for keeping your Windows/Program installs as slim as possible for use on an SSD drive?

I don't have one yet, but the performance gains seem to be really impressive so I'm thinking about making the jump. But my current Windows Vista install with about 5 games and Office 2007 (amongst various other smaller programs) is at around 100 gigs. I've actually had to install a few of those games on what was going to be the storage partition because I was filling my 100 gig OS/Program partition so fast. Granted, two of those games, Fallout 3 and Dragon Age, have a ton of mods to bloat their install size, but even without them my Vista + Programs install size was pretty huge.

Even before I get an SSD I'd like to know more about getting a leaner core installation package, but when I make the jump to SSD I'll REALLY need that info.

 

[taltamir]

Its simple... Get a secondary spindle drive... install most programs and games to it.
If a game is slow, I test install it on the SSD and benchmark, some games are amazingly faster on the SSD and I will only install it there now (ex: NWN2 map transitions are significantly faster when done from an SSD), some games have no noticeable or measurable performance difference (ex: Distand Worlds... loading a massive galaxy for me went from 1 minute and 11 second to 1 minute and 8 seconds... by moving the saved games and the game's install dir to the SSD)

 

[shortylickens]

My gaming machine and office machine are separate. And the game rig almost never goes online for anything except Steam verification. I get the files I need over the network from my office system, which can get by just fine with 30GB of SSD for the OS and basic programs, and a 1TB of HDD for pron and warez and shit (just kidding).

So, does anyone have any thoughts on my question? About drive preferences?

 

[shortylickens]

OK, since no one said I shouldnt, I got the Kingston 30GB V series. Hopefully its as stable as everyone says. I dont even care about speed, I just wanna install Windows 7 one more time and never again. Ripping open my case and swapping drives used to be fun. Now its just a hassle.
Even more hassle will be reinstalling all my software. And then copying over all my junk from one full 1TB drive to an empty one. Am grateful for my laptop. Es muy bueno! :awe:

Alright, installation and rebooting happened a little bit faster than the last time. Not exactly lightning speed, but thats not what I was going for anyway.

 

[Campy]

which ssd should i choose in the ~150£ price range? I'm mainly considering the OCZ Vertex 2 50GB and the Intel X-25M 80GB drives, but I'm open for suggestions.

 

[wpcoe]

Page File
Leave it enabled (proven that some software needs it) but if you have lots of RAM then reduce the size and make min/max the same.

Do you recommend leaving the page file on the SSD, or putting it on a secondary spindle drive?

Somewhere I read that with Win 7 (and maybe Vista?) it was a good idea to keep just a small page file on the system drive and put the rest on a different drive (not just a different partition on the same drive, but on a different physical hard drive). Is that only because of the read/write times of a spindle drive?

I looked at my Win 7 C: partition and see that it's about 32GB with all my apps (all my data is on a separate partition). I have a 1GB pagefile.sys and a 4.5GB hiberfile.sys and thought, hmmm, I could trim my partition size by deleting them, but then wondered if using hibernation with an SSD could be a Good Thing, being an almost instantaneous operation rather than the disk-thrashing intense operation on a spindle drive. Any thoughts on that?

I rarely use hibernate on my desktop computer, but I frequently (usually) use it on my older (Pentium M 2Ghz Acer Travelmate) notebook. Booting Windows (Vista) on my notebook seems to take forever, whereas hibernate seems to only take 50% of forever. I rarely use hibernate for the purpose of keeping open programs in place; rather, I use hibernate as a quicker way of getting to a usable Windows screen.

It'd be nice to be able to get a budget-priced 30GB SSD for my system, but I don't think I could trim my C: partition enough.* Maybe a 40GB SSD, but more likely a 50GB or larger?

*Yes, I could install programs to a partition on a spindle drive rather than the default C: on the SSD, but wouldn't that dilute the value of getting an SSD and keeping the programs on such a speedy drive?

 

[Zap]

Do you recommend leaving the page file on the SSD, or putting it on a secondary spindle drive?

Somewhere I read that with Win 7 (and maybe Vista?) it was a good idea to keep just a small page file on the system drive and put the rest on a different drive (not just a different partition on the same drive, but on a different physical hard drive). Is that only because of the read/write times of a spindle drive?

Yes. If you are into tweaking for that last iota of performance, then you want the page file to be on the fastest drive that is least loaded. With an SSD it would be the SSD because SSDs have higher I/O throughput than HDDs. With only HDDs in a system, using a secondary HDD makes some sense.

I looked at my Win 7 C: partition and see that it's about 32GB with all my apps (all my data is on a separate partition).

Yeah, you'll want at least a 50GB SSD if not larger.

I rarely use hibernate on my desktop computer... I rarely use hibernate for the purpose of keeping open programs in place; rather, I use hibernate as a quicker way of getting to a usable Windows screen.

An SSD will boot Windows faster, so you probably no longer need Hibernate on your desktop.

It'd be nice to be able to get a budget-priced 30GB SSD for my system, but I don't think I could trim my C: partition enough.* Maybe a 40GB SSD, but more likely a 50GB or larger?

*Yes, I could install programs to a partition on a spindle drive rather than the default C: on the SSD, but wouldn't that dilute the value of getting an SSD and keeping the programs on such a speedy drive?

Yeah, personally I'm not a fan of only sticking Windows on an SSD. I have Windows, all applications and my top handful of games on SSDs, with the rest of my games and my data on spindle drives.

How about a nice 60GB SSD? You can get an OCZ Vertex 60GB (Indilinx) for $115 on Newegg today. That's with free shipping, plus an extra $10 off rebate if you do such things making it a potential $105. There's also 2% Bing cashback if you do that too. The 40GB Intel was also on sale for $100, but I'd rather pay the $5 extra and do the rebate for the extra 20GB. A riskier bet is the Dane-Elec 80GB kit for $125 after rebate. Riskier because it is the older G1 Intel (no Trim, might actually be a better choice outside of Win7) plus the rebate is a whopping $75, so if it gets denied for those myriad of excuses that rebate houses give, you'll be out $200.

 

[wpcoe]

Thanks for the info, Zap.

All those tempting prices on SSDs remain largely a fantasy for me, at the moment. I live in Thailand, and SSDs are just starting to hit the streets here in reasonable quantity. When I go to the USA to visit family next (usually 2x/year), I hope Fry's or somebody else has some good deals!

Ironically, even spindle drives that are made in Thailand, are usually more expensive here than in the USA. I think they need to export them to USA, then re-import them from USA?

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

A riskier bet is the Dane-Elec 80GB kit for $125 after rebate. Riskier because it is the older G1 Intel (no Trim, might actually be a better choice outside of Win7) plus the rebate is a whopping $75, so if it gets denied for those myriad of excuses that rebate houses give, you'll be out $200.

Wait a sec. I thought that the G1 was more resilient to fragmentation / usage than even the G2 (w/o TRIM enabled)? That and with the 8820 firmware's improved garbage collection, the G1 still spanks everything out there even after extensive usage (well, other than the G2 and SandForce that is).

 

[Zap]

I thought that the G1 was more resilient to fragmentation / usage than even the G2 (w/o TRIM enabled)?

I've heard that too. Guess it depends on if you use Windows 7 or not.

 

[aggressor]

You'd be out $75, not $200

 

[graysky]

Nice post. Thanks for rewriting it. I took a stab at a wiki article geared toward Linux users, but info in universal here. Please contribute if you can.