SSD for Windows 2003 Server

[Carson Dyle]

I have a home file server running 32-bit Windows 2003 Server. In addition to file serving, it also runs some server apps, including a web-based media server that uses MySQL. I've been thinking of upgrading the system disk to an SSD for better application performance. A 60GB drive would be plenty for both the OS and data.

Without support for TRIM, is this advisable?

Is there any reason to avoid a SandForce based SSD? Someone locally is selling a used Patriot Pyro for cheap.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Nobody is running an SSD on an OS that doesn't do TRIM? Just wondering if performance will be OK and not noticeably deteriorate over time with just the drive's native garbage collection. Being a home server, although it runs 24x7, it's not used for much of the day, so there's plenty of idle time.

 

[hhhd1]

over-provision.

 

[Carson Dyle]

over-provision.

To what end? If I fully allocate the drive and never fill it past, say 80%, then the native GC should have plenty of room to work.

 

[hhhd1]

Not filling the drive to more than 80% is only useful when you have TRIM, since there isn't TRIM in windows 2003 , then you have to over-provision to compensate for that.

The amount of over-provisioning to do should be something around 7%~20% depending on your usage.

If you are doing heaving write operation, than you should consider over-provisioning more.

If you value the storage space more, or will not do large amounts of writes, than over-provision 7%.


To over-provision, first secure erase the drive, then allocate a partition with the required size (something like 90%), while leaving the rest ~10% untouched.