SSD Internet Cache and Other Optimization Questions

[jimmyzaas]

I purchased a SSD recently, a Crucial C300. I picked this over the M4 specifically for the 34nm nand and a great track record. So far I'm loving it.

Now I'm looking at all these SSD tweaks and I'm completely lost. In Anand's Vertex 3 Pro article, Anand mentions a Power User sees about 7 GB writes per day. Assuming that's the absolute worse I can do, that means my SSD should last me more than 108,000 days. However, now I read about Firefox/IE/Chrome Internet Cache can kill SSDs because of the high amounts of small writes to the SSD. Is there any truth to this?

If I move all the internet cache and temp files to a normal hard drive, why the hell am I bothering with an SSD? It seems cumbersome and counterproductive.

Moving on, I read Windows 7 automatically optimizes a new installation if an SSD is detected. I used the latest MSDN 7 64bit SP1-U disc and the only optimization I saw was TRIM was enabled. The rest, defrag, indexing, superfetch and all that crap were still enabled. Did Anand have to disable all that stuff to get the 7GB writes per day?

I'm dying to know what tweaks are employed by the Anand staff for their SSD installations. Do you leave your PC on 24/7?

I really wish Anand can post a How-To article on SSD optimization.. Myths and Facts. I find all these SSD Tweaks but how much truth is behind each tweak.

 

[jjmIII]

There is nothing to know. Set BIOS to AHCI, and install Win7. Enjoy.

 

[razel]

+1 jjmIII

Browsers do not directly access drives, like benchmarks do. Browsers tell Windows that they have written something. Windows will cache it and decides when to write to disk. This has been the case since Win 3.1. Win7/Vista do an awesome job of writing to 4k disks like SSD and newer HDDs. winXP needs help.

Anand hasn't written a how-to because there really doesn't need to be a one. However our moderator ZAP did. It's in the sticky at the top of the thread list.

 

[jimmyzaas]

This is good to know because there's so much crap and scare floating about the internet that it makes newbies like me nervous.

Thanks.

 

[nanaki333]

as others have said, don't worry about it. i had 2 intel G1s in raid0 for over 2 years on the same OS install and barely made a dent in them. your drive is likely to die for a bios or firmware issue before maxing out the write cycles

 

[Makaveli]

I have my Browser Caches on a ram disc

why RAM disc > SSD!

 

[Yellowbeard]

A lot of the tweaks I see people pushing for SSDs seem to rely on the old logic from the WIN98/WIN2K/XP days when a lot of people had 1GB or RAM or less along with HDDs. Some of the tweaks may be useful for minimizing writes to the SSD etc but, that is more of a longevity thing useful for smaller SSDs than it is for more performance or speed.

More +1 for JJMIII.