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Yeah! SSD!

J

Jman13

Senior member
So I'm back in Windows after a not-so fun experience with the migration of my HD to my new Crucial M4 SSD. I used Paragon Migrate to SSD to clone my boot drive to the SSD, which in theory eventually worked, but what a pain.

First, I tried to just shrink my drive to the new SSD by leaving out my User folder, thinking the program would redirect the stuff, since it's supposed to just use the directories you want. THing is, when you do that, it breaks Windows. So, after unsuccessfully trying to get Windows to find my profile directories, I rebooted into my HDD install of Windows, moved My Documents and My Music off the main hard drive to bring it down below 128GB, and then re-ran the cloning tool. Thing is, it is very finicky about the cloning, and ended up deleting and re-cloning the HD 3 times in succession upon reboot before finally actually working.

But...here I am at my desktop, with my system completely as I left it, but with a very fast SSD instead of the 500GB HD I was using as my boot drive. WEI is now 7.6....not that that's a useful number.
 
Are you sure you're using a sata III port. Sorry you had to go through all that, but it's exactly why I always do a fresh install.
 
Yes, using a SATA 3 port.

I thought about doing a fresh install, and while this was a pain, in the end it saved me probably 8-10 hours of work. It's amazing how quick programs load. 🙂

You can never really go by WEI. In Sandra, my drive is testing right on par with its database for this model. (400MB/sec read)
 
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About 35 GB now. Why do you ask? Something seem off from what very limited information I've provided?
 
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That's probably why you're getting a 7.6 score. Ssds become slower as they fill up. I only use ~50GB, but still bought a 256GB ssd for this very reason. When I say slow down I don't mean drive wear or anything that wrecks the ssd. I just mean it's potential speeds become slower until there is more free space or a secure erase happens. That being said, I'm very OCD with this kind of stuff and you should be happy and enjoy your new ssd lol 🙂

Sent from my HTC EVO 3D using Tapatalk
 
Quick question...I realized I was running in IDE mode, so I went to change it to AHCI, which changed it for all SATA devices, and resulted in an immediate BSOD/restart when loading windows. Changed it back and it's working fine, but I thought SSDs are supposed to be in AHCI.

Oh, and I'm moving my user data to my HDD, in the proper recommended way, so that'll get my SSD To about 75GB free.
 
Thanks...got it working. Big improvement in read speed, especially the 4k-64 test on the AS SSD benchmark (from 28MB/s to 280MB/s) Sequential read went to 490MB/s.

I do have one potentially big issue that I'm hoping you (or someone else) can help me with, though. I moved all the data in my user folder to the HD I formerly had as my boot drive (which has now been formatted). It copied fine, and was 46GB. Windows correctly re-pointed everything in the registry to the new location, so when I go to libraries, etc, it goes to the E drive now.

Problem is...while the files were deleted (as in, they don't show up on the SSD anymore), I didn't get any of the free space from deletion. It's like the drive still thinks they're there from a size standpoint, even though the files don't show in the file system. How can I get this space back? Otherwise, it's kind of like an 80GB drive....what happened here? If I select all the folders on C, it shows a total file space of 57.8 GB, including hidden files. But in "My Computer" and if I do a chkdsk in the command prompt, it shows the drive as having 82.6GB used.

EDIT: Found it...it's the pagefile and hibernation file. 16GB a piece. Used WinDirStat
 
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Run disk cleanup or read the thread I linked above. "System Maintenance" which is the last bit in his second post. That's all I can really think of tbh.
 
Yup...definitely the pagefile and hibernation file. Disabled hibernation (which I don't use anyway), which got rid of 16GB, and then moved my pagefile to my clean HDD (it'll almost never hit that anyway with 16GB of RAM...plus I wouldn't want it on the SSD due to the # of writes). Now I have 64.4GB free (of 119, since it's using real GB instead of marketing GB). 🙂
 
No, don't move the pagefile to the HDD hehe. I'd set it to 400mb min and 1024 max, keeping it on the SSD or remove it entirely.
 
Well, anyway, re-running the WEI, I now get 7.9 on the disk, I'm sure from moving to AHCI. Now I'm only held back by my 'lowly' processor score of 7.6...have 7.8s on everything else.

I'm going to keep the pagefile on the HDD for now. If I notice slowdowns or grinding, I'll consider making a small one on the SSD, but I'd rathe save the write cycles. I tend to keep HDDs in use for a very long time, (one of the disks in my machine is 4 years old, and I just on this build finally retired a drive I got in 2001).
 
Jocelyn84 said:
No, don't move the pagefile to the HDD hehe. I'd set it to 400mb min and 1024 max, keeping it on the SSD or remove it entirely.
Click to expand...

I'll 2nd this advice. My own experience is I have 8 GB of ram, so I had a chunky pagefile sitting on the SSD.

I manually changed it to 512 MB min and [I forgot the actual number] GB max. Then I used my computer normally. Windows is allowed to grow the pagefile if necessary. However, so far, the pagefile has remained at the minimum size. So it's a win/win because I freed up a lot of space by practically eliminating the pagefile, but I retain maximum potential performance if the pagefile is needed because it stays on the SSD (from what I understand, some programs will artificially check for the pagefile so you may need to keep it around just in case, but it may never get used if you have a decent amount of RAM).
 
My SSD just became a better deal! I paid $169 for it when I bought it the other day. While browsing at Microcenter at lunchtime, though I noticed it now on sale for $149. Went to the service counter and just like that, $21 back. 🙂 Sweet.
 
Jocelyn84 said:
That's probably why you're getting a 7.6 score. Ssds become slower as they fill up. I only use ~50GB, but still bought a 256GB ssd for this very reason. When I say slow down I don't mean drive wear or anything that wrecks the ssd. I just mean it's potential speeds become slower until there is more free space or a secure erase happens. That being said, I'm very OCD with this kind of stuff and you should be happy and enjoy your new ssd lol 🙂

Sent from my HTC EVO 3D using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Ummm. in all the time I've been here, I have never heard that, and I actually don't believe it. I don't buy this without further proof. Unlike spindle drives, SSDs work entirely in parallel. All the chips comprising the drive operate and contain data simultaneously. It's like a mini-RAID. In fact, the larger an SSD, the more in parallel it operates and the faster its overall performance, as there are more memory chips that can be accessed in parallel at a given time. I doubt that the amount of data in each chip has any effect on performance. Spindle drives do exhibit the kind of behavior you mention since as the tracks get filled up on the wider-radius sectors of each spinning disk, the read/write head has to travel further on two axes to access it.
 
BFG10K said:
Check this out: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-60gb-benchmark-review,3137-8.html

It looks like certain SandForce based drives' read speeds can be affected by having data on them.
Click to expand...

This and maybe I'm mistaken, but I've seen Tweaktown, rwlabs. and other review sites do these fill tests (Drives with Data Testing - 25%, 50%, 75% Full States and Dirty / Empty Test). Maybe I'm wrong in thinking this has any effect, but then why do they run this test? I've also seen people post about getting a bigger capacity then you need, say at least double what you plan to use. Is this a myth and are these tests meaningless, or is there some truth to them? Obviously when you're using 90%+, you definitely see a slowdown, but I'd imagine it would start before 90% even if it were a minor slowdown. I've also seen this done with benchmarks other than PCMark Vantage, though I can't seem to locate one right now.

http://www.rwlabs.com/article.php?cat=&id=590&pagenumber=9
 
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No.. Jocelyn is 100% right on target here. It is a fact that even SSD's slow down as they get fuller.

Some controllers cope better than the others(Intel is excellent here)and not nearly to the extent/percentage that HDD slows down.. but less throughput, random performance, and IOPS is the end result nonetheless.

Many also forget that the amount of partial blocks consumed can be quite high at times(especially after random data benchmarks). This leaves an already limited free space SSD in even more trouble as it is even more fragmented than it already typically would be by design due to wear leveling requirements.

I usually tell people like this. If you tend to have lighter usage levels and don't stream HD media/music for hours a day?.. then by all means.. run it up to 80% full and enjoy it. Just don't try it on drives running much below 60GB capacity, is all. lol

If you do enjoy longer sessions of streaming media(without ramdisk/software caching) or marathon vid/pic/music editing(and lets not forget about benchmarking)? Then watch out for any drive smaller than 256GB being too full. Then again, those larger drives are so fast that it may not be something severe enough to put people off of the negatives.

In the end it's not so much about capacity, though it's true that smaller drives are slower already/speed loss is compounded by overfilling, but more about the actual free space available for the anticipated write loads for that particular user/worksession. Then from there we can optimize the "quality" of the free space remaining with idle time recovery(GC).

So, anyone who thinks that an SSD controller can wear level(including the rotation of permanently stored data), do partial block consolidation, AND recover dirty blocks on the fly(trimmed or not) as efficiently on a drive that is 90% full as compared to one that is 30% full?.. is really putting them atop too high a pedestal. There are limitations to controllers processing speed and the overhead related to dealing with huge messes on drives containing relatively small amounts of free space can and does have impact. It'll take faster processors, larger DRAM, larger capacity, and much improved firmware to hit that sweet spot.

The actual tradeoff is usually in the eye of the beholder though and no one should be making definitive blanket statements about static percentages of rec'd free space. It depends entirely on the controller, drive capacity, and the usage environment.
 
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Thank you for clearing that up Groberts. Quick question... If I'm using ~50GB of a 256GB SSD would you recommend over provisioning, and if so, how much?

Edit: I'm fairly sure ~50GB will turn into ~120GB shortly, and none of that will be static data.

Sent from my HTC Eva 4G using Tapatalk
 
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Jocelyn84 said:
Thank you for clearing that up Groberts. Quick question... If I'm using ~50GB of a 256GB SSD would you recommend over provisioning, and if so, how much?

Edit: I'm fairly sure ~50GB will turn into ~120GB shortly, and none of that will be static data.

Sent from my HTC Eva 4G using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

I would over provision just for the sake of drive health. Your fine with 120-180gb of data on that drive but it will clean itself much more efficiently by simply over provisioning.
 
kbp said:
I would over provision just for the sake of drive health. Your fine with 120-180gb of data on that drive but it will clean itself much more efficiently by simply over provisioning.
Click to expand...

Thank you! So I could use diskpart and shrink volume from 238GB to something like 200GB, right?

Sent from my HTC Eva 4G using Tapatalk
 
Best way is a reinstall and only using 200gb as your primary drive. The free space must be unallocated space for it to be useful for over provisioning.
 
kbp said:
Best way is a reinstall and only using 200gb as your primary drive. The free space must be unallocated space for it to be useful for over provisioning.
Click to expand...

But if I shrink it without extending, post install, wouldn't that be the exact same thing? The extra space would become unallocated I thought. I'd really like to avoid reinstalling if possible.
 
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