SSD Thread (Benchmarks, Brands, News, and Advice)

Forgive me for sounding so retarded but...

My SSD is doing...something. I hear these tiny clicking noises as if it's trying to launch something (like an HDD) but the thing is I have no programs open whatsoever and no unusual background services running as I just did a clean install with very minimal application installation. I thought SSDs didn't make such noise?

 

The you bought a HDD???


SSDs are silent - no moving parts - or maybe its the fan?

 

Ah got it - it's my cooler that's making tiny noises lol

 

they can do some chipnoise, tho.. sounds annoying if they do that (damn you, early samsung ssd!! )

that's what i guessed..

the more silent the environment gets, the more you notice tiny things. i now always hear the SCREEN FAN in my 24" screen. i guess, 99% of the customers (or more) don't even know that it has a fan....

 

So here's a question for you guys. Solid State Drives noticeably make many applications launch instantly. Yet many of the larger or badly programed apps still take a considerable amount of time. While the SSD makes the launching faster, they just don't have the noticeable snap to opening themselves like smaller/better programed applications do.

That leads me to this question: What is the cause of bigger/badly programed applications still taking a long time to launch?

Is it the SSD's fault, and will a faster future drive eventually eliminate this loading time too?

Or is it the CPU's fault, with the CPU needing to process so much before it can fully open the program?

I can't imagine with most SSDs having read speeds of ~250MB/s that it is really the SSD still slowing down the loading times so much. Yet having installed Windows 7 on my Mac, seeing the delay in iTunes loading or Firefox loading with any decent amount of Add-Ons installed is ridiculous. Likewise with most heavy, non-Apple apps on OS X. So what do you guys think?

On another note, has anyone else tried the Office 2010 Beta on their SSD? Holy crap, is the app launching fast! It's my go-to demonstration that I show people to show off my SSD! I think I'm going to try to get a video recorded of it later today that I'll share with you guys.

 

from what i tested, itunes is single threaded and used up the cpu of one core during the whole loading process.

so it's most likely the parsing and verifying of the library, the initialisation of the audio engine and encoders, and the loading of all the additional information of the library taking the time, cpu wise.


for firefox it's mostly it's own back-end, which is coded in a multiplatform way. javascript, no matter how optimized (just as html, css, xul) is always a HUGE overhead.

firefox has, in essense, an own mini-windows for networking, parsing of files, drawing windows/buttons etc with it (xul engine). and that first has to be initialized.

the addons are written in javascript/xul etc, so can be loaded only AFTER the firefox engine and libraries got loaded. all of the files have to be parsed, executed.



so mostly, those apps have some other bottlenecks than disk, indeed. most of the time, cpu.


i told years ago that going the webapp xml html javascript css route is BAD, as it's additional overhead for nothing. but well, till to day, people don't understand that overhead. just ing around how in the days of gigahertz, multicore, ssds things still aren't instant

well, there you go

 

I find Office 07, even the notoriously slow to boot up Word 2007, loads plenty fast on my Intel. Of course I mean the 1st load after I turn on my laptop, not subsequent loads from cache. It's nice if Microsoft was able to get even more speed for 2010... but I tell you Office 07 on an SSD is not a problem

iTunes is a POS. The reason is a combination of factors that's basically a perfect storm. First, iTunes depends on several modules and seperate programs loading in a sequence. Second, it has to ensure that "iTunes Helper" process is running (and if not, it has to propagate it). Third iTunes has a pathological need to ensure it has an internet connection. The tests it runs to see if its connected and the hoops it jumps through to establish a connection have nothing to do with the hard drive. Fourth it physically has to identify and display your song/movie library. This doesn't include "optional" services like Genius.

Firefox has wildly consistent load times because of its not-so-random random number generator. Mozilla goofed and decided to pick numbers based on files on the users hard drive. Depending on how large a file, the load times vary. Incidentally, this would be the place Intel and the Marvel controllers in a very good place. Small random reads and writes...

Edit: Dave clearly knows more than me, but I stand by what I said

 

Desktop users can RAID 4 of those X-25V's @ $100 apiece and have a 160GB boot drive that will blow away any single drive on the market in performance and price.

 

I have spoken of just this a number of times and ITunes is right up there with a number of programs that like to run in the background at boot and self update. I believe it is Groove Monitor that throws itself in the startup folder with Office 07 but many people suffer through excruciating performance drops and slow boot times because of this.

It takes but a click to start something and one of the best pieces of advice anyone can ever give, or receive, is to have the system software run only when needed. Unfortunately, most aren't aware of how to shut down all of the processes once installed.

 

I can't stand that. Every single little program has to have an updater. And then every once and awhile, you have to download updates for the updater. So annoying.

 

Kinda funny the way you put it and makes for good inbvestigative skills finding and shutting them all down.

 

I have an alienware m17x with a 128 ssd made by samsung, and i have to tell you i don't see a bloody difference between this and traditional, 7200rpm drives! The ssd is just slightly a bit faster, this reminds me of the arugment between core 2 duos and core i7 same crap for most of the time, mostly.

 

Freedom, just like every system, your system should be given a fresh install and then tuned for the hardware you have in it.

You should also check to see if there are any firmware updates for that system. Is it new? When was the ssd manufactured? Is it Win7 compliant?

 

Yes its new, i don't know how to find the firmware update les, its the 128 ssd samsung manufactured for dell.

 

NO, if it is new, the drive should definitely be Win 7 TRIM compliant. Can I ask you to download Crystal Disk Mark (google it), run a test and post the results?

 

Well i gave the machine for my friend to work on, so that i have to get back to you on that, i hope i don't have too flash it and loose all my info, what do you recommended for a 256 ssd and bloody cheap lol. I will post the results in a few days, midterm hw to do.

 

Cheap 256...You could go Sammy but thats about it and thats going to still get ya for $550... I might consider going to a better drive of a lesser capacity and using a secondary hard drive internally or externally.

 

I second Les' advice. The 256GB Samsungs seem to be fine, but you'd really appreciate a smaller/faster Intel or Vertex. You already weren't thrilled with the Samsung you got so I'd recommend a purchase that has a higher chance of "wowing" you.

 

Mushkin seems like a good deal if you can find one reasonably priced! gl tho

 

Yeah i know i had a feeling the ssds made by dell weren't going to be that good at all, well i'll be on the hunt for ssds sales, but its not a top priotry right now, since i have just put a down payment onto a guitar and get some musically things done and MIDTERMS!! lol

 

freedom16,

My client has a Dell M6400 that not only 'matched' a 7200 RPM drive (128GB Samsung SSD installed), it was actually slower. Worse, the first time I saw/used it, it would actually stutter right-clicking on the desktop (or, any icon on the desktop too). This machine was originally Vista 64bit with 8GB RAM.

I then proceeded to upgrade it to Win 7 and much to my surprise, it was not only the same, but sometimes worse than the Vista installation. (This was a brand new system only a couple of months old at the time!).

What fixed it was installing every single update offered by Dell - whether it was actually updating the currently installed software or not. At the end of that exercise (a long 8 hrs!) - the computer literally flew. Okay, now, we're talking 'SSD-like' speeds (note: still not as fast as the same clients 160GB G2 though in a much lower platform (Opteron) desktop).

So, my first suggestion is a clean install (after a 'secure' erase (yes, all data gone) on your SSD. If you just want to fool around; try what I did and install/reinstall all the drivers available for your model.

To 'fix' the issues: get an Intel G2 160GB drive and throw the Samsung away (oops! I mean sell it ).

Good luck.

 

nothing wrong with the internet thing, and it doesn't do anything to the performance of the app start, so that doesn't matter. main task of itunes is the actual loading of the library, and the quicktime functions, AND the skin (it can't show the window until after it's fully initialized, and all loading is done, and the skin is rendered..)
this is different to most other apps who just pop up the window, then load the library. doing so would allow itunes to look much more snappy (they could even store a precached tiny snapshot of the library with only the first tracks to display right from the start or such).

main issue with itunes is, the developers just don't care much.

was just true in one alpha/beta/nightly build. not true for any ordinary user, ever.


in general, one always sees much slower startup performance of any app using an own environment. itunes uses quicktime, different hw drivers for interfacing with ipods and such, an own networking stack. quite much stuff for apple compatibility, obviously. all of this is dublication of what gets loaded at the os start. another app doesn't have to do that.

firefox loads an own environment + the addons. the own environment is the cross platform xul framework, which is, again, duplication of what's existing in the os.

both would be much faster when using only native frameworks from microsoft. but they would lack quite some functionality (itunes)/would have much additional work to be done (firefox).

oh, and btw, the addon framework from firefox is hell slow. but even slower: the actual addons. adblock f.e., with the wrong filter-packages can take seconds to initialize.

both give you functionality that you wouldn't have, if they would only "run when started". which is why they have that. not all of that is evil. it just got abused in the past.

would you like every driver on your system to have to be startet manually? every service? every time? no?

 

Good price on the Nova at the Egg. $339. Free ship 128GB. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233107&Tpk=nova 128gb

 

Dave,
of course I wouldn't want every driver to start manually but thats also the far side of the street compared to the problem that most experience which is the hijacking of the system because every program wants to have some small part run automatically once installed.

Programs like Groove Monitor in Office are a great example where there is no need to be running unless the program is running.

 

groove monitor is a great example of being always available in explorer without having to manually start it, actually. it's functionality you always want present, and don't want to manually think of it.

but we might have different point of views. i know why computers got created: to replace manual work. and i always focus on that point: make my computers more and more capable of serving me, not having me to serve the computer in some form.

messing with the autostarts of applications just for the geekness of being able to mess with it makes no sense. autorun stuff is always there for a reason. you just have to judge if it's a good reason or not. most actually are. even itunes by today is fine the way it starts. you can castrate it by disabling the stuff, but only if you don't care about the lack of features, then. and the features are actually quite good, if you know what they do.

 

The Windows 7 boot cd has a command prompt selection in repair my computer section where you can type diskpart [enter] list disk [enter] you can find your ssd then select it by typing, in my case, select disk 0 [enter] then you can erase by typing clean all [enter].

Clean all writes 0's to the entire drive which is bad for SSD's because I think, 0's = valid data on an SSD and 1's = erased or free space. I wonder if there is a command prompt to clean all write 1's or FF's or something like that?

I used that clean all command on my SSD yesterday prior to a new clean install but needed to run AS freespace cleaner and logoff for GC to restore peak performance.

The reason that I ran the clean all command was so that I could convert my SSD from dynamic back to basic. In order to convert from dynamic back to basic you have to remove all partitions and for some reason you cannot delete the 100mb partition on an SSD in Windows 7. You can delete the partition containing the balance of the SSD creating a single volume once again but not if the disk is dynamic -- for some reason delete was greyed out as an option for both partitions. Using the clean all command was the only way I could figure a way around the problem.

 

I guess I'm spoiled having an SSD. Seeing programs that aren't greased lightning annoys me, especially when I use them a lot.

Amen to what you said about iTunes. I'm functionally illiterate when it comes to this stuff, but I would have thought the internet stuff was holding the program back. iTunes uses its own network stack?! We know Apple's developers don't care that much about the Windows program. Look how long it took them to bring iTunes to Windows in the 1st place.

Well I'm glad Mozilla went and fixed the number generator. I do think it made it into the release of 3.5 and I didn't know it was fixed. Regardless I managed to forget about the addons Your example for AdBlock Plus is pretty apt given a lot of people seem to install it.

 

not really true, the ssd handles free space/valid data in an own list, independent on what data is on the cell.

BUT, if you write all 1 (or all 0?) to a cell, then it will be in a NON-EMPTY state that is very fast to erase (as it knows it doesn't have to erase it really, as the data is already identical to an erased cell). and thus, the erasing, while still at it's latest point, is very fast.

well, they support their networking infrastructure called bonjour to be able to communicate to other itunes related apple devices on the network (other itunes instances, wlan speakers, etc..). so it makes sense to port it to windows, as else, itunes on windows would be "crippled" and all would cry about that.

it was fixed after about one day later.

adblock is a very great example to look at the boot performance of firefox:
take "Easylist + Easylist (german)", and it's slow. take dr. evil and it's fast. the list is much shorter to parse at bootup.

 

Ideally, there would be a command telling the controller to "reset" the NAND to empty, erased or something.

 

which it does,then. but it's still "empty, valid data", and still has to "omg, i'm overwriting it now, so it's NOW not valid data anymore, but gets NEW valid data".

and there, trim wins. as it allows the ssd to drop the cell from the locked list of valid-data cells, allowing it to get emptied, AND released to new usage. ready to go.

that's why toni trim is just "toni trim", and not "real trim". it helps, but it's not the best solution. it's only the best if nothing better is around. (omg, obvious statement of the day, not? )

 

fastest PC with 40xSSD:
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/14386/patriot_claim_to_have_built_fastest_pc_in_the_world/

 

User on XtremeSystems has already nearly doubled their IOPS number:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=246384

 

I just bought an Intel X25-V today, cloned it from my SG 120G 7200rpm. I really don't notice a huge difference in boot up time, haven't timed it but I can tell you from heart it's not significant enough for me, sadly. Opening programs and browser is another story, the speed is pure breathtaking. So is there something that I'm not doing right that causes such poor boot up performance?

Vostro 1500 A06 Bios
T5470 1.6 GB (I'm taking this might be a bottleneck for startup?)
3GB RAM
40 GB Intel X-25V (Fireware 2CV102HB)
Nvidia 8600M GT 256 MB
Windows XP SP3

I'm getting 150~180MB read speed from a brief test.

 

xp isn't the best os to run on an ssd. you might consider moving to win7.

other than that, a clean install (and do it with ahci drivers, quite a hazzle on xp afaik) should help.

besides that, the os can just need some time to boot up your drivers and hw. how fast is it actually booting up?

 

Is there a significant difference between IRST and the MS drivers? I've tried out the standard MS drivers and the lack of reliable eSata hotswap killed it for me.

And it looks like Taleon has the same issues as me. Relatively long bootup, but in OS it performs just like it should.

 

Taleon,

My first thought would be that you cloned it rather than doing a Clean Install. I dont know your system at all but might suggest that your best move will be that nice fresh installation which, even on that V series, will help boot time and performance..

Also...XP....time to move up my friend as XP just cannot take advantage of your hardware as it use to.

Your 150/180 read speed means nothing and u should post a Crystal Disk Mark Test as the numbers you want to look at are the 4k random scores... The high read scores are virtually a wolf in sheeps clothing as they are the least valuable score when speaking specifically of your systems performance because large sequential reads are not commonly used.

 

not true. they mean much: if they are not according to specs, something's wrong. if they are, something's right

anyways, for best performance, one should be in ahci mode, and (esp for a 40gb ssd) have trim to stay high performing. both is not easily possible in xp.

but boottime of an os (esp after xp) is largely dependent on the drivers that have to be started, too. so some hw configs just boot slower, no matter what you do.

 

True...He is looking for real world and visible performance difference which is not noticeable as a result of the large sequential reads and writes Dave... It is a given though that those numbers reflect are the most refllective of whether the ssd is functioning correctly, simply because they are a higher score which shows the difference much easier.

Having sorted that out...again Op...post some Crystal scores and we will know your prob, for the most par right there...starting wiith AHCI.

 

How so?, please no quotes from MS blogs like msdn....trim...yup, what else? I haven't tried Win 7 on my SSD yet, but will do shortly.
You have considerably better boot times than most here do with 7, around the same as my slower SSD with XP and a few services stopped, is the wifi connected at 11.6 secs?....antivirus? have you done a file copy comparisons between the two ?.
If these win 7 SSD optimizations you hint of make a big difference, I'm certainly interested in hearing the results of your comparisons as long as it's done on the same pc with clean installs etc.

 

what else?
integrated ahci support?
by default aligned partitions, very important to easen the life of an ssd?
actually programmed with ssd in mind?
9 years of os evolution and revolutions integrated? don't let us talk about how win7 is better than xp, as it's just obvious.

 

I already know you think it's better because it looks really good and has better search, I'm more interested in the bottom line as far as speed goes, thats why we use them huh?

 

uhm.. all the points i listed ARE about that.

it's technically MUCH MORE ADVANCED and tailored to the hw of today (sata support, ahci support, aligned partitions, trim support, much improved memory management, list goes on and on).

and no, we use the os because the os delivers what we need: USEABILITY.

if you want a fast os, use dos.

 

Hmmm.. First and foremost, the AHCI concern brought up by Dave above is a huge concern but just to ease your worry about your boot tune...see below. Umm...the desktop is usable with the wifi connected around 8-9 seconds. The testing program uses is such that the final time has to reflect the loading of all services and startups, including those that run in the background.

So we are at AHCI and TRIM.... Antivirus... 18 seconds..no choice. I haven't found an antivirus that doesnt add less than 5-6 seconds load time. So my normal time is about 18 seconds with all usable and connected around 14-15.

I havent done any file copy comparisons but here...be amazed at the tests:

Win 7 is over a minute quicker on a 2.75Gb copy test....

As well, Dave will be the first two jump in and state there are really no optimizations that you can do to improve upon what Win 7 offers except for reducing on some key services... Its just that good.

And now to the idea of doing comparisons on the same system.....the idea of blowing off the dust on my ole XP disks is somewhat laughable and I used to say this with Vista as well. Why qould I ever want to remain a die hard with a less visuably appealing and less performing system? It just doesn't make sense. I could maybe justify it if I had only 512kb ram or even 1Gb and Vista but not with Win 7...sorry.

There are plenty of Youtube examples of Win7/XP comparisons and wait....

I can't remember but doesn't XP, by design limit you to only 2Gb ram if I remember? Hmm.. AHCI, more RAM and TRIM... I could be wrong about ram support as its been so long since I ever concerned myself with XP but...well we can also throw in software and hardware driver support.

Its kinda like trying to find parts for that ole Studebaker.

But if I may...I would love to see a Crystal Disk Mark and HDTune test scores on your system to see the lower rabdom writes as well as access times...

 

you tried MSE? for me, it's loading about instantly. what cpu do you have?

not really, but at the moment you go over 1gb memory usage, the os starts swapping to disk, as it hits a low-memory-limit programmed in the memory manager. so even while you might have 3.5gb ram available in your xp installation, after you use more than 1gb of ram, it starts to pageout everything to hell, making the whole system very slow even after short idling.

which is what i ment with "improved memory manager"

 

WD officially announces their consumer level MLC drives. Obviously it's from that random flash company they bought last year. I don't recognize the controller but the story trumpets wear leveling and other generic buzz words. I'm getting a "we licensed someone else's controller" kind of vibe. Also no word who makes the flash inside of it. Prices need to come down a little, too. I was hoping Western Digital would call them Velociraptor Mongoliensis or something :d

http://www.pcworld.com/article/190677/western_digital_to_sell_consumer_ssd.html

 

Anand just put a review up for WD Blue, havent had a chance to read it yet.
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3757

JMicron JMF618

 

sgilmore62,

Yeah, not impressed with the JMicron controller - nor the price.

WD thinks that people will be willing to pay twice the worth of a drive for the false sense of security of 'compatible-ness' it offers. I hope everyone skips this model and gives not only WD, but all SSD manufacturers a wake up call.

Most people don't buy an SSD for reliability right now - they buy it for pure speed. This fails hard (in my eyes).

Score?

Intel: 17 Gold, Competition: 0 (still) - okay, maybe a Bronze or a Silver, but that's pushing it.

Nothing left to do but wait patiently for a G3. Sigh.

 

Here are my Crystal scores:

--------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 2.2 (C) 2007-2008 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
--------------------------------------------------

Sequential Read : 186.700 MB/s
Sequential Write : 44.444 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 120.446 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 44.489 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 16.707 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 38.730 MB/s

Test Size : 100 MB
Date : 2010/03/03 9:12:54

I just timed my bootup time with my 7200rpm HDD

SSD: 37s to Window desktop (not splash), 56-58s until all taskbar programs show and no more OS load
HDD: 47s to desktop, 90 sec+ until relatively idle

It looks like my 'feel' was way off. And I've done 2 trials of each with warm boot and numbers are consistent. Reason why I can't switch to Windows 7 is one of the MMOs I play does not support/has issues with other platform other than XP.

Can someone please explain to me the significance between random read @ 512k/4k? Does it mean that small files with segments 4k size will be read slower compared to bigger chunks at 512k? Will reducing my cluster size have any significant effect on performance, right now it's at default 4k. The 512k random read and write should be a good indicator for my performance since my MMO files are in huge chunks, as wel as the pagefile? I still have 24.2G/37.2G space left if that's of concern. Thanks everyone for the input.

 

which mmo can't run on vista or win7 now. if their servers are still up and supported (why would you play the mmo else?), they should support the clients, too.

i BET it works just fine on win7.

 

Agreed. What the HELL is WD thinking. Compatibility? With what??? Moon landers? Sheesh!

Can you say "Bigfoot" ??? That thing was one step ahead of Punch Cards!