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

If I use the Nforce Serial ATA Controller instead of the default M$ driver there are never any max latency penalties even with the G1 fragmentation issues. The default M$ driver gets a little better queue 32/64 benchmarks with the Intel and better all around with the Samsung drive but clearly has some problems with latency.

Is there any precedent for M$ issuing new SATA drivers via update or service pack? With Nvidia chipset my only options are either Nforce SATA driver or the default M$ standard driver.

 

your chipset's SSD access time seems much better than intel's chipset.

 

Look at this crazy HDtune extra tests...

 

T500 vs N61(ICH9 vs ICH10): old model performs better.

surreal...driver bug?

 

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=247707

Post #13. New IRST drivers pass the TRIM command on to RAID arrays now. Works up to RAID 5 (which notebook users don't have anyway), so now you can RAID 0 and get TRIM.

 

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...Support-coming&p=500980&viewfull=1#post500980

 

Guys, which driver is best for the 160 GB G2? I'm using the Windows 7 one right now and noticed my write speeds have dipped quite a bit (drive is 75% full). I ran the toolbox but didn't see any improvements.

 

Do you have system restore disabled? It has been documented that system restore exacerbates fragmentation issues. As far as the best driver -- you will be better off with any of the IRST drivers as there is less fragmentation and latency. The latest IRST supports TRIM.

 

Isn't the 9.6 driver for desktops?

 

I have no idea, the only Intel SATA driver that works on my system is the default M$ AHCI one.

 

as long as you got intel hard drive controller, you can use it in your laptop.

 

I running it on my HP Pavilion DV6700t laptop. It's working great!

 

Running it on the system below.....no diff at all in benches from MS AHCI driver..

However.....you guys need to get this dude into the ssd thread... Check out all the tests and benches he did to prove TRIM is working in RAID...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=6045053&postcount=31

 

With the new 9.6 driver, is the ssd Toolbox still needed? I have it set to run every Friday, do I still need to do that?

 

WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME Win7 would be tricky with SW RAID?! GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR UGHHHH.

 

Not if you have a Gen 2 drive...

 

I have a 160GB G2. So yes to turn off the scheduled wipe and uninstall the Toolbox?

 

Ya....TRIM is and was doing the same thing if you were using the stock MS AHCI driver before....and now it is as well for the new Intel driver.

Myself, I am a bit dissappointed in the fact that there isn't a real confirmatory method of simply knowing TRIM is working.... I use the Optimizer in the toolbox weekly even though I know trim is working...eheheh

 

I'm reading mixed things from different sources on this. Will the toolbox work on an x25-E (g1)?

 

The toolbox will only work on X25M E G2.

 

Then why does it occur in the list of supported products at the bottom of the Download page?

 

It's a bit confusing. The toolbox according Intel uses trim to work on drive and the G1s do not support trim and never will according Intel.. I'm not 100% positive though.

 

Well I'm not concerned with TRIM, as it's SLC anyways. But the toolbox has other features. I'm just trying to get all my stuff in order, firmware, drivers, etc. before I format. Am installing a new OS, new chipset, RAID. Most of this foreign territory for me. I'm also trying to figure out how to stick a third HDD into my optical bay, and I'm apparently the first/only person to attempt this with the m17x. That's where I'm gonna' image my 64GB worth of space on the RAID0 x25-E's.

Suffice to say I'm a little more than freaking out about doing this.

 

Well I just fired up the toolbox. It says that the optimizer will only work for the G2 drives. The rest will work which is: View drive info, check SMART Attributes, Run Fast Diagnostic Scan, Run Full Diagnostic Scan.
Regards
jj

 

Is there a thread around discussing the procedure for flashing VERTEX SSD from 1.4 to 1.5 firmware?

Elsewhere I read that while rebooting, you need to go into BIOS and change to IDE from AHCI, however I don't have that option on my DELL 1720, only AHCI and ATA?

Also, I have not installed this drive yet, is it better to flash it before or after I install it and get Windows 7 running on it?

Has anyone done this and can pass on some tips? Even the OCZ forum is short of details would you believe! Thanks, John

 

ATA is the option you want.

And about upgrading the firmware - doesn't matter if you do it with or without an OS.
There is always a potential for corruption or data loss... your choice

 

OK, I got it, or them actually as I pulled the SSD out of my netbook and did that as well.

So, I prepared the CD with the 1.5 firmware as ISO image file, shutdown, pulled drives, installed the SSD, boot up, changed the settings (to AHA + boot order), ran the flash, shutdown, remove SSD, installed original drives, re-boot, changed settings back and all is OK.

There was some kind of error message when it finished but it already said the flash was successful - see the pictures below.

The netbook is running fine also; now my next question - I am running XP on that computer, should I run the tweaker program with XP, or any settings I should be looking at changing?

Is it advisable to go to Windows 7? I don't want to spend more on it if it is running just fine the way it is.

My Windows 7 should arrive for my DELL 1720 tomorrow, so the SSD will be back in with new operating system - be like a new computer

Thanks for your help, John
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As I don't use OCZ SSDs - just one Intel I can't help you on the error or any tweaker programmes.

Generally Vista or Window 7 are to be preferred on a SSD.

Win7 > Vista > XP

For example, XP pages everything to the SSD from RAM to keep as much free as possible - Vista & Win7 will run from RAM

 

I want to know what size NTFS allocation unit yields the best performance on an Intel X25-M 160GB 34nm SSD? I'm debating on using 512Byte vs 4KB vs 16KB allocation unit sizes.

I'm going to be triple or quad booting Vista, Win7, and maybe Linux in various 32bit/64bit versions. The first partition is going to be a 32bit Vista of at least 60GB. Should I compress the entire drive or just certain folders? This is going to be on an Acer 1410 SU3500 3GB ram.

 

Can you check your temperature?

Why would you want to tripple or quadboot?

You need either Vista or Win7 if you need Windows, not both - also, if you need 64Bit then use only 64Bit, if you do not need it (and I don't think there is much sense with only 3GB of RAM) stick with 32Bit.

So only dual boot - Linux + 1 Microsoft OS.

And the sector size - let the OS do what it wants.

 

I want to have all those OSes for testing and portable examplary purposes. I have friends and aquaintances that want to know what each of these OSes is like so instead of telling them I can bring around my laptop and show them. Simultaneously I'm the only person I know in person with an SSD so everyone else that asks me questions about it only heard random talk on the subject and doesn't even know what an SSD looks like much more what their befits are. I only know 2 people in person that knows all the details about the benefits of SSDs and one of them says for his purposes it's a wasteful overkill. Everyone else I know never knew of their existence prior to my mention of it.

I actually need both windows OSes for my use cases and that's also why I want to triple/quad boot. I intend to have Vista HP 32bit, Win7 HP 32bit, Win7 HP 64bit, and Linux 64bit. I'll be able to test and run all my software on each OS for a while mostly for demo purposes and then when I'm done demonstrating I'll redo the drive with Win7 HP 64bit and Linux 64bit.

I am not supposed to stick with 32bit because my cpu is a 64bit cpu with 3MB L2, and I will be upgrading to 2x2GB ram once I reprogram the SPD of all my 512MB, 1024MB, and 2048MB soDIMMs to a higher clock speed.

Your last statement, maybe you call it a sector, my experience a sector is the tiny physical block on spinning HDDs and I'm asking about the small logical/remap block of the file system (also not referring to the LBA blocks). Larger allocation units usually improve performance, only penalty is the amount of wasted/slack space so it takes some balancing to find the sweet spot. I know for FAT32 on my system I saw increases in performance going from 2KB up to 32KB allocation blocks but that's FAT32. I want to know what to know how the performance compares on NTFS using varying allocation block sizes primarily 512Byte vs 4KB vs 16KB.

I already know that SSDs use 4KB pages to read and write fresh data and can only erase data in 512KB blocks. 512Byte allocation unit would maximize usable space but would that hinder performance on an SSD? I find this a valid question along with what 16KB would be like.

after getting flamed pretty bad this guy comes back with a good defense lol http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?p=23454791&postcount=29 . My only disagreement is when he stated the begginning of the drive is the fastest, not entirely true from my understanding. Beginning of the drive has the lowest seek time but the end of the drive has the highest data/transfer rates.

Spinning hard drives spin at a constant angular velocity meaning the RPMs don't really change no matter where you are on the drive. The outer most ring of the platter is a larger circle/ring than the inner most ring. If they both turn at the same speed then obviously you are covering more distance per turn on the larger ring than the smaller ring. This reduces seek and access times and covers more MBs per turn during a read. I always try to make the OS partition at the end of a spinning HDD.

Now if what he says is true that the OS doesn't need to do random 4K reads/writes if the pagefile, system temp files, temporary internet files are all on a separate disk; it means all the reviews have been systematically misleading us users AND it opens the doors up a great deal to all the other SSD options out there...

and now after a week of research someone finally gives me my first answer http://forums.ncix.com/forums/?mode...enumber=1&msgcount=19&subpage=1&msgid=2165317

 

Issue fixed...

 

Out of curiosity does anyone have any experience with mix'n'matching two different SSDs in a dual-HDD-bay laptop?

 

It can be done - 2 SSDs will behave just like 2HDDs.

 

I have intel 160G and Vertex 120G in my E6400.
works fine.

 

Hi Les I just got back online 30mins ago or so and I'm discussing with that Mod about my post being considered flamatory I really don't see it and I have a copy of my original post too.

Anyway I'm trying to tackle everything you stated might be a problem. First I'm looking for the posts that apparently flame the guy, RFD for example. If his post ended up there I'm sorry I wasn't trying to post his msg at all I was posting the useful info I had multi-quoted. I'm looking for those posts now to edit/correct it.

EDIT 2mins later:
Les I don't see any flamatory posts of mine in RFD. I only linked a guy's post from slickdeals because he listed in plain english details a lot of tips/tweaks and very good advice for setting up SSD drives in any system. Info that I have NEVER seen mentioned anywhere else in forums. I considered his post golden because he taught me a lot of things to try. Then I linked my thread I started at the NCIX forums because there a user was the first, and so far the only, one to actually answer my question about the allocation unit size AND he was speaking from current experience too.

Les can you PM me links to the threads you found/considered flamatory that I posted? I really want to correct them if you are right. Also I don't think I've done multiple posts. Maybe once I did in the grand Aspire 1410 1810 thread when I was trying to solve booting/installing OEM recovery discs from a usb flash drive and from an SD card. When I finally figured it all out I quoted all my previous random posts on the subject and made a final post with all the quotes. Another user actually liked it and told me to post it in a 2nd thread that I thought was unrelated but he believed many people in that thread would find it useful so I did the repost and havn't posted anything else on that subject since.

I moved onto this subject afterwards and only RedFlagDeals forum has related posts in several threads but only to regain attention to the subject and document progress. Each of those threads was related to users buying SSDs related to the X25-M and they too might even make use of the info now that I've posted it where they can see it.

 

have you tried RAID 0 with these two or not ?

 

Hardware RAID will only work with identical drives.

 

mm i know i wanted know if will work
so if i have samsung with same amount gb and second intel or corsair
i wont make raid ? must be even brand?

 

Phew...
That's a difficult question - my guess would be no, but I can't give you a definite answer, sorry.

If you want a backup you could try a software raid though...

 

Corsair F100 SSD review - Features SF-1200 controller

 

Hardware RAID requires identical drives, down to the model.

 

I actually learned a lot from that review. Sounds like a nice drive. New firmware and the consumer SandForce controller trounces everything but the Marvel SATA 3 SSD and (maybe/maybe not) the enterprise SandForce controller. Maybe trounces isn't the right word, the Intel doesn't give a whole lot to it. Should make a lot of prospective SSD owners happy.

If I had to nit pick: why no mention of whether the drive goes to Hell when a user hibernates or puts the computer to sleep?

 

Hi Mkelliny, do you have the result yet?

 

Does Tony TRIM work on Intel G1's in RAID0? Or is there any other way to get the drive back to new performance without removing OS & Programs?

 

No, AS freespace cleaner does not work with g1 intel ssd's, it will cause a hit to random access times amongst other things. The only thing that I know that will restore performance is HDDErase. You need a computer with IDE compatability mode options to run it. I had to run it on an old desktop using a PATA port with a PATA to SATA adapter.

 

Hi,
I've been hedging for a while now. I saw these though and while SATA III, they work on, and fully saturate, a SATA II interface. I am so temped right now for a 256 GB SSD......

Edit; I post here as they are TRIM enabled out of the box for us Win7 owners too.......

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150636 1421555552&name=SATA III

 

WOW! Thanks for that link. Just ordered the 128GB one! I really need to dig around newegg more.

 

Maybe I should have posted after my hedgeing was over..........