Samsung MLC SSD question

Hi.

Question regarding MLC ssd's...

I recently purchased a Lenovo x200s with the Samsung MMCRE64G5MPP MLC SSD. I will be using the laptop for gradschool, mainly for MS Office, Internet/Research, email etc. Additionally, a statistics program, but this is about it.

In regards to the inability to defrag the SSD... what, if anything, should I be looking to do to maintain the speed and life of the SSD? Any programs recommended for routine maintenance or should I just let the drive be until i realize a slowdown?

Still learning about these suckers.. thanks!
adam

 

disable defrag and let it be until you notice something wierd. then come back (in one, two years earliest ) and ask for help.

i do the same currently with identical drives: use them and never think about it. they work great and i haven't noticed any slowdown or such yet.

 

you dont really have to do any maintenance on an SSD. windows will always slow over time, i just reinstall every 6 months or a year or so. its not the SSDs fault.

there are programs to tweak SSDs. diskeeper makes one, but i havent seen any reviews of it.

http://www.diskeeper.com/hyperfast/index.aspx

i have a tweak program that i got somewhere, cant remember where. it probably does the same thing, but was free and it helped some. i can email it to you if you want. just PM me.

here is a pic of what it does:

 

Don't waste your time tweaking or maintaining... JUST USE IT

 

Just use it. If it ever get's really slow I know of only one sure fire option.

1. Image off ALL your data to an external drive.
2. Disable AHCI
3. Boot into pure DOS mode and run HDDErase.
4. Run the enhanced secure erase command to wipe EVERYTHING, resetting the drive to a factory state.
5. Enable AHCI
6. Reload the image onto the drive.

I do this between OS installs, but it is not necessary to do on any regular schedule.

 

SSDs don't benefit from conventional defragging, since random access times are blazingly fast. Infact, you should not defrag the SSDs because it unnecessarily uses up erase/write cycles.

What supposedly helps is consolidation of free space if the free space gets fragmented; this will decrease the probability of random writes and improve write performance. Hyperfast from the link above works along these lines.
http://www.diskeeperblog.com/archives/2008/12/hyperfast_is_al.html
Some of the comments are informative.

Only the intel drives are said to not benefit from this optimization.

 

thanks a lot guys, lots of great info.
I'll take a look at the blog and the diskeeper website.

Appreciate it - Adam

 

How do you do this is you're running vista?

What other options do I have?

 

I have two SLC SSDs. According to Mtron's site, enabling AHCI can increase performance up to 10%....but that is with SLC so I am not sure about your case.

Also the Mtron FAQ stated that while defragging doesnt help read performance, it will help write performance. However that being said, I'd do it very minimally, especially if your laptop stays static (e.g. you don't install and uninstall a ton of programs etc. Media like mp3s and movies would be just fine).