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

Thank you! I hated the fact I even thought of tweaking, much less did it. I was desperate and thought that my drive was defective or something. I am going to put the tweaks back as near as I can. I really do not think I am smarter than Samsung, LOL!

Now, if I could just remember what I did Seriously, many do say to disable the indexing, yes?

Dave

 

WD now enters the the SSD market with SiliconDrive series.

 

Seems to match the first gen Samsung offering; needs to wait a while before it gets interesteing.

 

Cape Consultant, try it both ways if you'd like and see what works better. SSD's should be more than capable of handle the small writes and reads far better than any hdd, so why disable is my thought... (daveperman helped me come to these conclusions a while ago thanks)

 

Even on regular drives, I would disable INDEXING as it slowed things down. Also, it does seem to make sense to disable defragging and maybe even Superfetch, as the SSD has built in hardware cache. Page file the jury is always out. Me, I always left it for Windows to manage.

So, although I waited until what looked like a decent drive came along that had some of the early kinks worked out that would not need to be babysat full time, I am not opposed to a "normal" tweak here and there, similar to what I might do on a spinning drive.

I am working with Vista and it will be awhile before I move to win 7 simply because a re-format takes too much time. If I did not use the machne for work, I would already be using 7.

I am not really one for running benchmarks as I am more of a "broad stroke" how does it FEEL type of guy. But because this was a whole new tech, I did do the benchmarks and since it came out much lower than the 220/200 that was on the box, I panicked. Heck, I have been around long enough to know that I have never had, say, a printer that printed as fast as it said on the box So I do not put all that much into benchmarks as a rule. Does not really matter as one way or another and these drives will become VERY popular! Let's here it for us "enthusiasts"! here here!

 

if you'd know what indexing REALLY does you wouldn't disable it. it doesn't slow down, it enhances your system experience.

superfetch makes no sence, as its a prefetcher. no cache can help to preload stuff, only to reload stuff. superfetch preloads stuff and thus makes booting, logon, and even later starting apps faster.

page file just let it default.

best: just reinstall and disable defrag, that's all i ever do, never hurt me. en contraire, i have great performance and an os that can do all updates with ease (read all the sp2 installation problems) has no degradation in performance (en contraire, again, it only gets better).

all tweaking is useless. this is especially true on an ssd.

and the move to 7 is a no-move on an ssd.

 

As Dave was saying above...I just let Windows handle it.

 

Indexing is designed to speed up searching for files. Since I never use their desktop search, indexing is just a cost with no benefit for me. Blanket statements like "it enhances your system experience" are bogus since it really depend on how you use your system.

 

well, how about starting to use desktop search and noticing that it's faster than your old fashioned "i know which folders i have to click trough".

and how it can search trough your documents by content, so that you don't have to find it by filename?

yes it depends on how you use your system. i just say to people, maybe it's time to learn the new usage improvements to gain advantage of those system features and get more productive? because that's why they developed years to implement this stuff for you: so you gain.

if you don't like to gain, don't. up to you.

but most don't even know what indexing is about (and some then later think their search is slow after they disabled it.. but never understood that it's actually for the search ).

i do actually tweak the indexing to only go to my chosen subfolders of my user folder (no appdata for me). that way it doesn't have to index that much (not much at all afterwards) and reduces the performance drop due to constant reindexing of the always changing appdata folder.


edit: YES, DAVE STATED HE DOES A TWEAK!!!

 

Does it allow searching by exact text (e.g., including stop words and punctuation)? If not, I still have to fire up a 3rd party application to search files about 75% of the time (another 20% of the time I only care about file names, leaving about 5% of the time that indexing helps me).

(Disclaimer: Numbers are very rough.)

 

it should. but i don't know exactly how.

nice numbers btw

and we went offtopic in the ssd thread.

but how about.. enable and tryout?

how often does one need exact punctuation to get searched? and not buzzwords? i'm happy to be able to search with buzzwords that may not be part of the filename, at least big gain for me.

 

If I had a thousand or more word documents, then i would probably enable the search thing, but I don't. (I can't even remember the last time I used windows search function).

Anyways, I bought a g.skill falcon 128gb off of ebay for $299.99 + $5 shipping. I would have rather gotten an ocz because of their support forum, but I can't justify spending a lot more just for that.

This means I will be selling my current corsair 128gb for cheap if anyone's interested.

 

just why disable it, if you don't have much documents it doesn't do any harm.

it's called premature optimisation. and the first rule about premature optimisation is: get over it, just don't.

 

is there one more? can't find it!

 

I think the reason why nobody else got it before me was because the seller didn't have "ssd" in the title.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110403334936&ssPageName=ADME:B:EOIBSA:US:1123

 

Lucky You!!!

I'm searching eBay for "skill falcon", but didn't saw it because seller do not ship to Croatia.

 

Indexing service is not needed on a SSD where you can literally search the entire hard drive in 10 seconds. Unless you have a need for full text searching, like highlandsun said, it's cost at no benefit.

Paging file is also not needed. Set it at 256MB if you really insist on it, but if you have 4GB, it's just not necessary. It's well documented that Windows pushes things to your hard drive even if you have plenty of RAM. I'm also not into burning through write cycles on my drive for a feature that is simply not needed in a system with 4GB+ memory.

 

Bill - some old apps/legacy programs are simply hardcoded to use the 'page file' set aside by Windows [even if you had say 8 GB of RAM], so removing the page file altogether can prove to crash the computer in some instances. It's best to research individually the programs you have on your load-out and see what uses page file and what recommended page file sizes are given for the programs.

 

It's a 99%/1% principle that people aren't getting. 99% of users have no problem completely disabling the paging file. The 1% that are running programs that require a paging file likely know they need a paging file so it doesn't apply to them anyway.

 

That's same as Vertex 120GB, right? pretty good deal.

 

Spent the last hour reading through this thread. Wow, I had not been back to this forum in ages since I have switch to the mac side.

No, It is actually the same as the Vertex EX 120GB which makes it even better.

Summary of my research:

Vertex uses IDX110M00-FC + EDS51321CBH-7BTT for cache (Elpida 64MB 133MHz)
So does the Patriot TorqX and the Super Talent Ultradrive. (K9HCG08U1M-PCB0 8GB MLC NAND Samsung chips)

Vertex EX uses IDX110M00-LC (new model) + EDS51321CBH-6DTT for cache (Elpida 64MB 166MHz)
same as the Gskill Falcon although Falcon is an MLC (K9HCG08U1M-PCB0 8GB MLC NAND Samsung chips) and the EX is an SLC (K9NCG08U5M-PCB0 Samsung chips)

Summit uses S3C29RBB01-YK40 + K4X1G323PD-8GC6 for cache (Samsung 128mb 166MHz)
same as Samsung PB22-J and Corsair P256/P128 with (K9MDGZ8U5M-SCK0 8GB NAND Samsung chips)

I think the firmwares are all slightly different though.

 

Any body heard about the filemate?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820161360

No info on the cache or controller...

 

I think it is dual jmicron judging by this link:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=216668

 

I always turned off indexing, the type you get to by right clicking the C drive and choosing Properties and the uncheck Indexing. It seemed to actually slow down my regular because it would decide to index at the truly stupisist times, like when I decided to open a program.

For purposes of this discussion, i re-enabled super and pre fetch. i was never sure precisely what they did, so thanks Dave Perman for that info. I turn off hibernation as well always as I do not use it. I am going to try the paging file at 256 like someone mentioned. I wish someone wold tell us EXACTLY what programs NEED it, as I have never had any issues with it on or off. For that matter, I cannot tell a speed difference either way also. I think I will settle all my other tweaks back to default, and just try the page file change and see if there is any difference that I can feel.

One wierd thing, and lord knows Adobe software can be SLOW and sludgy, but Dreamweaver takes about 5 seconds, maybe a little more to open. Most, if not all other programs, are about a second, even Outlook. I am actually going to time Dreamweaver and report back for kicks.

I use a little program called Everything for search. Man, that is one fast program. Finds what I want before I am done typing. Which is pretty much how fast I want everything to be on my computer And SSD's help that.

 

Vertex EX is SLC though, so even though the controller might be the same, the flash type will definitely be different.

 

I am waiting for a reply on what kind of controller they are using for their expresscard ssd.

 

I stand corrected

 

I'm looking for a non-SanDisk SSD to go into my Dell D430 - needs to be atleast 64gb, but the only Mtron ones that fit are 16gb and 32gb.

I'm having a lot of trouble finding out information on this!

Can anyone advise?

 

Darth, Interested in Corsair 128. Pm me, please.

 

and that 99/1 does give you reason to tweak the system so that it will not work for 3 days per year? 3 whole days?

don't make up numbers. page file works best the way it is and does NOT NEGATIVELY AFFECT PERFORMANCE.

at least in vista+. it does not hurt the ssd, not your system, nothing. but it may save your data the moment it's needed.

and about the indexing, it does not hurt performance at all on an ssd. i have indexing on on several ssd's, some not that fast ones (well, samsungs..) and never noticed ANY lag due to index creation.

just disabling stuff because you "know better" is stupid. it's premature optimisation and may hurt you later on. it does NOT affect system performance. it DOES affect system comfort and/or stability.

everything ELSE is a lie. come to me, meet my systems. there is NO difference by just leaving it on as it was.

i do have some tweaks for the search, though, as you've seen above. but that mostly, too, for not finding stuff i don't want to find.

 

one simple example: my dj software sometimes goes to page file for no apparent reason. don't want to crash it in a live performance?

visual studio sometimes when you program something wierd completely pushes the os to the paging file (takes up to 10 minutes to recover, then, hehe, had this two days ago).

different video editing software triggered paging in the past.

tons of applications use it behind the scenes to virtually preregister memory that they don't need, as documented by microsoft. if you disable paging, this memory gets preregistered in your ram => your system has less free ram.

at work, i often happen to pop into the page file when having up to 20-30 apps simultaneously running.



but in the end it's no "do i need it, maybe not, i'll just take it away" habit that you should get used to. you don't sit into a car "what's that? maybe i'll never need it" and then take it out, now do you? savetybelt, out, airbags, out.. doors, out. oh, leave the radio in, i want to listen to music while i die.


why can't you leave it as is.

btw, the indexing on "c:\" just a flag on ntfs, and doesn't really mean anything on vista, as the indexing service by default isn't used anymore. it's just there if you happen to install some app that may require it. but the index does NOT get built, or what ever, at all on vista. but it's hard to find that documentation anywhere trough all the crap "disable it, it's the reason your pc is slow" posts. vista only uses "Windows Search", not that indexing.


so better get your facts straight and LEAVE YOUR SYSTEM AS IS. it will perform very well. we're in the ssd thread, and you have a samsung ssd. got over any optimisation hype and just use it the way it is. it rocks that way (not like intel, but still ). there is no need to mangle your system just because "you may not need it". why do the effort at all?


it's so ridiculous, that uh-i-have-to-follow-all-the-google-blog-tweaks to optimize my system behaviour in this forum. i thought people knew better than that. i thought that came from the spyware-age.. which i left years ago (the "omg i need that and this and that tool to prevent spyware.. all of the tools itself where spyware".. )



edit: to actually answer your questions instead of just ranting (i'm too good at it )

you will not find any tweak you applied to help your systems performance at all, so just do it back to it's default. the additional search tool should be unneeded, vista should handle this just as snappy, and much more integrated to your gui than any other system ever will.

adobe software is utter slow, and can lead to quite instable systems. the typical adobe suite installation takes about 5 - 10 times as long as my full vista installation. tells something about crapware, doesn't it? i'm happy i could remove that stuff again, and my system got fast and stable again.. (me not liking adobe).
the only slow app to boot in my case is ableton live, but that loads trough some gb of sample-libraries, and other stuff at load time. but i've seen some apps (from adobe f.e.) that take some seconds to load. no ssd can help you there

just let page file at "system managed". you don't know better than the system. and that is nicely formulated. shall i repeat? you don't know better.

i'm currently searching the microsoft blog explaining the page file.. grmbl.. so much missinformation on the web.

 

you talk about 1.8" zif drives, then? well, there aren't a lot of options sadly

 

This is exactly the 99/1 principle I mentioned earlier, you are the 1%.

 

Dave Perman I agree with so much of what you say. If you look back at my posts, you will see a desire to WAIT until SSD did not require these stupid tweaks. Aside from one or 2 MAIN tweaks as on regular drives I really did find that telling Windows not to index all the time did increase my system responsiveness, I really have managed to take a "may as well leave it" attitude. It was only because I thought my drive was under performing by SO much that I panicked a bit and decided to check a few tweaks. And the fact that the system did not feel quite as responsive as it did when I had a cheap G.Skill Jmicron in there for a few hours. for the few minutes it worked, before Outlook etc. totally jammed it up, man, stuff opened real fast. And although that was long ago, it SEEMED like this awesome new drive I got was not as snappy, so, again, that caused me to explore tweaks, even though I "knew" better. The reason I have read every post in this thread as I started WAY back when Les formed it, is to learn the facts. Admittedly, I am sometimes a slower learner than I would like I have restore all my little tweaks, except those that I always do like no hibernation and no system restore (I backup). Page file is at 256mb. I really do prefer the Clone and go method of installing a new hard drive. That was another thing that threw me a bit as if i have the time I would done a clean install, which, I believe but am not sure, is always best for a new drive. That said, I usually clone and go and never look back. I have a fairly complex mess of stuff that I use for work, so a clean install is usually not an option. Yes, Adobe has caused me issues. My older version of Dreamweaver wold NOT install on my last spinner drive, and they would/;could not help me so I HAD to buy the new version although I did not want to so I could get to work. That was an unexpected expense of a reformat, darn. Here are some numbers.

All tweaks are removed except for those mentioned above, and I closed sidebar, AV, Everything (which is a sweet little program whether it integrates into UI or not, you would like it!) and another system tray icon or 2 and the numbers seem darn good.

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

Sequential Read : 203.114 MB/s
Sequential Write : 144.476 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 154.509 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 115.951 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 10.087 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 5.377 MB/s

Test Size : 100 MB
Date : 2009/06/17 3:13:55

Thanks for being a part of this forum and a fellow hard drive now SSD aficionado. Your input has always been appreciated. Dave

 

@Jlbrightbill:

no, sir, i just stated some of my apps.
ask my friend. photoshop pages from time to time, 3d studio max, premiere..
another friend has outlook paging, and corel draw..
here at work we all page from time to time just because of the raw numbers of apps..

and still you haven't got the main point: a 99%/1% means EVERYONE including you would have a non-working completely crashing system for over 3.5 days a year. you want that? i don't. i don't want even just one crashed app that i could have prevented. an di can NOT understand anyone wanting otherwise.
in your specific case, i understand to tweak the page file size just because your ssd is tiny. then again, i had an ssd of the same size and haven't touched the page file, as it worked well, and i had NO need ever to reduce it's size. so i have a direct counterproof that you "need to disable it because of storage size restrictions".

 

a system tray icon more or less means 50% more tray icons here (i have home server + live messenger in tray).
i looked at everything. while nice, it looks completely useless to me (except maybe on xp ).
disabling sidebar is not a tweak, but a good user choice
the indexing can get tweaked, check my post some posts above. but the indexing on c:\ properties shouldn't get touched and don't harm your system. premature optimisation. but don't turn it back on, could get messy (leave it as installed, or after removing, but don't turn it back on ).

cloning isn't suggested but i understand it for work-related installations. can be hell to set up manually again (but gets rid of tons of softwares and tools that one never really needed anymore sometimes )

thanks

 

As I read again your post, I see the info about page file. I have come full circle to System Managed and thta is where I had my Vista when I was on my spinner wd 320gb. However, I thought it might be smart to revisit that particular tweak due to the completely different workings of an SSD. I mean hey, no harm either way, I can change it back and forth 10 times a day if I want BUt with new tech, a little exploration is I think in order as I may (which is the point of any "tweak") get a nice performance boost. Does it happen everytime? No way. I wold be VERY interested to clone my current install to an Intel and do a direct comparison. That way, I would really be able to see what the difference was. Oh well, this may be my first SSD, but I guarantee, as long as I live, it will not be my last

 

For no apparent reason is a polite way of saying "bug".

With sufficient free memory, this should not occur on any properly functioning operating system and program. See previous "bug" reference.

Video editing is a fairly typical "corner case" item and a perfect example of the 1% that was mentioned before. Video editing, especially HD Video editing, is very memory intensive.

As long as you have sufficient physical memory, why is a reservation of physical memory a problem? Paging should never happen until you cross your low available pages threshold.

Then you need more physical memory on the machine. Given the low cost of memory, upgrade.

This is an absurdist non-argument detracting from the discussion at hand.

Why can't I/we tweak when we're making a conscious decision to do so? If I always accepted the defaults, I'd be a crappy system administrator.

And? I've not run across some app that requires it.

Because I manage large scale systems professionally, and I actually do know what I'm doing.

Taking the defaults is rarely the path to optimal performance.

See previous re: defaults.

Apps don't boot, Operating systems do. That Adobe takes longer than the OS says something about their monumental inefficiency.

You haven't provided any backing evidence and a properly sized modern user system shouldn't require paging anyway. Servers are different animals.

Once again, defaults are rarely the path to optimal performance.

 

I think I will try putting back system managed page file and be done with it.

My last WD drive had a fresh install, about 4 months old after using a 3 time cloned install for about 4 years. So, at that time I did clean out a bunch of stuff, but for sure have added some bloat back.

Anyways, I am the only one within 10 towns that even has a SSD, I bet. Pretty conservative types around here. Most of my clients are on 5-8 year old spinners I would not want to be them

 

hm. an app suddenly requiring a lot of memory it can release afterwards maybe a bug, maybe not. it's anyways something that doesn't crash in the default os configuration, but does in the tweaked config => the tweaked config results in.. bug amplification? which is useless and dangerous.

even while i don't agree about calling it a bug. an app is free to use any memory it requires. if it does for no reason, it's a bug. no apparent reason just means i could not know it in advance to prevent a crash if i would not have a page file.

untrue lie

one percent means everyone has 3.5 days per year where he can't use the system. or one in 100 can't use the pc AT ALL HIS WHOLE LIFE.
1% is MUCH.
and preventing that 1% means preventing a lot of hazzle

and you can hit that any time, unimportant how many ram you have. if you never hit it, your page file is tiny actually. that's what's called "system managed".

not my system, not allowed to upgrade.
but btw, it's a nice test: does your system frequently goes to page file, you need more ram. how do you test that else? if your system frequently crashes, you need more ram? my way is WAY more userfriendly, not?

no, the car argument fits perfectly well. the page file normally never gets used. but the moment you may need it you'll hate yourself for disabling it. and as long as you don't need it IT NEVER HURTS YOU.

btw, this was not true on xp days. there it did hurt you. but you have to get over this habbit from old days. vista is better in this regard. MUCH better.

if you always think you know better than microsoft, then you are a crappy system administrator. they develop the os, they know how it really works. they know why they invented the page file.
i don't want a system admin configuring systems in a way that it may crash apps.
imagine our xp systems here would have no page file. 7 years ago, that would all have been fine, and "no one needs more than 1gb ram anyways". nowadays, about all 10-15min an app per user would crash.
premature optimisation is the root of all evil, and you as a sysadmin should know better. really.

so you're a bad sysadmin by not testing your systems to their limits to know how they behave? because that's what we did with our clients and servers.

except when your systems reach the limits, then you have no clue what actually happened. no, sorry, sir, this is a fail. system admins always go for failsave over performance.

optimal performance is unimportant. first you want to reach 100% stability, then the optimal performance in that environment.

you should not favour performance over stability, ever in your whole life. espencially if you're a system administrator. you should get fired for that, actually. i don't want you to get fired btw that's why i try to continue to preach my thoughts..

well, it does.. adobe taking 10x as long to install than a full os with tons of different apps, drivers for all sorts of hw, and all that for some movie editing and painting shows some inefficiency. it's apples vs. oranges, but it still shows some inefficiency. and the instability that my system had (quadcore, 4gb ram, ssd) shows some inefficiency as well.

no one provided any evidence that disabling the page file gains anything. not performance, but definitely not stability. i've showed evidence that it does negatively affect stability in different independent use cases.

again, the typical "i know better" attitute that is so very wrong that it's not even fun to make jokes about it.

 

Btw, John Kotches, don't ever try to fix a bug together with microsoft support when you disabled pagefile on some system. they won't help you without the crash dump. yep, they get 600$ per hour and JUST HANG OFF THE PHONE.

yes. don't even try.

as a sysadmin, just leave the system at their default. and tweak the hw to fit well (that's why we're in the ssd thread, here, all, actually).

get an os, configure it your way (group policy etc) to work perfect for your companies needs, and support needs, etc. and then fit the hw around your os + all your required apps. enough ram, fastest hdds, fast cpus, what ever fits the budget.



edit: added the mark russinovich post about the page file in my sig. check the part "How Big Should I Make the Paging File?", espencially
" ...Perhaps one of the most commonly asked questions related to virtual memory is, how big should I make the paging file? There’s no end of ridiculous advice out on the web and in the newsstand magazines that cover Windows, and even Microsoft has published misleading recommendations. Almost all the suggestions are based on multiplying RAM size by some factor, with common values being 1.2, 1.5 and 2. ..."
and
" ...Some feel having no paging file results in better performance, but in general, having a paging file means Windows can write pages on the modified list (which represent pages that aren’t being accessed actively but have not been saved to disk) out to the paging file, thus making that memory available for more useful purposes (processes or file cache). So while there may be some workloads that perform better with no paging file, in general having one will mean more usable memory being available to the system...".

 

Hey SSD experts!

I'm new to the market for an SSD (I only have an SSD in my EEE PC)...

Is the OCZ Vertex still considered a great SSD or have problems arisen with it?

How's the OCZ Summit?

Are the Intel SSDs still the best, or is there something better out there now days?

Thanks!

 

Vertex is great, so is Summit, and Intel is best in most cases. The others have better prices, though.

Vertex is "evolving" with a lot of firmware updates, but looks quite mature. summit is mature, intel is, too.

I don't need much storage and don't care really about price, so i got a 160gb intel. else i might have considered some 256gb one.

then again, i think in the 1.8" case, the 160gb from intel is actually the biggest?

 

Just pulled the trigger on a new "sealed" Samsung Dell OEM on Ebay. $529 shipped after instant cashback. Not a better deal than the Buy.com price mistake for the Kingston/Intel but not bad I guess. I already missed out on a deal on Amazon for a 160gb X25-M for $450. I just hope it works ok on the macbook pro and it is not one of those defective ones I have seen on the macrumor forum... keeping my fingers crossed.

 

good luck. you talk about the 256gb version, right?

 

The Summit is an expensive version of the Corsair/Samsung 256gb. The Intel X25-M are still arguably faster in some particular cases (small files access high I/O) but are limited to 160GB for now and are very expensive ($2.8/GB in the best case I found see my previous post)

The Vertex now has a lot of clones: Super Talent, Patriot TorqX and G.Skill Falcon. The G.Skill falcon goes for $589 shipped from Newegg.
You can get the Super Talent 256GB for $609-8%=$557 on Ebay.
These are all Firmware upgradeable whereas the Samsung clones so far cannot be upgraded.

See my post on the previous page for more details. Basically I doubt you will feel any difference between the three families of drive (Samsung, Indilinx, Intel)

 

Indeed, the 256GB version.

 

Just to update on my situation

I have had no luck with these SSD drives. On the advice here I received I put a order on a PBJ-J Samsung drive and thought that they were due to ship to ship on the 15th of this month. Then I learnt I could wait a month for my Samsung drive and I’m not prepared to wait a month so i cancelled.

I'm not prepared to buy a Corsair one. I guess for now I will put these plans on hold.

 

Sorry to hear that. Seems that these drives are hard to come by in Europe. Maybe you can get them shipped from the US?

 

Thanks rafale
I will look into that.