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 Crucial M4 owners: update to the latest firmware to fix/prevent bluescreens!Note: As of May, the going rate for SSDs is around $.75/GB, with deals to $.70 and under. If the drive you're looking at is more expensive than this, you may need to shop around, or it might be about to go on sale. I don't want to read anything just tell me what SSD to buy! (last updated: 05/12/2013) The Mushkin Enhanced Chronos Deluxe is consistently the best value, get a 240GB or larger drive if you can for best results. See the lists below for more options: Great, rock-solid drives: * Samsung 840 Pro * Intel SSD 520 (probably not worth the price premium) * SanDisk Extreme * Intel SSD 330 (3K-endurance memory) Good value drives: * Mushkin Enhanced Chronos Deluxe (best value, the non-Deluxe version is only a bit slower, but at the price just go Deluxe) * Intel SSD 335 (1.5K-endurance memory, 240GB+ only) * Samsung 840 non-Pro (1K-endurance memory, 250GB+ only, 120GB version may only last ~3.5 years) BAD drives to avoid: * OCZ drives have very poor reliability, probably due to insufficient memory validation. * Kingston drives seem to have reliability issues, perhaps also due to insufficient memory validation? * ADATA drives also seem to have issues due to memory validation. * Crucial drives are plagued by firmware issues. The M4 has had a lot of problems but seems to have stabilized (but is a poor value today so shouldn't be purchased), the M500 is brand-new and has known issues, and the V4 is the worst SSD on the market (far slower than an HDD). * Plextor drives benchmark well but have poorly-tuned firmware. * SATA300 and other older/last-gen drives are not as reliable as modern drives. NEW drives to avoid until they mature: * Seagate 600 and 600 Pro (new LAMD-based drives, seem to have potential) * Crucial M500 (firmware issues, Crucial has a BAD history resolving those, 960GB particularly is drive to watch for) * Corsair Neutron (new LAMD-based drive with the same name and better performance, how to tell apart from old slower Corsair Neutron?) * SanDisk Ultra Plus (would make a decent low-end drive, but isn't usually much cheaper than the other faster drives in the "Good" list above) What are SSDs and how do they differ from mechanical hard disk drives? SSDs are Solid-State Drives. Rather than using a spinning magnetic disk with heads that move across the surface, they use an array of flash memory chips to hold data. While each of these individual memory chips is slow, when combined together into an array of 8+ chips their performance can be substantially faster than a hard disk drive, especially in cases where a drive would spend a lot of time waiting for the head to seek around the disk or for the data it's waiting for to spin back around rather than reading and writing data. How reliable are SSDs? Good SSDs with the latest firmware are substantially more reliable than harddrives, but even good SSDs can die so keep your backups current. There are two primary factors that contribute to the reliability of a drive: the maturity and presence of bugs in the firmware, and the quality (and degree of testing/validation) of the flash memory used in the drive. To prevent firmware issues, don't buy drives soon after they launch, let them "settle" for a few months so issues are found and fixed. It's also a good idea to periodically check for firmware updates and apply them if they note reliability fixes. Drives from flash memory manufacturers (such as Intel, Samsung, and SanDisk) tend to have fewer issues as they use their best memory in their branded drives. Drives from companies that buy untested flash memory in bulk and do their own validation (including but probably not limited to OCZ, Kingston, and ADATA) tend to have more issues, presumably because they have lower standards. What is endurance and how does it relate to lifespan?  From Anandtech's Samsung 840 review Unlike magnetic hard drives, flash memory can be written to a limited number of times before it wears out and can no longer hold data. Each time data is written, the previous contents of the cell are erased and the new contents are programmed in, this is called a Program/Erase or PE cycle, also known as a write cycle. You don't need to worry about wearing out the flash memory on any modern 120GB+ SSD except the Samsung 840 (non-pro). The two main factors that determines how much data can be written before an SSD is worn out are the endurance of the memory, in terms of the number of Program/Erase (PE) or write cycles the memory can take before it wears out, and the efficiency/intelligence of the controller (how well it works with that endurance). Back in the day we had flash memory with EXTREMELY high endurance, but controllers were very stupid and inefficient, so people worried about wearing out their drives. Today we have very efficient and intelligent controllers, but flash memory cell sizes have shrunk to reduce cost, lowering endurance. On most drives this is still fine, for example on the Intel SSD 330 (left side of the chart above), which uses reduced-endurance flash rated for 3000 cycles instead of 5000, a 120GB drive will last 10.5 years in a pessimistic desktop workload. The Samsung 840 uses a new kind of flash memory called "TLC", for Triple-Level Cell, because it holds three bits per cell instead of two (more detail is available in the Anandtech article linked above). A result of this is that endurance is only 1000 cycles compared to 3000-5000 for typical MLC. Cutting the endurance down this far now means a 120GB drive dies in 3.5 years in the same pessimistic workload. However, doubling the flash memory in the 250GB version also doubles the lifespan to 7 years, meaning you don't really need to worry about wearing out the drive. Do remember that drives can die for reasons other than being worn out, so I'd still be cautious around the Samsung 840 non-Pro. Data on flash memory also "fades" with time, meaning that you can't necessarily fill an SSD with data, stuff it in a drawer, and pull it out years later to read the data. JEDEC standards say consumer flash memory must retain data for at least 1 year at 30C when all write cycles are exhausted, so this probably isn't an issue for most people, just don't put your wedding videos on an SSD and store it in a safe for your kids. This may become even more of an issue as cell sizes shrink further. What SSD should I buy? First, a bit about SSD controllers There are a large number of SSD manufacturers building products based on a small list of controllers. This makes the controller the easiest way to group and classify SSDs, since drives with the same controller from different manufacturers will perform similarly, apart from differences due to the flash memory chips used. Intel: Descended from the original X25-M, this controller is used on the Intel SSD 320-series. Weak performance (especially for writes) and no SATA600 support, but with a reputation for rock solid reliability with the latest firmware. Now obsolete and discontinued. Sandforce 2200: The "standard" for high-performance SSDs. Sandforce-based drives pay a much smaller performance penalty than others from not having TRIM enabled, so are good choices for Macs or RAID arrays. There was a reputation for difficult-to-reproduce hangs and BSODs in some situations, but this appears to be fully corrected in the current firmware. Used in the Corsair Force 3, OCZ Vertex 3, and Intel SSD 520 drives, among many others. Marvell 88SS9174: The first controller to support SATA600, with pretty good performance. Used in the Crucial M4, Intel SSD 510, Corsair Performance 3, and a few others. Marvell 88SS9175: The above controller cut in half to four channels and optimized for power usage. Used on the SanDisk Ultra Plus. Marvell 88SS9187: An incremental improvement to the previous Marvell controller, used on the Crucial M500 and some not-recommended Plextor drives. Samsung MCX: Pretty fast, generally reliable and work well in Macs. The Samsung MAX (470) did have a pretty good reputation for reliability and was one of the OEM SSDs sold in Macs. Used on the Samsung 830-series of drives. Samsung MDX: High performance, potential to be reliable when mature. Used in the Samsung 840/840 Pro. Indilinx Barefoot 3: Potentially not a hoax this time? Used on the OCZ Vector series. Has fast but weird performance, OCZ says reliability is improved but they are probably lying. Link-A Media Devices (LAMD): A dirt-cheap, slow controller with unproven reliability. Used in the Corsair Neutron-series. Phison: Another dirt-cheap, slow controller from a company that previously made USB flash controllers. Used in the Crucial V4-series. A bit about types of NAND flash memory One of the ways that various SSDs differ from eachother is the type of NAND flash memory chips they use. Here are the most common types, in order of increasing performance: ONFI 1.0 Asynchronous: This is the least-expensive, most-common, and slowest memory, and the name is quite a mouthful! Often from IMFT which means "Intel-Micron Flash Technology", Intel and Micron pooled their resourced to construct fabrication plants for the 25nm generation, and share the resulting product. Whether the memory is branded Intel, Micron, or IMFT, it's all the same stuff. The "ONFI 1.0 Asynchronous" bit describes the interface version between the memory and the SSD controller, asynchronous has no clock cycle and is thus simpler but not as fast. Used on less expensive Sandforce drives like the Mushkin Enhanced Chronos, generally doesn't work well on non-Sandforce drives. Toggle-Mode DDR NAND: This is the big competitor to IMFT flash and is often found on mid-premium or "MAX IOPS" drives. Toggle NAND has a clock cycle but only turns it on when actually transferring data, saving power. It's slightly faster than Asynchronous flash, but the high-IOPS drives take things further by using lower-density chips to improve random I/O performance. Used on most Mushkin Enhanced Chronos Deluxe drives (smaller models use Synchronous). ONFI 2.x Synchronous: Similar to ONFI 1.0 Asynchronous above, but has a clock cycle and runs at double the data rate. Used on high-performance drives like the Intel SSD 520 and Corsair Force GT. Drives like the Intel SSD 330 and Kingston HyperX 3K are built on lower-binned Synchronous flash rated for only 3000 write cycles versus 5000 (this is still plenty if it does live up to ratings). On SSD capacity Drive performance tends to scale with capacity up to about 256GB, as drives with a higher capacity use more flash memory chips. This starts becoming really noticeable on drives with capacities below 120GB. 90GB/180GB drives also only have six out of eight memory channels populated, so are proportionally slower. Drives smaller than 120GB don't really offer much available capacity after Windows is installed, especially when you consider the Hibernation and Page files on systems with a decent amount of RAM. Do not disable the page file or move it to a hard disk drive, just set it to a smaller, fixed amount if necessary, such as half or one quarter of your system RAM. On all SSDs, performance and efficiency begin to drop if you have low free disk space, on average you want to keep at least 20% free, so consider that when sizing your drive purchase. If free space drops VERY low, some drives can get be slow to recover when you free up space again. If that happens, run a TRIM pass using ForceTrim or the Windows 8 defragmenter. Drives for the Average Consumer The Mushkin Enhanced Chronos below is sort of a placeholder for low-cost SSDs based on Sandforce controllers with cheap flash memory. In general terms as long as a Sandforce-based drive has a capacity of 120/240GB (NOT 128/256GB), has a SATA600 interface, isn't from OCZ, and the manufacturer offers current firmware, it's probably a decent option. If you're not sure about a drive, post it in this thread. Sandforce-based drives such as the Mushkin Enhanced Chronos 240GB are your best bet, they deliver the best values and most consistent performance. The Intel SSD 330 240GB (also Sandforce) is a faster option with Intel's reputation for reliability, though it uses flash rated at 3K cycles instead of 5K (still enough for desktop use). The Mushkin Enhanced Chronos Deluxe 240GB and SanDisk Extreme 240GB fall between the two in terms of performance and price but have full endurance flash. The Samsung 830 256GB is fast (though not as consistent as Sandforce drives) and has a good reputation for reliability but has been discontinued (you might get good deals on clearance). The Intel SSD 335 240GB uses newer, slightly-lower-endurance 20nm flash and is a decent option if you see a good deal. Drives for Reliability Nuts The Intel SSD 520 240GB is probably the most reliable SSD you can buy, but you pay a very stiff premium. The Intel SSD 330 240GB is a good option, though it uses flash rated at 3K cycles instead of 5K (still enough for desktop use). The Samsung 840 Pro (NOT non-Pro) is extremely fast and seems to continue Samsung's reputation for reliability, though it has been out less than six months. Another option might be the SanDisk Extreme 240GB, it has performance roughly equivalent to the Mushkin Enhanced Chronos Deluxe 240GB mentioned above, but it uses SanDisk Toggle flash and speaking broadly drives from flash manufacturers are more reliable because they use the best memory in their own branded drives. Drives for Performance Enthusiasts The Mushkin Enhanced Chronos Deluxe below is sort of a placeholder for mid-tier SSDs based on Sandforce controllers with Toggle-mode flash memory, an equivalent is the SanDisk Extreme (not Ultra or Extreme Plus). In general terms as long as a Sandforce-based drive has a capacity of 120/240GB (NOT 128/256GB), has a SATA600 interface, isn't from OCZ, and the manufacturer offers current firmware, it's probably a decent option. If you're not sure about a drive, post it in this thread. The Samsung 840 Pro (NOT non-Pro) is the fastest SSD on the market right now, and Samsung has a great reputation for reliability (though the 840 Pro has been out less than six months). The Intel SSD 330 240GB is a good option, though it uses flash rated at 3K cycles instead of 5K (still enough for desktop use). The Intel SSD 520 240GB may be a bit faster and uses full-endurance flash, but is very expensive compared to other drives. The Mushkin Enhanced Chronos Deluxe 240GB/SanDisk Extreme 240GB isn't as fast as the Intel SSD 330 and is less expensive, but is a better value and still a step up from standard drives. Drives for Caching SSD caching is less worthwhile than it has been, as the sinking prices of SSDs have made it a lot more reasonable to just buy a drive with enough room. The 64GB limit of Intel Smart Response Technology also makes it less useful, especially when combined with the poor price scaling of 60/64GB drives. That said, there are still some cases where it makes sense. The Mushkin Enhanced Chronos Deluxe 60GB shines here as using Synchronous NAND makes up for the lower performance from the small capacity. You might want to consider just picking up a larger drive for the better cost/GB, such as the Mushkin Enhanced Chronos 120GB, using 64GB for cache, leaving some space for a pagefile and other important data, and leaving the rest unpartitioned for spare area. Drives for Macs Sandforce-based drives are now recommended as the best option for Macs as of late 2012. This is because they offer the best I/O consistency of all consumer drives, and Anandtech found this to be very important to the user experience in Mountain Lion. Sandforce drives also suffer the least performance penalty from TRIM being disabled, though you should still enable it if you can. The Intel SSD 330 240GB is a good option, though it uses flash rated at 3K cycles instead of 5K (still enough for desktop use). The Mushkin Enhanced Chronos and Chronos Deluxe (or SanDisk Extreme) are also good options that are less expensive than the SSD 330, I'd prefer the Chronos Deluxe for Macs if possible. OWC makes Sandforce-based drives marketed for Macs, but there's no reason to pay extra for OWC-branded Sandforce drives unless you need a Mac-specific form-factor. Samsung 830s work well when TRIM is enabled, and are what Apple ships in their own systems, but don't offer the same I/O consistency as Sandforce-based drive. The Samsung 830 has been discontinued but you may be able to get good deals on clearance. Marvell-based drives are NOT recommended because they suffer without TRIM, but if TRIM is enabled the difference is small. mSATA Drives The Mushkin Enhanced Atlas and Atlas Deluxe (SATA600 models only) are the only reasonable options here at the moment, the Crucial M4 has buggy firmware and you can't flash working firmware as you can on the desktop (though they claim the December 4th firmware fixed the issues, some are still reporting problems). The Samsung PM830 is pretty sweet but OEM-only and hard to find. The Intel SSD 525 is new and awesome but expensive. SSD Values and Deals Check out the SSD Deal Megathread in coupons for current deals and savings. Remember: If you buy an old, crappy, or OCZ SSD, you're just wasting your money, not saving it. The Mushkin Enhanced Chronos-series are consistently the least expensive SSDs that don't suck. The Samsung 840 (non-Pro) has low endurance and write speed, but the 500GB models have had some compelling deals recently. General FAQ Should I upgrade my CPU, memory or get an SSD for the best performance boost? Make sure you have "enough" memory for your computer first. Memory is cheap and if you don't have enough installed it will be an unnecessary source of slow performance. There's no reason to not to run with at least 4GB of memory on Vista+, and with 8GB+ if you do any gaming / 64-bit computing. Check the physical RAM usage to make sure your memory usage isn't higher than or near the amount of RAM you have installed. Get the right upgrade for the right slowdown. If the tasks you're concerned about are severely CPU bound get a a better CPU. Regardless, moving to decent SSD from a mechanical hard disk will give a noticeable speed boost for many tasks (see the what will / will not be faster with an SSD section below). What will be faster with an SSD compared to a mechanical hard disk? Modern SSDs excel at random reads since seek times are virtually 0. The better modern SSDs also have excellent read and very good sequential write performance. In summary, anything that's I/O bound will be much faster with an SSD, this includes: * Booting * Closing/Opening applications * Loading game levels * Loading/Booting virtual machines What will not be faster with an SSD? Anything that's not I/O bound: * Video encoding (CPU bound) * Game frame rates (CPU/GPU bound) * Video playback frame rates (CPU/GPU bound) Can I run CHKDSK or a disk clone tool on SSDs? Sure, as far as your computer is concerned an SSD as just like any other connected storage device. Macrium Reflect Free is a good option for disk imaging. Acronis, Norton Ghost, CloneZilla, and dd have been verified to work just fine on SSDs, with the provisos below. Be careful when restoring an image from a different drive to ensure you get the right 512k or 1024k partition offset, otherwise there could be a significant degradation in performance. Windows 7 will align the partition automatically on initial install of new raw drive, but when you're imaging from different source you have to tell the software to do it manually. The reason is that if you have an oddball partition offset number then the drive is actually trying to read/write 2 blocks for what is effectively one block's worth of information, you can imagine how that's a bad thing. Vista and 7 both align every partition, whether on a platter or solid state drive, to 1024kb. Older versions of software like Acronis or Norton Ghost tend to use I think 32kb or 64kb. What about Hybrid Drives and SSD Caching? The Seagate SSHD 1TB and 500GB are a decent option for laptops where you need a lot of storage and want fast system performance. They're not competitive with real SSDs, but they do perform more like desktop harddrives. Intel's Smart Response Technology, available on motherboards with the Z68/Z77/H77 chipsets, allows you to use up to 64GB of an SSD to transparently cache a hard drive. With a bit of use to fill the cache, system bootup/shutdown and application launches can be as fast as an SSD. The downside of SRT is that you can't tell it what to cache, the driver decides automatically. SRT offers two modes: Enhanced Mode, which will keep working if the SSD fails, and Maximized Mode, which is much faster but stores boot files on the SSD. The Corsair Accelerator and Crucial Adrenaline SSDs include the Dataplex software you need to enable caching, and like other solutions that use Dataplex you get to decide what data you want cached. OCZ has some products in this area, but since OCZ is poo poo you shouldn't consider them. What if I have a motherboard without SATA600, is an SSD worth it? Yes, most of the performance improvement from SSDs comes from their improved random read/write performance, which still isn't fast enough to be capped by the SATA interface. Something to watch out for when putting a SSD into an laptop is that any laptop based on an older onboard controller is probably capped at SATA-150 to save power, even if the laptop motherboard chipset says it has SATA-300 (aka SATA II) support. The result is that on mobile platforms the SATA controller the limiting factor in read speeds of some of the better SSDs. Although this results in possibly slower speed than the full potential of the drive in many cases it's still many times faster than a mechanical hard disk. Try Googling for your laptop model and terms related to this issue, some people have created hacked BIOSes to enable faster SATA speeds. Can I put an SSD in a game console? Not in an Xbox 360, Microsoft locks down the ability to use ANY drive not provided by them. That said, there are some modding hacks out there to let you use a 3rd party hard disk, but you'd have to research what the limitations of those hacks/mods are. Note that most of the noise comes from system fans, so an SSD upgrade wouldn't help there. Here's a case of Microsoft insider doing an SSD upgrade: http://digg.com/xbox/Major_Nelson_G...ive_on_Xbox_360 You can upgrade a PS3 with an SSD if you have the money to burn: http://www.gamespot.com/features/6192258/index.html http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/15/...ttered-budgets/ How can I put a 2.5" SSD in a 3.5" desktop drive bay slot? Some people just use Velcro, double sided tape, gravity, etc... You can also get a 2.5" to 3.5" bay adapter, many SSDs come with them or you can pick one up at your favorite source for computer parts for less than $10. Should I consider a PCI-Express SSD? No, these drives are unreasonably expensive and complex for consumers. Enterprise PCI-Express SSDs can be good options for servers, but we're not going to cover that kind of enterprise storage here. I'm going to sell my SSD, what's the best way to wipe it? Secure erase the entire drive. Secure erase is a special ATA command this is equivalent to wiping the entire drive and doing a TRIM on all the contents, which restores the drive back to factory default write performance. The main way to do this for the Intel drives is to use the HDDErase utility. However, hardware support for HDDErase is pretty mediocre. Another alternative is the use the Unix hdparm tool which can be run from a LiveCD/USB flash drive. Finding your drive firmware version / SMART Data Info: A great freeware tool to view your current drive firmware version and if your drive supports TRIM is Crystal Disk Info: http://crystalmark.info/software/Cr...fo/index-e.html TRIM FAQ: What is TRIM? Much like mechanical hard disk drives, SSDs don't bother to clear out data the OS has marked deleted, instead they clear it off when they need to write something new to it. However unlike a mechanical hard disk this is not a single pass operation and so SSD's take a significant performance penalty for writes once the drive has filled up and there's no clean empty space to write to. This is one of two major issues discovered with first generation SSD's in early 2009. An OS with TRIM support tells the SSD to mark the cell as deleted at the time deletion. Further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM_%28SSD_command%29 Are there any benchmarks showing the benefits of TRIM? Yes, http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631 What's needed for TRIM support? You need a current operating system, recent SSD, a compatible SATA controller, current drivers, and AHCI support enabled in the BIOS. TRIM will be disabled on SSDs that are part of a RAID array, though support for TRIM in RAID arrays is coming in the next version of the Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) drivers on Intel systems. What's the status of TRIM support on Windows? Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 (same Kernel) have support for the TRIM command. Older Windows operating systems do not support TRIM, with no current plans to add support to older Windows versions. How do I know if TRIM is enabled in Windows 7? Go to the Command prompt and type: fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify Output definition: DisableDeleteNotify = 1 (Windows TRIM commands are disabled) DisableDeleteNotify = 0 (Windows TRIM commands are enabled) To really verify TRIM is working, use TRIMcheck. What's the status of TRIM support on OS X? TRIM will only be enabled by default on the SSDs Apple ships with their systems. Use Trim Enabler 2.0 to make it work with other SSDs. Trim Enabler 2.0 doesn't use the old kext like earlier versions, so shouldn't be as problematic. This post by Bitcoin Billionaire has instructions for how to enable TRIM manually. What's the status of TRIM support on Linux? TRIM is supported in Linux with kernel 2.6.36+ when using ext4. In addition the newest versions of hdparm can pass TRIM to ext4 partitions online for most modern kernels and do offline TRIM on ext2/3, xfs, and reiser partitions. Thanks Aquila! What's the status of TRIM support on *BSD? feld posted:FreeBSD: TRIM is supported out of the box as of FreeBSD9 for UFS. It is also supported in FreeBSD 8.3, but not through the installer so you need to enable it yourself with tunefs. Work is in progress to bring it to ZFS. When tweaking, be aware what a tweak actually improves. A lot of tweaks published for older SSDs such as the JMicron based drives were based around the fact that those drives had abysmal write performance compared to a mechanical drive. So the tweaks focused on minimizing writes to increase performance, on modern drives the opposite is true, and thus applying these tweaks would have the opposite effect. Other tweaks that minimize writes are geared towards increasing drive lifetime rather than increasing performance. A lot of tweaks published out there that minimize read/writes by disabling things like indexing or system restore increase performance regardless if you're using an SSD or not, since there's simply less background I/O happening. Turning off anything that caches to RAM can still faster when using the cache since RAM is still much faster than SSDs. Turning off things like indexing will increase overall performance at the sacrifice of performance when using something that can use the index such as a file search. What are good SSD benchmarking tools? Please don't post your benchmarks in the thread unless you're trying to troubleshoot performance or something, in the past we had a bunch of people posting Crystal DiskMark screenshots of their new SSDs for no reason and it really got in the way. Atto CrystalDiskMark HDTach HD Tune AS SSD Enable AHCI: Make sure to set your SATA controller to AHCI mode before installing your operating system. AHCI offers numerous noticeable performance improvements over legacy IDE mode, including NCQ support and TRIM. You may have to pre-load AHCI SATA controller drivers on a flash/floppy disk for the operating system installation to recognize your drive. It's also possible to put your drive in AHCI mode post installation: * In OSX and Ubuntu this usually requires no change * In Windows Vista/Windows 7 you can enable AHCI via a registry change. * In Windows XP, it's a trickier process since if the driver in use is a not an AHCI driver and it attempts to boot in AHCI mode a blue screen will occur and vice versa. The procedure involves installing the AHCI driver for your SATA controller first, then restart and go immediately into the BIOS to change to AHCI mode then boot normally into Windows XP. More reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanc...oller_Interface Install AHCI and Chipset Drivers: If you have an Intel chipset, install the latest Intel Rapid Storage Technology software, after you install the Chipset INF Update Utility. If you have an AMD chipset, install the AMD Southbridge and AHCI drivers. Updating the BIOS on your motherboard is also a good idea for the best performance. Laptop Users: Make sure you update the BIOS on laptops (especially Dells) before attempting to install an SSD! For you laptop Vista/Windows 7 users make sure to set your power profile to "High Performance", otherwise your SSD speeds may be limited. Should I defrag my SSD for better performance? No, defragging doesn't improve performance on SSDs and consumes some drive lifespan. Microsoft Windows 7 detects when it's being installed on a SSD and automatically turns off the background defragger. The Disk Defragmenter schedule (to see it go to start menu, start Disk Defragmenter) will not be turned off by default, but should have the SSD drive unselected under the choose disks settings to prevent the SSD from being defragmented when the schedule runs. Double check to make sure the SSD drive letter is unselected here. The Disk Defragmenter built into Windows 8 will detect if it is running on an SSD and will do a TRIM pass instead of attempting to defrag the drive. This can help the drive return to a high-performance, relatively clean state, though if TRIM is working and the drive isn't over-filled it shouldn't be getting out of that state in the first place. Windows 8 will automatically schedule the Disk Defragmenter to run when needed so you do not need to run it manually. If you are going to run the Disk Defragmenter, make sure you do any file deletions or disk cleanups BEFORE you run it, not after. Also, let the drive sit idle during and after running the defrag, or it won't act on the TRIM commands as effectively. Should I run maintenance, toolbox, or SSD optimization software? Factory Factory posted:There is pretty much zero need for such programs. TRIM is enabled automatically when you run the Windows Experience Index with an SSD as the system drive. The only other marginally useful thing is SMART status, and there are plenty of utilities to check that. But SMART isn't that useful for SSDs; basically, the only useful thing is checking the write endurance lifetime, and for desktop use it'd take a decade to go through that. By the time it became an issue, you will have upgraded, perhaps multiple times. Managing Disk Space Page and Hibernation files The Hibernation file is located at C:\hiberfil.sys and is equal in size to your system RAM. You can disable Hibernation to get this space back, but this is probably not a good idea on a laptop or netbook. Your page file is located at C:\pagefile.sys and is often sized to more than twice your system RAM, which gets ridiculous when you have more than 4GB of RAM. Don't disable your page file or move it to a harddrive, this will reduce performance and can cause system problems. You can set the page file to a more reasonable size, such as half your system RAM, to reclaim some space. If you have less than 4GB of RAM, I wouldn't set the page file below 2GB. SteamMover Update: Steam now lets you choose where to install some games. You can use SteamMover to move Steam games and other programs between drives using NTFS junctions (basically symlinks). Install Steam to a large harddrive with plenty of space, then create a folder on your SSD to hold the games you want to load quickly, and move those games to that folder using SteamMover. Unfortunately you can't move games that are contained in cache files, such as most Valve titles (because SteamMover only lets you move the subfolders, not the multi-gig GCFs in the Steamapps directory above them). Alternatively, if you have a large enough SSD and are just worried about a few big games, install Steam to your SSD and move the games you don't need to be fast to a spinning drive. WinSxS folder The Windows Side-by-Side folder, located at C:\Windows\winsxs, contains different versions of libraries so that programs always get the version they expect. The problem is that these copies are never removed when no longer needed, so this folder can balloon in size. Make sure you run Windows Update and do any installations/uninstallations you need to, reboot, then run the following command from an administrative command prompt: dism /online /cleanup-image /spsuperseded This can easily shave 3-5GB off of your winsxs folder. Use CCleaner Piriform's CCleaner can remove a lot of unnecessary clutter and save a decent amount of disk space. Shamelessly stolen, edited, and updated from scarymonkey's OP of the old thread. Alereon fucked around with this message at May 13, 2013 around 00:54 |
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| # ? May 20, 2013 17:10 |
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SSD Performance The Anandtech SSD Bench Database is a good place to look for benchmarks comparing many drives. Here are some benchmarks from a recent review:   To assist you in comparing similarly performing drives: OCZ Vertex 3 = Corsair Force GT = Mushkin Enhanced Chronos Deluxe (DX) = Intel SSD 520 = Kingston HyperX OCZ Vertex 3 MAX IOPS = Corsair Force GS = Mushkin Enhanced Chronos Deluxe (MX) OCZ Agility 3 = Corsair Force 3 = Mushkin Ehanced Chronos Remember: Don't buy OCZ drives, they are unreliable. Alereon fucked around with this message at Sep 2, 2012 around 16:16 |
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How fast is such and such SSD? Anandtech has a huge collection of benchmarks and you can even compare one drive against another. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/SSD/65 I have a Mac, which one should I buy? Any standard drive will work, but OWC sells (mostly Sandforce-based) drives for Macs, all the way from old PowerPC models all the way up to 480GB upgrades for the Macbook Air http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/ I have some strange micro-laptop that takes PATA ZIF drives Here's a list of drives. You may have to hack something together in those small sizes. http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...-available.html
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| # ? Dec 9, 2011 19:21 |
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Alereon posted:Data on flash memory also "fades" with time, meaning that you can't fill an SSD with data, stuff it in a drawer, and pull it out a few years later to read the data. Exactly how long the data lasts varies depending on the type of flash memory, but you're generally good for up to a year.
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| # ? Dec 9, 2011 19:55 |
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Yeah that is news to me as well, once written it is supposed to be there until overwriting or failure.
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| # ? Dec 9, 2011 20:06 |
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Nice Willy Northpole reference there.
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| # ? Dec 9, 2011 20:06 |
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Nice, fresh, comprehensive OP. Maybe it'd be nice have bigger titles for the subsections, or something, so once someone has decided which SSD to buy, they can skip straight to the "Do I gently caress about with the Windows settings?" type information, since those seem to be the most common questions. A bit like the refreshed Monitor megathread OP with the nice heading images. Barely a minor point though, it's good stuff. HalloKitty fucked around with this message at Dec 9, 2011 around 20:15 |
| # ? Dec 9, 2011 20:13 |
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peepsalot posted:I've never heard of this before, and have always understood flash memory to be completely non-volatile. Do you have any references for this? Edit: Actually I misread this blog, it says retention on unused MLC NAND was expected to be 3-4 years. So yeah, probably not going to hit you in the real world, but don't use flash for backup media that isn't going to get rotated. Alereon fucked around with this message at Dec 9, 2011 around 20:30 |
| # ? Dec 9, 2011 20:16 |
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All of these caveats make NAND Flash seem like a bit of a stop-gap technology. Come on, memristors, or racetrack memory, or whatever else fantastic non-volatile-but-fast-as-volatile memory they can come up with.
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| # ? Dec 9, 2011 20:21 |
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HalloKitty posted:All of these caveats make NAND Flash seem like a bit of a stop-gap technology. Come on, memristors, or racetrack memory, or whatever else fantastic non-volatile-but-fast-as-volatile memory they can come up with. Holograms, bitch 
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| # ? Dec 9, 2011 20:40 |
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That reminds me - it seems like we've been promised holographic discs with a capacity of something crazy like 2TB "in the next 5 years" for the last 10 years. 
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| # ? Dec 9, 2011 21:44 |
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I just upgraded to an SSD and I'd like to 1. rant about how loving lovely Win7 is about moving the Users directory to another drive, and 2. request you put instructions for accomplishing this in the OP. It's mostly my fault, but I can't believe how loving long it took me to set up my computer correctly. First of all, I have a lot of old lovely drives, and I can't quite afford to get rid of them. The moment prices drop after the Thai floods subside, I'll be all over it. I followed this guide: http://windows7easy.wordpress.com/2...7-installation/ The guide was great, besides the fact it's saved in PDF format. The first attempt, I accidentally picked the wrong drive to put the user profile on. gently caress. Second attempt I got the XML SysPrep file correct ... but I didn't realise all my drive letter assignations would reset. gently caress gently caress. Third time I got those two parts right and it finally worked, but holy gently caress it's taken hours. Yeah I made mistakes, but no user should have to write and load a customised XML file to accomplish this task correctly. I can't believe Microsoft wouldn't take any steps to make this easier for non-nerds. Maybe SSDs weren't common at Win7's launch, but 10K RPM SATA drives were. Same loving problem.
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| # ? Dec 10, 2011 04:22 |
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I'm keeping my eye on Dataplex, or a competitor that sells the software commercially instead of locking it to specific hardware. C:\Windows alone is 25+ GB, and most of the crap in there is hardly ever used. Prime candidate for being on a large, slow medium. PageFile.sys and hiberfil.sys are going to be another 10-12gb (depending on RAM and settings). The files needed to fast-boot windows are going to be a fraction of that, and the most common DLLs not much more. Managed tiered storage is the way to go. How much of CS5 is actually read when it launches? Games are one of the few program installs that actually do use the majority of their data in the hotpath, cutscenes excluded. Also not cool Intel, their SSD cache software is locked to the Z68. There's no hardware support in the Z68, they just decided to require you to buy that chip in order to use SRT.
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| # ? Dec 10, 2011 05:23 |
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teethgrinder posted:I just upgraded to an SSD and I'd like to 1. rant about how loving lovely Win7 is about moving the Users directory to another drive, and 2. request you put instructions for accomplishing this in the OP. There's an easier way. Do your install as normal, let it put the Users folder where it wants. Then boot into recovery mode from the install CD, go to the command prompt, move the Users directory wherever you want it and create a hardlink in the default location that points to where you put it. This is easy and more or less foolproof.
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| # ? Dec 10, 2011 05:41 |
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fatman1683 posted:There's an easier way. Do your install as normal, let it put the Users folder where it wants. Then boot into recovery mode from the install CD, go to the command prompt, move the Users directory wherever you want it and create a hardlink in the default location that points to where you put it. This is easy and more or less foolproof. You can actually also right click > properties > location > move most user folders. Really easy if you are more comfortable with a UI. e: I honestly have no idea how I figured this out, of course with an SSD knowing how to create a hardlink is useful so you can move apps around, because some poo poo STILL insists on hard coding to be installed to C:\
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| # ? Dec 10, 2011 06:30 |
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God I fucking love Diablo 3 gold, it even paid for this shitty title
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I love having my OS and main applications/games installed to a SSD. It just feels so right for the desktop to appear after booting up, and immediately be able to open an application. The days of sitting waiting for icons to fill up the tray are over, don't think I could go back to regular hard drives.
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| # ? Dec 10, 2011 06:44 |
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Autarch Kade posted:I love having my OS and main applications/games installed to a SSD. It just feels so right for the desktop to appear after booting up, and immediately be able to open an application. The days of sitting waiting for icons to fill up the tray are over, don't think I could go back to regular hard drives. I bought a SSD for my work laptop, and when they offered to replace my current laptop with a really nice new one, I passed because it didn't have an SSD, and it just wasn't worth taking the time to reinstall everything. No matter how fast all the other components in a computer are, an SSD is the only component that makes everything I typically do on a computer soooo much faster. IT guy at work told me the new ones they are getting in have SSDs now, I told him I am ready for my new laptop 
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| # ? Dec 10, 2011 06:58 |
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What would you guys recommend for a high-capacity (+400GB) SATA3 SSD to put OS, programs and games on? I want to replace my current solution of a 80 GB Intel X25-M + 1 TB Samsung HD103UI with a high-capacity SSD and my HP N36L with a v28 ZRAID1 (as I get line-speed over SMB/CIFS). Speaking of SSDs - if any of you are running zfs on a server and have a couple or three small (no more than 10GB) SSD/USB3-attached flash disk to spare, use it for zil and log device (2 in mirror for zil to avoid data loss, 1 for log). The preformance gains are really remarkable. D. Ebdrup fucked around with this message at Dec 10, 2011 around 12:24 |
| # ? Dec 10, 2011 12:20 |
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pixaal posted:You can actually also right click > properties > location > move most user folders. Really easy if you are more comfortable with a UI. fatman1683 posted:There's an easier way. Do your install as normal, let it put the Users folder where it wants. Then boot into recovery mode from the install CD, go to the command prompt, move the Users directory wherever you want it and create a hardlink in the default location that points to where you put it. This is easy and more or less foolproof.
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| # ? Dec 10, 2011 12:57 |
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You wouldn't want to move the appdata folder though, surely, because it's referenced for so many small, random access files necessary for all kinds of applications.. the absolute ideal scenario for an SSD
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| # ? Dec 10, 2011 13:10 |
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D. Ebdrup posted:What would you guys recommend for a high-capacity (+400GB) SATA3 SSD to put OS, programs and games on? Crucial M4 512GB for $736.99 Samsung 830 512GB for $769.99 I'd probably go with the Crucial M4 because of it's slightly lower price/GB. The Samsung 830 is new, and while they have a reputation for reliability, this product hasn't been out long enough to find out about any gotchas. All these drives are pretty drat fast, though I think the Corsair Force 3 is likely to be slightly faster (not that you'd notice, really).
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| # ? Dec 10, 2011 19:56 |
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So is it "safe" to assume that the Sandforce using drives are reliable now, with all the firmware updates? I'll probably end up getting another SSD in addition to my Intel 320 160gb later on (prob give this over to my parents' computers or something), so by sometime next year, any problems with the new sandforce ones should have popped up, right?
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| # ? Dec 10, 2011 20:30 |
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Archer2338 posted:So is it "safe" to assume that the Sandforce using drives are reliable now, with all the firmware updates? Edit: I edited the OP to be a bit clearer that you probably shouldn't buy OCZ drives. Alereon fucked around with this message at Dec 10, 2011 around 21:16 |
| # ? Dec 10, 2011 20:46 |
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Archer2338 posted:So is it "safe" to assume that the Sandforce using drives are reliable now, with all the firmware updates? The OP seems to think so, and I've been following this thread for probably close to a year now and it does seem like way fewer people are coming in here saying their Vertex/Agility died completely out of nowhere. But noone can say for sure that there weren't other problems that have yet to be fixed (their fix was supposed to remedy bluescreens but a lot of people also complained about it being dead when they try to power it on in the morning; maybe the same thing and maybe not). It was such a serious problem and lasted so long that I definitely don't feel comfortable buying a Sandforce drive. The only ones I considered when buying were Intel and M4 (Marvell controller), with preference to Intel. If you're OK with the risk and get a great deal it might be worth trying but if you don't want to mess around with something that is potentially risky I would not recommend them.
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| # ? Dec 10, 2011 20:55 |
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Well, Vertex/Agility are both OCZ drives, so that might have more to do with it. I haven't seen a lot of people come in here saying "poo poo, my force/force gt just died"
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| # ? Dec 10, 2011 20:58 |
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As far as I'm aware the only reason OCZ (Vertex and Agility in particular, since they are the most well-known) gets such a bad rap is because they were the main producers of drives with Sandforce. Unless I'm wrong and they just use shittier memory?
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| # ? Dec 10, 2011 21:12 |
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You are wrong. They get a bad rap because they tweak the firmware to make the drives 10 MB/s faster but five times as likely to die, and also because of the Vertex 2. They packed it with cheaper NAND so it was cheaper to produce, ran half as fast, and had less usable space (5GB less on a 60GB drive), but sold it under the same SKU for the same price, all without telling anybody about the switch until people benchmarked them and realized something was amiss.
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| # ? Dec 10, 2011 21:16 |
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Factory Factory posted:You are wrong. They get a bad rap because they tweak the firmware to make the drives 10 MB/s faster but five times as likely to die, and also because of the Vertex 2. They packed it with cheaper NAND so it was cheaper to produce, ran half as fast, and had less usable space (5GB less on a 60GB drive), but sold it under the same SKU for the same price, all without telling anybody about the switch until people benchmarked them and realized something was amiss. I seem to remember them also doing something shady with RAM several years ago.
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| # ? Dec 10, 2011 21:18 |
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the littlest prince posted:As far as I'm aware the only reason OCZ (Vertex and Agility in particular, since they are the most well-known) gets such a bad rap is because they were the main producers of drives with Sandforce.
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| # ? Dec 10, 2011 21:24 |
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I have a crucial c300 drive that came before TRIM support, and I tend to wipe it with HDparm in ubuntu pretty drat often (usually every month or so). This won't cause any performance degredation, right? I'm so anal about the write performance I'll nuke the thing as soon I start to feel like the drive is getting cluttered 
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| # ? Dec 11, 2011 00:02 |
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Scionix posted:I have a crucial c300 drive that came before TRIM support, and I tend to wipe it with HDparm in ubuntu pretty drat often (usually every month or so).
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| # ? Dec 11, 2011 00:19 |
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Most common Linux file systems don't support trim unfortunately
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| # ? Dec 11, 2011 01:26 |
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Kingston V+100 series (not... anything else in the badly named line, it has to be V+100) uses an updated Toshiba controller that has aggressive garbage collection and you can't tell the difference in performance with or without TRIM. It will probably have less write amplification with TRIM, it does support it, but it's way more aggressive than Intel's GC, and you can fill one completely up and still get great performance (with less usable write cycles/nominal lifetime, but thems the breaks).
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| # ? Dec 11, 2011 01:38 |
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Sharing the love for the V+100 series. It's a shame they're getting phased out. If they weren't I'd have recommended them as a budget option as they were easily found for about $1.25 - $1.3 per GB. Too bad the V200 series doesn't have nearly as aggressive pricing.
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| # ? Dec 11, 2011 01:59 |
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Scionix posted:I have a crucial c300 drive that came before TRIM support, and I tend to wipe it with HDparm in ubuntu pretty drat often (usually every month or so).  Every month? How many extra writes are you doing writing everything back to the drive? 
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| # ? Dec 11, 2011 02:24 |
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So I looked on newegg for the recommended SSDs in the first sentence of the OP, and they're either overpriced or out of stock. But the Force GT 120gb is $160 AR. Seeeeeems good? Anyone use one?
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| # ? Dec 11, 2011 02:36 |
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It's an SF 22xx drive, so with the firmware updates and whatnot should be ok. In fact that's a good price for the GT model.
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| # ? Dec 11, 2011 02:55 |
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kingcobweb posted:So I looked on newegg for the recommended SSDs in the first sentence of the OP, and they're either overpriced or out of stock.
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| # ? Dec 11, 2011 03:02 |
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kingcobweb posted:So I looked on newegg for the recommended SSDs in the first sentence of the OP, and they're either overpriced or out of stock. The Crucial M4 is in stock at Amazon. holocaust bloopers fucked around with this message at Dec 11, 2011 around 17:27 |
| # ? Dec 11, 2011 17:24 |
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| # ? May 20, 2013 17:10 |
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Okay so my SSD only stops responding and crashes my system when I open 12+ VM's at once, I guess I am just overloading the controller?
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| # ? Dec 11, 2011 20:38 |
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