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Boten Anna
Feb 22, 2010

Noob question, why is the "4k" write so slow in all of these? I assume that is writing 4k chunks? Like what exactly is going on there?

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dietcokefiend
Apr 28, 2004
HEY ILL HAV 2 TXT U L8TR I JUST DROVE IN 2 A DAYCARE AND SCRATCHED MY RAZR

Tetraphagia posted:

I picked up one of the Intel 330 180GB drives and installed it a few days ago. As I was installing Steam games and running Windows Updates, things seemed a little unstable, lots of Chrome and Explorer freezing up, but no blue screens. I ran a benchmark at the end of the first day and I got this (I actually ran it about 5 times because of the weird results):



Going over SATA II, so everything is about what I expected except for that final test. Installed the Intel SSD Tools, ran a full diagnostic scan (no errors), shut down the computer, came back the next day and re-ran the benchmark, got this:



Everything has been fine since then, but I also haven't really been stressing the system. I was debating RMAing just because of the weird early behavior, but now it seems like everything is back to normal? Am I paranoid thinking I should RMA this, or was it probably just a really weird fluke?

Is that first one connected to a Marvell SATA 6.0Gb/s connection?

Tetraphagia
Jun 27, 2006

dietcokefiend posted:

Is that first one connected to a Marvell SATA 6.0Gb/s connection?

I didn't change any connections between the two benchmarks. I'm not sure what the controller is, (AMD 770 chipset, SB710 southbridge), but it's going over SATA II. I enabled AHCI before I installed Windows, also.

Tunga
May 7, 2004

Grimey Drawer

jwoven posted:

Don't do that, it's not good for your ssd. Use an actual ssd erase program.

Parted magic can do it: http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-20115106-285/how-to-securely-erase-an-ssd-drive/
Right, I'm not concerned about the actual data since it's going to my brother, just a quick format would do in that regard, but I want to restore the performance. This looks like the correct thing, thanks.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Boten Anna posted:

Noob question, why is the "4k" write so slow in all of these? I assume that is writing 4k chunks? Like what exactly is going on there?

That is writing 4K chunks, and it's because the SSD's controller has to process many, many different writes, and because the physical process of executing a write takes a certain amount of time. The size of a read or write is variable, from 512 bytes to a few megabytes per write command, and so 4K random I/O involves less data moved for the same amount of data moved than larger, sequential I/O.

Just for a laugh, you should see what 4K random I/O is like on a platter hard drive. Even a slow SSD is at least about an order of magnitude faster.

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

So when are OEM's going to start sticking 32GB or 64GB of flash on the motherboard? Seems like it would only cost $10 and it would be perfect for business computers that just have office/windows and use network storage. Right now they just use a fraction of a 250GB drive. Oh the wasted space...

Not Wolverine
Jul 1, 2007

Bob Morales posted:

So when are OEM's going to start sticking 32GB or 64GB of flash on the motherboard? Seems like it would only cost $10 and it would be perfect for business computers that just have office/windows and use network storage. Right now they just use a fraction of a 250GB drive. Oh the wasted space...

Well the cheapest 32GB right now is $50, the cheapest new (non-refurbished) hard drive is a 160GB for $64, $10 to give the IT department a lot of extra space they will waste. I see SSDs as still an enthusiast option, not necessarily something for the everyday user.

I don't think your average office worker will really notice increase in speed from an SSD. Yeah it boots faster and cuts office load times from like 10second to 3seconds, but for just browsing the web and actually using the programs after they are loaded the performance increase is not as noticeable.

There are two reasons I have not bought a SSD (until today, my M4 should be delivered sometime this afternoon :) ), price and noticable performance increase. Sure booting windows in 20seconds instead of 40seconds would be awesome, but I do far more with my system than just booting windows. Sure loading firefox or MS Office instantly instead of a few seconds would be nice, but for the cost and space I can wait.

Granted I sound like a hypocrite since I recently bought an SSD. But I waited until the price seemed cheap enough for me to justify the drive, I know I will still have to have a storage drive, I realized the load time on my games was taking too long. For the rest of my tasks, I simply could not justify the cost of an SSD for typical "office work", unless "office work" means photoshop or something similar.

VVV My main machine runs 2x 2GB OCZ DDR purchased 3/2010, so far it has been reliable. Some OCZ products can be reliable and last (knock on wood) but despite my positive experience with OCZ I still don't want to risk one of their SSDs. One of the things I noticed today is that OCZ left the memory market a year ago (yes, I am behind on hardware). OCZ says "it's too competitive" but I'm pretty sure that is just their technical jargon for "we hosed up our brand name so bad nobody wants this poo poo".

Not Wolverine fucked around with this message at 21:09 on May 25, 2012

Goober Peas
Jun 30, 2007

Check out my 'Vette, bro


movax posted:

I dunno, I thought their RAM was fairly well regarded. I ran all OCZ DDR2 on my older systems, but then again it wasn't any crazy extreme overclocker stuff, like some of the really high-end Crucial Ballistix.

e: ^^ 'sup fellow former [H]tard

The OCZ DDR3 RAM in my laptop lasted all of 9 months before it poo poo the bed last. I'm not an overclock-er at all. I don't hold them in high regard.

CLAM DOWN
Feb 13, 2007




Goober Peas posted:

The OCZ DDR3 RAM in my laptop lasted all of 9 months before it poo poo the bed last. I'm not an overclock-er at all. I don't hold them in high regard.

When I bought my desktop about a year ago, I got OCZ DDR3 RAM because it was on sale. It was dead on arrival, twice in a row. Finally exchanged for some G.skill and couldn't be happier.

Fatal
Jul 29, 2004

I'm gunna kill you BITCH!!!

This entire argument could be brought up for why should you ever buy a new computer. For most situations installing a SSD is a bigger upgrade than replacing a 4 year old computer. Think about that.

Fayk
Aug 2, 2006

Sorry, my brain doesn't work so good...

spanko posted:

Is anyone else having problems with their Crucial M4 lately? In the last two days I've had two different people tell me their M4s starting crashing and the details are exactly the same. The computer locks up but sound still works including push to talk voip like mumble, ventrilo, or skype. They can move their cursors around for a few seconds but can't interact with anything, and then the computer BSODs. There's some posts on the Crucial SSD forums about it but no response from Crucial, and its hard to tell if the issues on the forums are the same thing. Its just really weird cause both these people have had their drives for a while, updated their firmware in the last couple months, and both their problems started in the last two days.

Just saw this (or something remarkably like it) last night for the first time. Couldn't actually launch task manager, even just opening windows in Explorer would never show directory contents, etc.

On reboot it happened again for about 2 minutes (nothing more would launch, etc, as if there's no disk IO possible) but then it recovered.

I am not familiar with the '5000 hours bug' or issue, but I haven't had mine nearly that long.

bloops
Dec 31, 2010

Thanks Ape Pussy!
Check firmware. Make sure that's current first. Been using an M4 128gb and 256gb since November with no issues.

movax
Aug 30, 2008

Bob Morales posted:

So when are OEM's going to start sticking 32GB or 64GB of flash on the motherboard? Seems like it would only cost $10 and it would be perfect for business computers that just have office/windows and use network storage. Right now they just use a fraction of a 250GB drive. Oh the wasted space...

Well the flash is cheap, but you need to spend some extra bucks on a controller/interface. Flash chips on their own are worthless, they need a controller. Then, the controller needs some way to talk to your system (so in this case, pretty much SATA).

Shadowhand00
Jan 23, 2006

Golden Bear is ever watching; day by day he prowls, and when he hears the tread of lowly Stanfurd red,from his Lair he fiercely growls.
Toilet Rascal

Star War Sex Parrot posted:

By the time DDR2 rolled around they had mostly cleaned up their act. Their horrible RAM days were in the DDR/SD-RAM days around 2000. Behold, people basically saying the same thing about OCZ (that they used to be terrible) back in 2003. :laugh:





gently caress that company.

I had a few techs out at OCZ once for a phone system installation. They were not happy with what they saw. I wish I had some pictures of their server room, but it literally looks like this:

Not Wolverine
Jul 1, 2007

Fatal posted:

This entire argument could be brought up for why should you ever buy a new computer. For most situations installing a SSD is a bigger upgrade than replacing a 4 year old computer. Think about that.

:lol:
An SSD does not improve your graphics, does not decrease your CPU load, does not free up more RAM, etc. Simply put, an SSD opens your web browser or your spread sheet in less time. From then on it's back to the same 4 year old PC computing experience.

Honestly unless your a gamer or Photoshop user, I feel SSDs are kinda over rated.

HalloKitty
Sep 30, 2005

Adjust the bass and let the Alpine blast

Colonel Sanders posted:

Honestly unless your a gamer or Photoshop user

ahh, this plus your custom title made me smile

Flipperwaldt
Nov 11, 2011

Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?



Colonel Sanders posted:

An SSD does not improve your graphics, does not decrease your CPU load, does not free up more RAM, etc. Simply put, an SSD opens your web browser or your spread sheet in less time. From then on it's back to the same 4 year old PC computing experience.

Honestly unless your a gamer or Photoshop user, I feel SSDs are kinda over rated.
You've got it backwards. Unless you're a gamer or a Photoshop user, none of the things you mentioned are bottlenecks in a 4 year old PC. The harddrive is.

HalloKitty
Sep 30, 2005

Adjust the bass and let the Alpine blast
Pretty much. SSDs are for the everyday user. Gamers don't benefit much at all, environments load into RAM and you're done, sequential loading mostly, but SSDs could offer a little benefit. Photoshop users actually can benefit using one as their scratch drive depending on their canvas size, but as always, RAM is your first port of call.

Booting Windows faster is not the main benefit either, but simply the lack of sluggishness within everything you do. Things just respond more quickly in a way that isn't measured in raw numbers

HalloKitty fucked around with this message at 23:26 on May 25, 2012

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice
Yes, SSDs are awesome, but let's be realistic: Light/normal usage isn't bottlenecked in any way by a reasonably modern 7200rpm harddrive as long as it isn't failing, full, or badly fragmented. With the prices of SSDs of course it makes little sense to buy a harddrive for your system drive, but replacing an existing drive can be much less compelling for most people.

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

Whenever I go back to a machine that uses and SSD it's just like :bang:

I mean just doing the whole out of the box registering Windows removing pre-installed crap, initial virus scan so MSE shuts up, installing Office, importing Outlook mailbox, installing Acrobat/Flash, it's just fuuuuck this is going to take all day.

And that's on a brand new Dell with an i5, 8GB, 7200RPM 1TB drive... :bahgawd:

You start doing two things at once (like install two programs) and it's just molasses.

Srebrenica Surprise
Aug 23, 2008

"L-O-V-E's just another word I never learned to pronounce."

Goober Peas posted:

The OCZ DDR3 RAM in my laptop lasted all of 9 months before it poo poo the bed last. I'm not an overclock-er at all. I don't hold them in high regard.
Their DDR2 was all overvolted to hell too. Nobody should be praising them for selling 85% of their lineup at 2.2V just to get some slightly tighter timings (or to get those piece of poo poo modules to run without errors :lol:) at twice the price as competitors at the lowest point of DDR2's price just because by OCZ's standards that was a fantastic run. Companies will do that now with 1.65 vs 1.5 with 9-9-9-24 instead of 10-10-10-27 or whatever or 1333 vs 1600, but 1.65V isn't enough to burn your hand when you try swapping out the sticks (with heat spreaders!) or gently caress up the memory controller every third boot. It was clear they were rummaging around in the bottom of the bin and I wouldn't be surprised if the lower voltage tolerances in DDR3 doomed this strategy to the point where they pulled out.

Srebrenica Surprise fucked around with this message at 00:33 on May 26, 2012

Fayk
Aug 2, 2006

Sorry, my brain doesn't work so good...

Alereon posted:

Yes, SSDs are awesome, but let's be realistic: Light/normal usage isn't bottlenecked in any way by a reasonably modern 7200rpm harddrive as long as it isn't failing, full, or badly fragmented. With the prices of SSDs of course it makes little sense to buy a harddrive for your system drive, but replacing an existing drive can be much less compelling for most people.

The argument people are using as far as SSDs being relevant in the mainstream is that if the machine is modern enough (or was high-end enough at the time) that it probably isn't bottlenecked by actual CPU speed or RAM - it's disk I/O constrained.

The more high-end the system, the more that's true. If you bought a brand new machine that's 4+ cores, etc, unless you did something like put 2GB of RAM in it, it's the disk that's going to be the one thing you could really upgrade that would make a lot of (small) improvements.

My main desktop is from 2009 or something at this point, but disk IO was definitely the slowest thing in the system...but that's because it's a 2x4 Core Xeon w/ 10GB of memory.

Whether Joe OfficeComputer actually even has a reasonable amount of memory installed in his machine is a bit suspect though. If he's got 4GB plus though? Yeah, SSD is probably the least painful upgrade.

Flipperwaldt
Nov 11, 2011

Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?



Alereon posted:

Yes, SSDs are awesome, but let's be realistic: Light/normal usage isn't bottlenecked in any way by a reasonably modern 7200rpm harddrive as long as it isn't failing, full, or badly fragmented. With the prices of SSDs of course it makes little sense to buy a harddrive for your system drive, but replacing an existing drive can be much less compelling for most people.
I agree with all that, apart fron the "in any way" qualifier. You won't be waiting all the time or unbearably long, but you can bet your rear end that when you're waiting, it's not because the CPU is maxed out (for longer than a fraction of a second anyway), or because the GPU can't keep up. And with a decent amount of RAM for 4 years ago, you shouldn't hit too many problems with light/normal usage either.

I meant bottleneck in a relative sense.

Flipperwaldt fucked around with this message at 01:23 on May 26, 2012

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

An SSD will turn a C2D into a virtual rocketship for 90% of Office app users. An i5/i7 with a spinning disk will still be a PITA for a lot of stuff.

Boten Anna
Feb 22, 2010

I just installed a fresh Windows on my brand new 256GB Crucial m4 and this is what I'm getting from CDM:



What the hell am I doing wrong? :psyduck:

CLAM DOWN
Feb 13, 2007




Boten Anna posted:

I just installed a fresh Windows on my brand new 256GB Crucial m4 and this is what I'm getting from CDM:



What the hell am I doing wrong? :psyduck:

My SSD performance is very subpar, even lower than yours, because I have to use a Marvell SATA3 connector which are evidently poo poo. Do you have yours plugged into anything like that? I'm not sure what kind of numbers you should be expecting.

Boten Anna
Feb 22, 2010

CLAM DOWN posted:

My SSD performance is very subpar, even lower than yours, because I have to use a Marvell SATA3 connector which are evidently poo poo. Do you have yours plugged into anything like that? I'm not sure what kind of numbers you should be expecting.

Well, see this post on the last page from someone else with an m4:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3454120&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=47#post403965381

I have an ASUS P8Z77-V PRO motherboard. I'm going through to make sure I installed drivers for everything, and I did the thing in the OP what with making sure AHCI is on, but I've only seen a marginal improvement so far.

Boten Anna fucked around with this message at 04:45 on May 26, 2012

DrDork
Dec 29, 2003
commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness
Just to be sure, you are selecting the Fill 0x00 or whatever the wording is to use nothing but straight 0's for the tests, yes? There's a huge numbers difference between testing with that and with random data.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

DrDork posted:

Just to be sure, you are selecting the Fill 0x00 or whatever the wording is to use nothing but straight 0's for the tests, yes? There's a huge numbers difference between testing with that and with random data.

Not on the M4, it doesn't compress data like Sandforce does.

I vote on using the Marvell SATA instead of Intel. Use the Intel controller (the ports right next to the 3Gbps ports).

Boten Anna
Feb 22, 2010

Factory Factory posted:

Not on the M4, it doesn't compress data like Sandforce does.

I vote on using the Marvell SATA instead of Intel. Use the Intel controller (the ports right next to the 3Gbps ports).

I plugged it in to a port that was marked as 6 GBit, I guess I can double check to ensure I did this right? Or is there a way to tell for sure in Device Manager?

EDIT: Whenever I try to install the Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver it says "This computer does not meet the minimum requirements for installing the software." :psyduck:

Boten Anna fucked around with this message at 05:19 on May 26, 2012

4 Day Weekend
Jan 16, 2009

Boten Anna posted:

Well, see this post on the last page from someone else with an m4:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3454120&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=47#post403965381

I have an ASUS P8Z77-V PRO motherboard. I'm going through to make sure I installed drivers for everything, and I did the thing in the OP what with making sure AHCI is on, but I've only seen a marginal improvement so far.

Your board comes with 2 Intel SATA 6G ports and 2 ASmedia ones. According to the Asus site, the Intel ones are grey, and the ASmedia ones are navy blue (and the SATA2 ones are blue also). Make sure your SSD is plugged into a grey one.

Boten Anna
Feb 22, 2010

Thanks for pointing that out, my graphics card is covering up most of the ports and I didn't noticed that I had identified the wrong one as the 6GBPS ports :doh:

Also Windows didn't install the bootloader on the SSD for some dumbfuck reason--I told the BIOS to only boot from the SSD and everything shat the bed. So now I'm installing everything again.

My physical HDDs still make a weird grindy noise when booting Windows that I don't see any particularly good reason for. :sigh:

DarkJC
Jul 6, 2010
I noticed that behaviour installing Win 7 on a laptop with an SSD and HDD. It stuck the bootloader on the HDD even when I told it to install on the SSD. Weird.

Tunga
May 7, 2004

Grimey Drawer
When installing Windows I now disconnect (or disable in BIOS) every other drive, to avoid that exact poo poo. Worth noting though: you can fix it with your Windows disk and some console commands that I forget now, should be fairly easy to Google.

CLAM DOWN
Feb 13, 2007




DarkJC posted:

I noticed that behaviour installing Win 7 on a laptop with an SSD and HDD. It stuck the bootloader on the HDD even when I told it to install on the SSD. Weird.

Grab EasyBCD, fantastic little tool. It's quite straightforward but if you're not familiar with how bootloader stuff works there's some decent documentation on the site too.

http://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/

evil_bunnY
Apr 2, 2003

Bob Morales posted:

An SSD will turn a C2D into a virtual rocketship for 90% of Office app users. An i5/i7 with a spinning disk will still be a PITA for a lot of stuff.
I agree with this 200%. We introduced a no-desktop-left-behind policy at work and the good will we got out of it was insane.

Not Wolverine
Jul 1, 2007

Boten Anna posted:

My physical HDDs still make a weird grindy noise when booting Windows that I don't see any particularly good reason for. :sigh:

Can you instead use the installer and reinstall the MBR? Also, how did you find out where the MBR was installed? I have a strange feeling the same thing might have happened to my system since I had my storage drive and old system drive still hooked up in my PC during the windows install, and now every time I boot it asks me to choose between the two windows copies (old one use to work but is now broken btw, I assume this could be from enabling AHCI?).

Also, do these performance numbers look normal or did I mess up?



It is a 128GB M4 on a slightly older AMD system. 3.2GHz quad core 12GB RAM, GA-770T-USB3 motherboard. The SATA controller it's connected to is a 3G AMD SB710. Do other drives attached make a difference? It also has a 1TB, a 500GB, and a DVD-RW attached to the same SATA controller.

**edit** so I unplugged my old system drive to discover as suspsected, Windows did indeed not install a boot manager to my SSD. WTF, why Windows? WHY?? I unplugged all drives except the SSD and attempted to use my USB to install a boot record. . . loving LOL. Auto repair, bootsect.exe, bootmgr.exe, a few other commands later and I was left with both a busted SSD and busted USB thumbdrive. Why Windows? Why is it this loving complicated to install the boot manager onto the system drive? :downsbravo: So I am now rebuilding my USB drive and going to reinstall Windows again.[/rant]

Not Wolverine fucked around with this message at 22:09 on May 26, 2012

Boten Anna
Feb 22, 2010



Well this is certainly an improvement, even if it required me to reinstall everything. But it was faster this time! :v:

I tried to do a boot repair or whatever but just went fuckit and installed again. It went faster this time, anyway.

It seems like it COULD be faster judging by the performance of the person on the other page but this is, at least, very acceptable. :)

And yeah Colonel Sanders, I think you have the same problem I did. It was also giving me two Windows 7 boot options. Also make sure you have the SSD in the 6 gig port!

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
If you check under the picture, he only has 3Gbps ports. :ssh:

And for the record, other drives attached do not make a difference for SATA. Each port is independent.

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dorkasaurus_rex
Jun 10, 2005

gawrsh do you think any women will be there

So I'm building a proper desktop for the first time in nearly a decade and I'm looking at SSDs, I'm wondering: are the SSDs in the 500GB capacity range worth it, or should I wait? Currently I'm rocking with three 7200RPM drives, one at 200gb, one at 500gb, and one at 1TB. I'd like to replace the 200GB 7200RPM drive with a nice, sizable, reliable SSD, but they seem to still be well over $1/GB which is more than I'm comfortable paying.

That being said, I got a good deal on the computer overall, so I wouldn't mind paying more to futureproof my rig and I definitely do want an SSD of some sort. I do a lot of PhotoShop CS5 stuff with enormous scans of images sometimes well over 100MB a piece from time to time so having a super fast hard drive with a lot of space would definitely be awesome, apart from the obvious benefits of putting the OS and other commonly used programs on there.

Also, being somewhat new to the modern PC building world, I heard SSDs are really small and most cases (mine is a Lian Li) don't actually have small enough bays for them without some kind of harness to hold them in place. Is this true?

Thanks in advance.

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