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Diovanti
Aug 19, 2003
no afterlife
I didn't see any mention of this yet, so I have to ask: If I use truecrypt to encrypt my SSD do I have to over-provision it by 20% in order not to kill the performance?

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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!

Diovanti posted:

I didn't see any mention of this yet, so I have to ask: If I use truecrypt to encrypt my SSD do I have to over-provision it by 20% in order not to kill the performance?

Wouldn't you rather use a different encryption system that's hardware supported by your drive and OS?

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice

Diovanti posted:

I didn't see any mention of this yet, so I have to ask: If I use truecrypt to encrypt my SSD do I have to over-provision it by 20% in order not to kill the performance?
Yes, but don't use TrueCrypt. BitLocker drive encryption in Windows will use your SSD's built-in encryption for true zero-overhead FDE if supported (update the firmware), otherwise it will use your CPU's hardware acceleration and only encrypt used space.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Diovanti posted:

I didn't see any mention of this yet, so I have to ask: If I use truecrypt to encrypt my SSD do I have to over-provision it by 20% in order not to kill the performance?

Do you have to use TrueCrypt? Almost all drives will self-encrypt with 128-bit or 256-bit AES if you set an ATA password.

Besides that, a number of drives are compatible with TCG Opal and MS eDrive, which make the a compatible OS (like Windows 8.1) aware of the SSD's hardware encryption and delegate key management duties to the OS, rather than relying on an ATA password.

The only thing TrueCrypt would add is the plausible deniability partition obfuscation thing.

But yes, if you do FDE in software and need to maintain the full-disk nature of the encryption, not only does that instantly fill the drive, but TRIM won't function correctly, so you need to overprovision the drive.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice
SanDisk has released the Ultra II (120-960GB), the first drive using TLC memory from a company other than Samsung. This drive is very similar to the 840 Evo, combining SanDisk's 19nm TLC NAND with an SLC caching scheme they call nCache 2.0, similar to Samsung's TurboWrite. Pricing seems to be directly targeting the Crucial MX100, so it'll be very interesting to see how performance stacks up! SanDisk also has a better track record than Crucial both with reliability and not being jerks to consumers.

WattsvilleBlues
Jan 25, 2005

Every demon wants his pound of flesh
If I'm formatting my Samsung EVO 250GB SSD to reinstall Windows (my OS and programs are already on the drive), do I just do this the normal way? The drive has 20% space reserved already.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice

WattsvilleBlues posted:

If I'm formatting my Samsung EVO 250GB SSD to reinstall Windows (my OS and programs are already on the drive), do I just do this the normal way? The drive has 20% space reserved already.
Yes. Note that you don't need to overprovision for a normal system where TRIM is working.

cage-free egghead
Mar 8, 2004
I haven't dealt too much with Windows 8 and reinstalling the entire OS but I'd like to replace my 5400rpm drive with an SSD, but my new laptop does not have an optical drive. Is installing it from a flash drive still viable and where would I go to get a legit copy of Windows 8?

WattsvilleBlues
Jan 25, 2005

Every demon wants his pound of flesh

Alereon posted:

Yes. Note that you don't need to overprovision for a normal system where TRIM is working.

Ah, there was a bit of to and fro about that in the last thread. I'll reprovision my drive, thanks.

Sibling of TB
Aug 4, 2007

Alereon posted:

Yes. Note that you don't need to overprovision for a normal system where TRIM is working.

So the overprovision by 20% to increase the life and performance of the drive is only when TRIM is not enabled, and when it is it's fine to fill the thing up all the way? Because the impression I'm getting from this thread is that other than this post, everyone seems to be saying that you never want to go below 20% free space.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice

Sibling of TB posted:

So the overprovision by 20% to increase the life and performance of the drive is only when TRIM is not enabled, and when it is it's fine to fill the thing up all the way? Because the impression I'm getting from this thread is that other than this post, everyone seems to be saying that you never want to go below 20% free space.
On any normal system with a good SSD where TRIM is functioning, all you need to is try not to fill the drive past 80%. If you do performance will go down in proportion to how full the drive is, but it will go back up once you free up some more space. If TRIM is NOT working, free space doesn't "count" if it's part of the system partition. Additionally, performance will never go back up once it goes down. Thus, you overprovision the drive to address both problems.

Overprovisioning is when you make the partition smaller than the size of the drive. This is only necessary on systems without working TRIM or on SSDs with lovely block management.

Alereon fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Aug 19, 2014

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!

What applications are there for not having TRIM? Mac with an aftermarket drive? XP?

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice

Bob Morales posted:

What applications are there for not having TRIM? Mac with an aftermarket drive? XP?
OSX with aftermarket drives and Windows Vista and older. Hardware wise AHCI doesn't work right on any nVidia chipset, AMD chipsets before the 700 series (can be made to work via driver fuckery sometimes), and on the base versions of Intel southbridges before the Core i-series.

Also we've been back-and-forth on AHCI and TRIM a few times, but basically on Windows if AHCI isn't working either Windows won't send TRIM commands or they will be dropped by a driver or controller somewhere on the way to the drive depending on your specific configuration so it PROBABLY won't work.

Alereon fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Aug 19, 2014

Double Punctuation
Dec 30, 2009

Ships were made for sinking;
Whiskey made for drinking;
If we were made of cellophane
We'd all get stinking drunk much faster!
So, this happened.

AnandTech posted:

Back in 2011, AMD made a rather unexpected move and expanded its Radeon brand to include memory in addition to graphics cards. With today's announcement AMD is adding another member to its Radeon family by releasing Radeon R7 Series SSDs. Similar to AMD memory, AMD is not actually designing or manufacturing the SSDs as the product design and manufacturing is handled by OCZ [:barf:]. In fact, all the customer support is also handled by OCZ, so aside from the AMD logo AMD is not really involved in the product.

Well, marketing to morons with their $5000 fantasy libertarian dollar mining rigs worked pretty well for them before. Better add AMD to the Bad Drives list in the OP, though.

Cactus Jack
Nov 16, 2005

If you even try to throw to my side of the field in a dream, you better wake up and apologize.
Looks like the 250gb evos are on sale like everywhere today, including the msata model. Around $120 on Amazon and Newegg.

Too lazy to copy/paste everything so go here.

Hadlock
Nov 9, 2004

Wasn't TrueCrypt compromised and/or Officially Abandoned by the developers?

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Hadlock posted:

Wasn't TrueCrypt compromised and/or Officially Abandoned by the developers?

Officially abandoned, suggested (maybe) that there was an NSA backdoor, and immediately forked into a new project.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice

Hadlock posted:

Wasn't TrueCrypt compromised and/or Officially Abandoned by the developers?
Yes, though it's unknown why this happened and what the implications are for the security of the TrueCrypt software before these changes. Either TrueCrypt was broken and they were gonna fix it and the NSA stopped them so they shut it down, or TrueCrypt was too good and the NSA wanted them to break it so they shut it down. If you are a normal person and want to protect your data from someone who steals your laptop and maybe corrupt local cops, you should switch to something like BitLocker that is supported which will work just as well, if not better. If you are a tinfoil hat weirdo trying to protect your bitcoins from the NSA then #1 is still a goddamn compelling reason not to use TrueCrypt, and even IF #2 is true the NSA is just gonna get your poo poo anyway and you will die in gitmo. :nsa:

So there is really no benefit to using TrueCrypt for anyone really, and there are other tools that actually support SSDs, both via using the drive's built-in encryption or just not defeating TRIM.

Hadlock
Nov 9, 2004

Sure, but if you use hardware encryption provided by the SSD, now you're vulnerable to attack by the Korean NSA :tinfoil::hf::downs:

My bitcoin :negative:

I may have recently completed a stanford cryptography course

Lowen SoDium
Jun 5, 2003

Highen Fiber
Clapping Larry
Does the encryption offered by SSDs have any kind of performance penalty?

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice

Lowen SoDium posted:

Does the encryption offered by SSDs have any kind of performance penalty?
No, if you're doing encryption on the drive there is effectively no overhead.

Alereon fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Aug 21, 2014

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice
Quote is not edit!

Alereon fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Aug 21, 2014

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Without eDrive, there's even less performance penalty - encryption-capable SSDs always encrypt. An ATA password just enables checking for the correct password hash at boot before unlocking the drive.

Fun fact: A Secure Erase on some encryption-enabled drives just erases the encryption key and then issue a drive-wide TRIM.

Thermopyle
Jul 1, 2003

...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. —Bertrand Russell

Is anyone doing 3rd party audits of the encryption features of SSDs?

1gnoirents
Jun 28, 2014

hello :)
Hmm, I'm pretty out of date on encryption apparently. I lost faith in drive encryption after being able to defeat it with some free russian tools and an old computer (which is no longer being supported now though, but its still quite disheartening). But I had no clue about the Truecrypt thing.

I don't actually need it, or even want to use it, but it's always been an appealing concept just because.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice

Thermopyle posted:

Is anyone doing 3rd party audits of the encryption features of SSDs?
While not exactly what you're looking for, Intel did an internal audit of their drives that found that only 128bits of the 256bit AES key were used, which resulted in a drive recall since they promised AES256 and only delivered AES128.

1gnoirents posted:

Hmm, I'm pretty out of date on encryption apparently. I lost faith in drive encryption after being able to defeat it with some free russian tools and an old computer (which is no longer being supported now though, but its still quite disheartening). But I had no clue about the Truecrypt thing.
You're talking about on HDDs, right? The difference is that the ATA password set on the hard drive doesn't actually encrypt anything, it's just saved on the drive and the firmware checks to see if you supplied a matching password (or supervisor password) in order to communicate with the system. If you can bypass this check or replace the password all the data is there for the taking. On a Sandforce SSD for example, data is ALWAYS encrypted with a default key as part of the scrambling and error correction steps. When you set an ATA password, it generates a new key based on your password and uses this to encrypt data, so even if someone is able to pass the password check they can only get to encrypted data.

1gnoirents
Jun 28, 2014

hello :)

Alereon posted:

While not exactly what you're looking for, Intel did an internal audit of their drives that found that only 128bits of the 256bit AES key were used, which resulted in a drive recall since they promised AES256 and only delivered AES128.
You're talking about on HDDs, right? The difference is that the ATA password set on the hard drive doesn't actually encrypt anything, it's just saved on the drive and the firmware checks to see if you supplied a matching password (or supervisor password) in order to communicate with the system. If you can bypass this check or replace the password all the data is there for the taking. On a Sandforce SSD for example, data is ALWAYS encrypted with a default key as part of the scrambling and error correction steps. When you set an ATA password, it generates a new key based on your password and uses this to encrypt data, so even if someone is able to pass the password check they can only get to encrypted data.

That would make more sense if it weren't encrypted. The last one I remember had a screen like this



I just assumed it was an encrypted drive, but I guess it was probably just a password.

Thermopyle
Jul 1, 2003

...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. —Bertrand Russell

Alereon posted:

While not exactly what you're looking for, Intel did an internal audit of their drives that found that only 128bits of the 256bit AES key were used, which resulted in a drive recall since they promised AES256 and only delivered AES128.

Huh.

That actually makes me worried about the smaller manufacturers like ADATA or whatever. I don't have a lot of confidence that they're doing good audits and then actually taking action on the results.

I suppose it's possible that the encryption is entirely on whomever is providing their controllers, but I doubt it's just plug and play. The manufacturer probably has to do some not-insignificant amount of implementation.

And when I say "worried", I mean in some nebulous, theoretical sense. I don't even use it.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice

Thermopyle posted:

That actually makes me worried about the smaller manufacturers like ADATA or whatever. I don't have a lot of confidence that they're doing good audits and then actually taking action on the results.

I suppose it's possible that the encryption is entirely on whomever is providing their controllers, but I doubt it's just plug and play. The manufacturer probably has to do some not-insignificant amount of implementation.
Sandforce-based drives should all be in the same boat since they use a manufacturer-supplied firmware without significant customization. Aside from that I think eDrive is only supported on first-party drives from companies that do their own validation, other drives to to get AES 256/TCG Opal support patched in via a firmware update after release, if they get anything.

GrizzlyCow
May 30, 2011

dpbjinc posted:

So, this happened.


Well, marketing to morons with their $5000 fantasy libertarian dollar mining rigs worked pretty well for them before. Better add AMD to the Bad Drives list in the OP, though.

I doubt AMD got any money from the cryptocurrency craze, and OCZ new stuff doesn't seem so bad at the moment. We'll have to wait and see though. I'm just wondering why AMD didn't try a more prestigious OEM like Intel Samsung, though. They have a much better reputation.

Proud Christian Mom
Dec 20, 2006
READING COMPREHENSION IS HARD

GrizzlyCow posted:

I doubt AMD got any money from the cryptocurrency craze, and OCZ new stuff doesn't seem so bad at the moment. We'll have to wait and see though. I'm just wondering why AMD didn't try a more prestigious OEM like Intel Samsung, though. They have a much better reputation.

Because no-one else wants their name attached to this horseshit

Hadlock
Nov 9, 2004

GrizzlyCow posted:

OCZ new stuff doesn't seem so bad at the moment.

It's not difficult to improve on a track record like theirs. For OCZ to have a worse reputation they'd have to try and invade Ukraine and Palestine simultaneously.

Aphrodite
Jun 27, 2006

GrizzlyCow posted:

I doubt AMD got any money from the cryptocurrency craze, and OCZ new stuff doesn't seem so bad at the moment. We'll have to wait and see though. I'm just wondering why AMD didn't try a more prestigious OEM like Intel Samsung, though. They have a much better reputation.

The companies making good SSDs are better brands than AMD right now and don't need to do it.

Double Punctuation
Dec 30, 2009

Ships were made for sinking;
Whiskey made for drinking;
If we were made of cellophane
We'd all get stinking drunk much faster!
Also, even if the OCZ SSDs are rock solid, the AMD versions are still overpriced compared to Samsung. AMD basically did it because it's free money for them.

redeyes
Sep 14, 2002

by Fluffdaddy
I was testing a laptop hard drive for bad sectors and ended up doing the 'yell at the hard drive' test I saw in a Youtube video. Check this out.. kind of shocked me how senstive spinners are.
https://plus.google.com/+MichaelBruce007/posts/QzqSDVTCbwo?pid=6050106143883970290&oid=109159079222891743710

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice

redeyes posted:

I was testing a laptop hard drive for bad sectors and ended up doing the 'yell at the hard drive' test I saw in a Youtube video. Check this out.. kind of shocked me how senstive spinners are.
https://plus.google.com/+MichaelBruce007/posts/QzqSDVTCbwo?pid=6050106143883970290&oid=109159079222891743710
So datacenters and computer rooms use a fire suppression gas instead of sprinklers to protect the equipment, formerly Halon but now CO2 or something else. It was discussed in the GBS OSHA.jpg thread (post pictures of workplace safety violations) that in some cases the noise from the compressed gas release is so loud that the resulting vibration will kill any hard drives operating in the room.

DethMarine21
Dec 4, 2008
The Intel 730 Series 240GB is on sale for $170.99 for the next 72 hours.

I probably wouldn't see much of a difference upgrading from a 320 Series 80GB would I? My usage is just general desktop / gaming use and I'm still stuck on SATA 3GB/s.

DethMarine21 fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Aug 22, 2014

Star War Sex Parrot
Oct 2, 2003

redeyes posted:

I was testing a laptop hard drive for bad sectors and ended up doing the 'yell at the hard drive' test I saw in a Youtube video. Check this out.. kind of shocked me how senstive spinners are.
https://plus.google.com/+MichaelBruce007/posts/QzqSDVTCbwo?pid=6050106143883970290&oid=109159079222891743710
Yeah audio/vibe mitigation is a huge effort in HDD firmware design over the last few years.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice

DethMarine21 posted:

The Intel 730 Series 240GB is on sale for $170.99 for the next 72 hours.

I probably wouldn't see much of a difference upgrading from a 320 Series 80GB would I? My usage is just general desktop / gaming use and I'm still stuck on SATA 3GB/s.
You would see a huge difference from a new SSD, both in terms of the available capacity and raw performance, but I don't think the Intel SSD 730 is the drive for you. If your system supports TRIM consider a Samsung 840 Evo 250GB for ~$120, that will be much faster for typical desktop use. If your system does not support TRIM, consider the Intel SSD 530 for $140, and shrink the partition by 20%.

Here is a benchmark comparison between the Samsung 840 Evo 500GB and the Intel SSD 730 480GB, and that doesn't even really show the advantages the 840 Evo has for typical desktop workloads.

Here's a similar comparison between the Intel SSD 530 240GB and Intel SSD 730 480GB, and the 530 is at a disadvantage because they are testing the larger model 730. Overall the 530 is a faster drive, and both exhibit excellent performance consistency.

Edit: Oh and for good measure, here's the Intel SSD 320 160GB versus the Samsung 840 Evo 250GB, again that's actually a faster drive than yours since it's twice the capacity, but it still gets beaten down by the Samsung 840 Evo, even taking into account that it will be handicapped by the SATA300 bus in your system. The biggest benefit is the additional capacity though, not the raw performance.

Alereon fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Aug 22, 2014

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DethMarine21
Dec 4, 2008
Great info, thanks!

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