The SSD Megathread - Be nice to Alereon you jerks

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Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

I think you can install Reason onto the harddrive and then configure it to use a folder on the SSD as its cache. Maybe. I haven't touched it since 3.0.

Also, I don't know what amounts of content it comes with these days, but way back when it was several gigabytes already. On one hand having all that on the SSD might improve project loading time and preset browsing and stuff like that. On the other hand: does it leave you the space to use the SSD normally for all the rest of your programs?

# ¿ Aug 25, 2014 20:10

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# ¿ Apr 19, 2024 21:34

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

I've got a 1TB WD10JPVX Blue Mobile 5400rpm drive and a 16GB Sandisk SSD U110 as a cache drive, linked by Condusiv Technologies ExpressCache.

First round gave me something very similar to this:

Factory Factory posted:

In the second, third and fourth round, a very special weirdness began as -I assume- the cache system started to try to predict what was going to happen next:
http://imgur.com/a/RNB0b

At the end there's how the U110 performed.

Posted for mere curiosity value, sorry if this is too off topic.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2014 11:05

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Jose Cuervo posted:

Any ideas on what may be taking up this space?

Who knows? Take a look with Space Sniffer.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2014 21:37

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Volguus posted:

(and Blackblaze report doesn't show that much of a difference between WD and seagate, especially at the 3TB mark. HGSTs though, does).

At the 3TB mark, the Seagate models fail nearly twice as often as the WD models, for the specific models Backblaze posted on.

Rehashing your personal distastes based on ten year plus old drives in the face of statistically relevant failure rates for specific, current drives is meaningless, man. You might as well recommend against buying the HGST drives because of the Deathstar incident in 2001.

Here's the Backblaze blog entry again for anyone who doesn't know what we're talking about.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2014 13:09

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Factory Factory posted:

Yet in Magician, the same firmware I had last week is on the drive and listed as latest.

dud root posted:

So has the firmware been released? My magician is saying EXT0BB6Q is the latest

td4guy posted:

The newest firmware is only available through the Performance Restoration utility. It's not available as a standalone download.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2014 00:00

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Was there a specific name for the adapter to put a regular SSD in the optical drive bay of a laptop? Or a name for the bay itself? I have a feeling there was some sort of keyword that would help me googling for it and I forgot. It's driving me crazy, starting to think I've just made this up.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2014 23:20

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Factory Factory posted:

Optibay?

For a ThinkPad, Ultrabay.

Thank the almighty god, ultrabay is what I was thinking of. And apparently my Thinkpad Edge doesn't have it. Have found generic caddies mentioning my laptop model in the meantime though.

Thanks.

FISHMANPET posted:

But you probably don't want to put the SSD there, and instead move the hard drive into that bay and the SSD into the system. At least on my laptop, the SATA connection in the Ultrabay is much slower.

A good point I didn't think of.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2014 23:45

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

FISHMANPET posted:

One thing to watch out for (if you care) is the bezel on the caddy matching what you've got. It may or may not be a concern, but for my laptop (Y500) I had to find the one Chinese seller that had a caddy that matched my model, or else the others would have required me to reuse the bezel from the optical drive, which would be a little weird since there wouldn't be an optical drive behind that bezel.

Studying this as I write. I'm going to have to recycle the old one, because it's this weird, angled piece of plastic, sticking out like half an inch out of the actual drive tray, that doesn't show up on any of the pictures of the AliExpress sellers. Can't really order anything before I know how to remove it without breaking it.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2014 00:01

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

It's the E540. And thanks again for all the information. I looked at the video, and it doesn't really apply; wiggling the plastic a bit, I can see that there's a screw involved and what's more: the screw is half obscured by an actual part of the drive, which is bullshit. I'm probably going to have to disassemble the whole thing.

Ebay does me no good because I need a place that delivers to Belgium. We don't even have Amazon. Nightmare for poo poo like this.

hddcaddy.com has a caddy for the E540 and delivers worldwide, but it costs twice as much as the AliExpress one and doesn't have the bezel either (apparently). The video on that product page is the same as the one on the page you linked. Ugh.

e. Well, apparently some sellers on ebay do international shipping. Not finding the bezel there either, though.

Flipperwaldt fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Nov 19, 2014

# ¿ Nov 19, 2014 00:30

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Brut posted:

Yeah dude the E series doesn't come with Ultrabays, which is what would make it an easy snap in snap out like other machines (the Y410p for example, See this list), so yeah, you're probably gonna have to take it apart. It is likely not as much work as you think though, I doubt it's under the board, so you're probably looking at something like 10 screws to get the back off and probably like 5 more to get to where the drive is.

I wasn't worried about taking the drive out, I was worried about taking the bezel off and having to partially disassemble the drive for that. I was wrong about that anyway, there was no screw involved. Just tiny plastic clips. Of which three out of four just broke off :cripes:

That's including the one I had access to and pushed out of the way very carefully with a tiny screwdriver. I'd beat myself up about it, but looking at the way it was attached, I don't see how it could have gone any other way.

So I guess I'll order a caddy and if it fits and works, glue the drat thing on it :negative:

# ¿ Nov 19, 2014 11:33

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Jago posted:

change swap file

I've seen a lot of mentions of this over the course of this thread, but I just did a clean install of Win 8.1 and it magically decided that 1.8GB was enough of a pagefile for 8GB of RAM. I've also got a 256MB swapfile. No intervention on my part.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2014 12:06

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

There's no mystery. The newest firmware is not available through Samsung Magician. You are not on the newest firmware, despite what it says, because the software is not aware of the newer version. It's a mystery why Samsung did it like this, but that's how it is.

You should upgrade to the newest one by installing the Samsung SSD 840 EVO Performance Restoration Software and running it. You can remove the program afterwards.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2014 01:43

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

EL BROMANCE posted:

1) The ACPI element mentioned in the first post... how much of a performance difference does this make? I'm currently getting a hanging system when I switch my SATA driver over to ACPI in the BIOS. I'm guessing plugging away at drivers/settings might fix it but as the system is currently working, if it's not going to be an obvious speed boost I might just leave it as is. My mobo actually mentioned BSOD on boot over ACPI and offers this advice. Does it sound likely? The cable management off my modular PSU is already a nightmare in my case (it's an HTPC one that has so little room it's unbelievable). It's probably more to do with needing correct drivers/BIOS update but willing to try this if necessary. edit: just realised that AHCI not ACPI... doh.

You get a bluescreen with the BIOS in AHCI mode because the setting in the BIOS doesn't match the settings in Windows. This is normal. Switching over to AHCI mode actually involves changing both. So you adjust these registry settings (Win7) or presumably do this (Win8), shut down the computer, power the computer on and immediately switch over the setting in the BIOS.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2014 13:38

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

KozmoNaut posted:

Yeah, don't bother with One Weird Formatting Trick, format 100% and just keep an eye on free space, it'll work fine.

... on a system with TRIM.

This poo poo is in the OP, guys.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2014 15:52

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Boozie posted:

I just bought a 840 Evo, it sounds like all I need to do is run the 840 EVO Performance Restoration Software after I install it.

If you're on Windows, you still need the Samsung Magician to run after that to have Rapid mode enabled.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2014 01:56

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

The one with the C is the new firmware that fixed the performance degradation for old data though and the B one is the version before that.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2014 23:00

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

The new firmware is exclusively available through the restoration tool if you don't have it already. It was released somewhere this year.

I also checked against what firmware my drive is running and the restoration tool is the first thing I ran when I got it. It's the C one.

e. It also says that on the page you linked btw. Under the heading of the restoration tool.

Flipperwaldt fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Dec 6, 2014

# ¿ Dec 6, 2014 23:09

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Mush Man posted:

Thanks, but that utility also does not work. The drive thinks it's a SCSI device even though I'm certain it's connected via SATA, and the Restoration program doesn't work with SCSI (as documented by the manual). Step 1 of the process fails. What's more is if I uninstall the NVidia controller and restart as directed by the manual, it just reinstalls itself rather than installing the Microsoft one. Forcing it to use the Standard SATA AHCI Controller causes boot failure with the message INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE. I stopped messing with the drivers after that happened.

If I recall correctly, drives connected in IDE mode will be labeled SCSI in device manager. It isn't necessarily as odd as it would seem at the surface, I think.

Switching to AHCI mode and ending up with a bootable machine involves adjusting two settings at the same time. The thing in the BIOS and telling Windows to use the AHCI driver. I googled up some instructions for Windows 8 here. If you only do one of them, you'll get the bluescreens.

If all that is successful, then switching between generic Microsoft drivers or the NVidia ones might start to matter. Mostly for performance consistency. Again, if I recall correctly.

I do not know if this will solve the problem with Magician not communicating with the drive properly, but it's worth trying. For making sure trim is working, the firmware update and whatever.

The recommendation for the 840 EVO in the OP for computers with a modern operating system is shorthand for "if you have a reasonably recent computer" as well. It's a fair assumption in most cases. With the old rear end computer and the NVidia chipset, you're sadly in the special snowflake category.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 13:06

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Tanbo posted:

I've never messed with AHCI, is that only an issue when cloning from a platter drive?

It's an issue when you have a a Windows installation that was installed in IDE mode. Like on an old computer from a time when IDE mode was the safe option and no one ever bothered to change the BIOS setting because it doesn't matter as much for platter drives. You want to clone an ancient installation from that or do a fresh install without changing the BIOS setting first and you come across this problem when going to an SSD.

Newer computers just come with the BIOS set to AHCI by default.

E: Thanks for the heads up, guys, I've just declined the Magician update.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 18:45

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

There are definitely more manufacturers of mSata SSDs. Sadly it seems the slot in your laptop might be half size (doublecheck this please), which rules out the 840EVO mSata.

Sandisk is the most familiar name I see after a quick GIS.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2014 17:25

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Well, as far as we know, knock on wood, the firmware issues got fixed. You might have to update it yourself once, but it whouldn't be too much of a hassle.

So we're back at the 840 EVO for the recommended drive for modern computers with a recent Windows OS as far as price/performance/reliability is concerned, I think.

The Intel drive is good, but the price usually makes it less attractive.

The difference between the kits is the included accessories, like a bracket that makes the 2.5" drive fit a 3.5" drivebay in a desktop or a usb to sata cable to help you clone your laptop's HDD. Things like that. The drive is the same anyway.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2014 15:43

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Turkey Farts posted:

I just opened the Sandisk Ultra II I bought a few weeks ago and it came with this black bracket with adhesive on the back of it. There's no mention of it in the paperwork. What's it for?

It stops the drive wiggling around if you put it in a laptop that expects a 9.5mm thick drive instead of the increasingly more common 7mm, which your SSD is.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2014 18:24

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

I'm sure there was some discussion on this earlier and I wasn't really paying attention, but can someone put this in perspective a bit: I have now around 530 power on hours on my SSD and I'm seeing ~570GB of total host writes. I'm sure that isn't incredibly excessive, but when I start thinking about it as 1GB+ per hour, it sounds like a lot. Is it?

# ¿ Jan 9, 2015 11:09

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Cool, thanks. Can't even imagine what SSD sizes in 2090 are going to be :v:

Actually, 75 years from now is way beyond my expected lifespan, come to think of it :ohdear:

# ¿ Jan 9, 2015 13:15

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

The Lord Bude posted:

Are you remembering to factor in future advances in cybernetics?

Well, yeah, but when budgetting I've got to pick between that and the moving out before this entire place floods in twenty years.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2015 13:59

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

New EVO 840 firmware confirmed for the end of april. Apparently the solution is 'an automatic periodic refresh'.

Here's the meat from some guys who got to beta test it.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 18:10

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

I don't know when exactly their clock resets, but I just got the new Magician from Samsung after being blocked from it eight hours ago.

Was surprised to see improvement in the graphs immediately, because there was no 'rewriting all data' stage during the firmware upgrade. The first 30GB on the disk (presumably the entire Windows install) used to drop to around 100MB/s (even after the C firmware) and now it sort of wobbles a bit between 250 and 300.

Fingers crossed it sticks this time!

e: In an hour of using the computer regularly, average went up to around 330, which is more or less in line with the rest of the drive. Gonna let the thing idle a bit, see where this is going.

Flipperwaldt fucked around with this message at 01:26 on Apr 26, 2015

# ¿ Apr 26, 2015 00:18

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Smegma Princess X posted:

I'm thinking of picking up an SSD for when Windows 10 drops. Has the 840 EVO been fixed, or should I go for something else?

840 EVO was fixed, but 850 EVO is what's recommended now. OP is getting out of date.

# ¿ May 26, 2015 18:04

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

FordPRefectLL posted:

I have a friend who is migrating data from an HDD to an SSD. He keeps trying to defrag the source drive and it is taking forever and preventing him from completing the process. I asked him why he is trying to defrag it first and he told me every guide says to, which I checked and it seems most do but none seem to provide an explanation of why you'd want to. In the OP here though, it doesn't mention that step.

Is there any real reason to defrag an HDD before cloning it to an SSD?

I think it might be a remnant from the time you needed to manually downsize your partition before cloning. Can't think of a reason why it would be needed today with modern cloning software.

# ¿ May 28, 2015 17:48

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Siochain posted:

Who still uses partitions on their boot drive in TYOOL2015?

Laptop manufacturers. Like all of them.

# ¿ May 29, 2015 18:12

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

When I updated from 4.4 to 4.6, it offered (in confusing language) to disable Rapid temporarily for me. Then it went: disable Rapid > reboot > install update > reboot > enable Rapid > reboot. Doesn't the prompt you get that you can't install the update give you any other option than "ok, let's not then"?

# ¿ Jun 1, 2015 07:52

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

redeyes posted:

The EVO problem totally sucks though, I have a ton of those drives in use and Samsung should be RMA'ing them since they don't work right. One thing, you can secure erase those OEM EVOs and it does fix the worthless performance for say 4-6 months.

Umm... is that on the newest firmware, ie the second one that was supposed to fix this problem (EXT0DB6Q from april 2015 I think?), or were you just not aware of that?

# ¿ Jun 8, 2015 15:50

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

redeyes posted:

I was talking about the OEM-EVOs which have no firmwre updates. Yeah I know the 840 evo does have an update and I don't have time to go around to 40 computers to update it.

poo poo, I thought I was going to blow your mind :sigh:

# ¿ Jun 8, 2015 19:44

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Can't remember if the mSATA version has the same firmware and or if it's updateable. There was something like that, but it might as well have been for another drive or another manufacturer.

I'd go with the 850 EVO anyway.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2015 16:40

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Could you run into something like that if you hosed around with pagefile and swapfile settings, despite actually having a shitload of physical ram?

# ¿ Jun 14, 2015 19:53

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

^^^ should have refreshed

a glitch posted:

Just installing a Samsung 850 EVO 500GB drive, but the actual space available on it is 465.76GB. What number should I use to calculate the 20% I need to keep free to avoid this?

20% of whatever the program you use to check if you went over reports.

The difference should mostly be explained by whether the program reports the available space in 1000� bytes (gigabyte) or 1024� bytes (gibibyte). As long as you stay within the same unit, 20% is 20%.

500 gigabyte = 465.661 gibibyte

20% of that is 100 gigabyte = 93.1323 gibibyte

Not that you have to monitor this this closely and precisely.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2015 18:08

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

There are laptops where the optical drive is connected to a SATA 2 port and the harddrive to a SATA 3 port, that's what that whole thing is about. I don't know specifically for his situation and even then you'd be hard pressed to actually notice, but it's a thing.

# ¿ Oct 2, 2015 15:26

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Same type of connectors, different speed of controllers. He did misinterpret your question.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2015 08:14

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

In the mean time, run a benchmark like HD Tach. It will give you confirmation that you're dealing with the sort of problem a firmware update would fix.

# ¿ Oct 25, 2015 16:38

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# ¿ Apr 19, 2024 21:34

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

The Lord Bude posted:

I choose to refer to myself using the majestic plural.

Almost busted for account sharing there, bud.

# ¿ Oct 25, 2015 18:54

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The SSD Megathread - Be nice to Alereon you jerks

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