Care and Maintenance of SSD's

whs · 12 Feb 2014

My score since 2007 - 1 HDD failed and 1 SSD failed. That is out of a total of appr. 20 HDDs and 7 SSDs. It only shows that one better make backup provisions for both.

Lady Fitzgerald · 12 Feb 2014

whs said:

My score since 2007 - 1 HDD failed and 1 SSD failed. That is out of a total of appr. 20 HDDs and 7 SSDs. It only shows that one better make backup provisions for both.

Victek · 19 May 2014

I just installed a 240GB PNY SSD in my old laptop. I really appreciate the improved performance. I currently have CrystalDiskInfo running mainly because I was already using it with the previous hard disk. As far as I can tell the manufacturer doesn't offer a monitoring/updating tool. Are there any tools that members would recommend? TIA

Layback Bear · 19 May 2014

Victek did your PNY SSD come with a little CD. If it did it might have a Toolbox program on it.

You could Google PNY SSD Toolbox. Might find something.

Victek · 19 May 2014

Layback Bear said:

Victek did your PNY SSD come with a little CD. If it did it might have a Toolbox program on it.

You could Google PNY SSD Toolbox. Might find something.

Unfortunately the SSD didn't come with a disc and PNY doesn't appear to offer a software "toolbox". I did read though that the Intel SSD Toolbox might work, so I'll give that a try. In any case I verified that AHCI and trim are enabled. By the way it really breathes new life into my old laptop - feels like it came out of a coma LOL

whs · 19 May 2014

There is not too much you need to do. Just make sure defrag is disabled and that the SSD is always aligned. Leave about 10 to 15% of free space so that Trim/Garbage collection can do their job.

If after a couple of years you have the feeling that the SSD has slowed down, pull everything off (with an image) and do a Secure Erase. That cleans it up. The dump the image back on.

Victek · 19 May 2014

whs said:

There is not too much you need to do. Just make sure defrag is disabled and that the SSD is always aligned. Leave about 10 to 15% of free space so that Trim/Garbage collection can do their job.

If after a couple of years you have the feeling that the SSD has slowed down, pull everything off (with an image) and do a Secure Erase. That cleans it up. The dump the image back on.

Thanks for the reply. Yeah I've already disabled defrag. I hadn't heard about aligning the SSD. How is that done?

ignatzatsonic · 19 May 2014

Alignment might be just fine, but you can check it several ways, such as:

Running an SSD benchmark:

Download AS SSD Benchmark - MajorGeeks

Or running Diskpart from a command prompt should reveal the necessary detail.

Probably a good idea to run the benchmark once anyway to confirm it's performing within expected parameters.

Victek · 19 May 2014

ignatzatsonic said:

Alignment might be just fine, but you can check it several ways, such as:

Running an SSD benchmark:

Download AS SSD Benchmark - MajorGeeks

Or running Diskpart from a command prompt should reveal the necessary detail.

Probably a good idea to run the benchmark once anyway to confirm it's performing within expected parameters.

Thanks I'll give those a try

Edit:

Here's a snap of my test score. Does it seem low, high?

Also regarding Diskpart I'm not sure how to determine if the alignment is correct. What command should I use?

ignatzatsonic · 19 May 2014

The alignment is OK. That number shown in the upper left 1573888 should be evenly divisible by 4 to be in proper alignment. It is; check with your own calculator.

In Diskpart, you would enter list disk to show your various hard drives. If your SSD is shown as disk 0, you would then enter select disk 0. The response should be "disk 0 is now the selected disk". Then enter list part. The response will show the partitions on disk 0. Look for the number under the "offset" column. It needs to be evenly divisible by 4.