Care and Maintenance of SSD's

[whs]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

 

[whs]

This is a very strange alignment. Although it is properly aligned, 1.5GB is a massive alignment. I wonder what else is on the SSD. Can you post a snip of disk management.

Btw: here is my tutorial dealing with alignment. The verification chapter may be interesting for you.

 

[Victek]

This is a very strange alignment. Although it is properly aligned, 1.5GB is a massive alignment. I wonder what else is on the SSD. Can you post a snip of disk management.

Btw: here is my tutorial dealing with alignment. The verification chapter may be interesting for you.

There's a 1.5 GB "recovery partition" which carried over from the hard disk (no drive letter assignment). I believe it contains the Windows 7 startup recovery tools, such as Startup Repair and System Restore.

 

[Victek]

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.

Thanks, I appreciate your confirming that.

 

[Victek]

After doing some reading it seems like a test score of 301 is quite low. I don't know if it can be improved. I updated the driver for the Intel ICH9M-E/M SATA AHCI Controller to the latest version, but it had no impact on the score. I do have write caching enabled, but I haven't turned off "Windows write cache buffer flushing".

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I wouldn't worry about the score. My Intel 320 series 80 GB drive scores 357. Some drives score a lot higher.

The important thing is the access time and any SSD is going to have faster access times than an HDD.

I'm guessing you got that PNY for quite a low price. If you want to brag about benchmark scores that you likely would never notice in real life, spend a lot more money and get a Samsung 840 or whatever today's benchmark speed demon is.

 

[crawfish]

Here's yet another quick command to check alignment:

wmic partition get BlockSize, StartingOffset, Name, Index

The output on my main PC is:

BlockSize  Index  Name                   StartingOffset
512        0      Disk #3, Partition #0  1048576
512        0      Disk #0, Partition #0  1048576
512        0      Disk #2, Partition #0  1048576
512        0      Disk #1, Partition #0  1048576

You want StartingOffset to be divisible by 4096. Disks 1 and 2 are hard drives, and AFAIK, Windows 7 aligns all drives like this. I didn't have to do anything special.

 

[Victek]

I wouldn't worry about the score. My Intel 320 series 80 GB drive scores 357. Some drives score a lot higher.

The important thing is the access time and any SSD is going to have faster access times than an HDD.

I'm guessing you got that PNY for quite a low price. If you want to brag about benchmark scores that you likely would never notice in real life, spend a lot more money and get a Samsung 840 or whatever today's benchmark speed demon is.

Thanks for the reply. I understand that differences between synthetic benchmarks don't always translate into perceivable performance. The difference between my old hard drive and the new SSD is unmistakable and I'm quite happy with it