Show us your SSD performance

[sygnus21]

I think he is saying he installs lots of applications that take up lots of disk space. Clearly Windows isn't using that much space...but chances are pretty good that his C:\Program Files directory is pretty large. The combined total of my program files and program files(x86) is about 5GB.

Correct. And that's exactly what I'm saying. While I don't just istall anything, I do tend to install/keep a lot of programs/files without worrying about disk space. I also leave system restore on which is currently set to 10% (12gig)

Even though I have a 120gig OS partition off my 1TB drive, I usually try to keep it under 60gig. That's why I say I need at least a 120gig SSD drive

BTW my "game" drive is allocated for 493gig, and it already has 268gig of games loaded

Like I said, I don't worry about storage space. That's me

Right now I have 3 drives in my system... 1TB, 750 & 500 gig HD. When/if I get a 120 SSD, I'll replace the 750 & 500 gig drives with a 1TB drive.

 

[zrtom]

I was reading some reviews on an SSD drive and ran across a post stating you should put your page file on another drive to save space. That got me wondering... wouldn't this impede performance?

I'm of the opinion that I would want to have my page file on the fastest drive in the system.

So, have you moved your page file to a conventional drive to save space?

Thanks

Here's the review on newegg by PASysBuilder.....

Pros: Very fast. Very, very fast. Really fast. Did I mention it was fast? Be sure to put your windows page file on a traditional hard disk, disable Superfetch, disable drive indexing, disable defrag, leave 20% of the space unallocated, and DON'T BENCH CONSTANTLY. This will prolong the life of the drive.

Customer Reviews Of OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX120G 2.5" 120GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

The article in "Engineering Windows" entitled "Support and Q&A for Solid-State Drives"
Support and Q&A for Solid-State Drives - Engineering Windows 7 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs has this to say about the pagefile:

Should the pagefile be placed on SSDs?
Yes. Most pagefile operations are small random reads or larger sequential writes, both of which are types of operations that SSDs handle well.
In looking at telemetry data from thousands of traces and focusing on pagefile reads and writes, we find that
Pagefile.sys reads outnumber pagefile.sys writes by about 40 to 1,
Pagefile.sys read sizes are typically quite small, with 67% less than or equal to 4 KB, and 88% less than 16 KB.
Pagefile.sys writes are relatively large, with 62% greater than or equal to 128 KB and 45% being exactly 1 MB in size.
In fact, given typical pagefile reference patterns and the favorable performance characteristics SSDs have on those patterns, there are few files better than the pagefile to place on an SSD.​

I've been going with that advice for the 2 years or so that I've been running SSDs.
Tom

 

[sygnus21]

That's some pretty good info

Thanks

 

[Dave76]

I have a 40GB SSD, disabled hibernation, page file reduced to 500MB (8GB RAM) and kept it on the SSD, system restore off (keep a lot of backups), used space 16GB.
Keep everything except programs on a HDD.


FYI, OCZ Agility 2 120GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive, on sale today $238

 

[BugMeister]

Too bad mate! :shock:

had some good news, they're going to replace it with a Vertex..

- can't wait..

Glad to 'hear' it.

- even better - it's a Vertex2..!!

 

[BugMeister]

blimey, it's a screamer..!!

 

[Dave76]

Lucky you

The Vertex 2 is top of the line, according to several review sites.

The HD Tune looks very nice.

Did you run the AS SSD benchmark?

 

[whs]

My 16 months old Vertex does not do quite as well. It is slightly under 200 - but that is still good enough for me.

 

[pparks1]

My 16 months old Vertex does not do quite as well. It is slightly under 200 - but that is still good enough for me.

The sequential reads and writes aren't necessarily what's important with SSD drives...especially for the OS. It's the random I/O and the extremely low access times which make them shine.

 

[whs]

My 16 months old Vertex does not do quite as well. It is slightly under 200 - but that is still good enough for me.

The sequential reads and writes aren't necessarily what's important with SSD drives...especially for the OS. It's the random I/O and the extremely low access times which make them shine.

True, but all my SSDs (OCZ and Intel) have an access time of 0.1ms. I only distinguish them by the sequentiel reads.

 

[pparks1]

True, but all my SSDs (OCZ and Intel) have an access time of 0.1ms. I only distinguish them by the sequentiel reads.

But unless you are going to sequentially read continously...that doesn't really print a very accurate picture of performance. I'd be willing to bet with 2 computers side by side...one with an SSD running at 170MB/s and another at 220MB/s...and you did the exact same steps in the exact same order that the time difference between the two would be almost imperceivable as the benefits are far more related to the random I/O and the low access times for the files...then they are the sequential read and write performance.

 

[fseal]

Yeah it's specifically the multithreaded small random IO that really makes the difference. Windows + Apps can be running a couple hundred threads with dozens of them wanting data from the drive at the same time. IDE vs AHCP and drive to drive differences can make some large differences between those values as seen in this thread. One test that doesn;t seem to normally be done is the multithreaded read AND write test

The linear read and write values are nice, but I think the multithreaded 4k read and write numbers are most meaningful to me. But they all add up as one or the other scenario is used back and forth possibly hundreds of times a second.

 

[whs]

True, but all my SSDs (OCZ and Intel) have an access time of 0.1ms. I only distinguish them by the sequentiel reads.

But unless you are going to sequentially read continously...that doesn't really print a very accurate picture of performance. I'd be willing to bet with 2 computers side by side...one with an SSD running at 170MB/s and another at 220MB/s...and you did the exact same steps in the exact same order that the time difference between the two would be almost imperceivable as the benefits are far more related to the random I/O and the low access times for the files...then they are the sequential read and write performance.

I completely agree, especially since the system usually does not read big chunks of data. I did not mean to imply a performance statement in my posting. Just a way for me to differentiate. But no big deal.

 

[sygnus21]

contemplating on getting an SSD drive...

OK, so after my strong opposition to the price per gigabyte of these drives, I'm seriously contemplating on getting this... Amazon.com: OCZ Technology 120 GB Vertex 2 Series SATA II 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive (SSD) OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G: Electronics

Since I know nothing about SSD drives, questions are in order....

1- What kind of maintenance is required? I don't want to have to wipe my drive every so often. My habits are to set it and forget it; I'm not into reformatting every month.

2- What kind of "prep" is required/needed?

3- Anything else I need to know?

Thanks.

 

[pparks1]

1- What kind of maintenance is required? I don't want to have to wipe my drive every so often. My habits are to set it and forget it; I'm not into reformatting every month.

2- What kind of "prep" is required/needed?

3- Anything else I need to know?

Thanks.

#1) I do nothing special with mine. I turned off defrag. Mine supports Trim as does the one you are looking at so it should maintain itself

#2) I just suggest backing up your current data....installing the new drive...reinstall the OS to the new drive. Attach your old drive as a secondary drive. Once it's installed, patched and activated use something like Macrium to create an image

#3) I don't think so.

 

[Dave76]

In addition to pparks1 great suggestions, especially #2.

Also have seen several recommendations to disconnect all other HDDs when installing the SSD. Just extra insurance, keeps the boot files where they should be.

OK, so after my strong opposition to the price per gigabyte of these drives, I'm seriously contemplating on getting this... Amazon.com: OCZ Technology 120 GB Vertex 2 Series SATA II 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive (SSD) OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G: Electronics

I have never seen anyone say that they regretted getting a SSD. It's usually 'I wonder why I waited so long, I will never go back to a HDD for my OS'.

Since I know nothing about SSD drives, questions are in order....

1- What kind of maintenance is required? I don't want to have to wipe my drive every so often. My habits are to set it and forget it; I'm not into reformatting every month.

The old SSDs and the Gen1 SSDs required some maintenance, the breakthrough came with Gen2. They are ready for mainstream use, pretty much setup and forget.
I have been using mine for about four months, no re-install required. It's still running great.
The Trim function is what keeps the SSD cleaned up and working like it should.

2- What kind of "prep" is required/needed?

First check that you have the latest firmware.

For a new SSD, win7 will recognize that it's a SSD and align and install it with the the minimum settings required.

The OCZ SSD forum is arguable the best SSD forum.
The only problem with it is there is literally too much information there.
Just remember that there is a huge difference between Gen1 and Gen2 SSDs. Gen1 needs a lot of tweaks, Gen2 very few. Vertex and Vertex2 are Gen2.

Here are a couple of threads to get you started.
Just what tweaks are needed in win7 with SSD?
Since the above thread seems to be the internet general consensus I'll put it here.

This thread is not a definitive list of what MUST be tweaked, it is simply a discussion of what various users have tweaked and had good results with.


I see arguments and conflicting advice...so lets settle the debate here in this thread before i write a new guide.

At this time when I test a system i do the following tweaks and NOTHING ELSE..

1 I check the board is in AHCI mode, if no option is available there is nothing you can do.

2 I check if S1 and S3 sleep are supported in bios, I usually set S1 but S3 should be ok also....if they are not in bios there is nothing you can do

3 I check ACPI 2.0 is in bios and enabled, if its not in bios there is nothing you can do

4 I boot to 32bit win7 RC1 on USB which also has Sanitary Erase on the USB drive. I run SE off the USB drive using the CMD window within the win7 installer. if the drives are brand new i do not bother with this step.

5 I then power off, swap USB drives to 64bit win7 final and I Install win7 off this new USB drive ( I do this is its much faster than off DVD)

6 I let win7 installer create and format the partition, all i do is hit NEXT even though the installer sees the drive and reports the drive space is RAW. Win7 will create a primary partition and quick format all on its own.

7 I use win7 native AHCI driver for both AMD and INTEL systems.

8 Install takes 10mins tops, i then load Video and Sound drivers and any LAN driver I may need.

9 The tweaks:

Disable Superfetch

Disable Defrag scheduler

Disable drive Indexing

I set the power state to high performance and set the machine to never sleep, HDD power down to OFF but I do set the screen to go off after 1hr.

I rarely touch pagefile when testing drives, I let the pagefile be on the SSD. I also leave Hibernate alone and also system restore is left alone.


So, you should see I do very little, I have worked on tweaks BUT I believe they are more aimed at the enthusiast and not the day to day user.

So...lets discuss what we think is best for just day to day easy to implement tweaks. I think what I do here is all that is needed...what do you all think?

Edit:

I just read a post from Praz explaining something I had not noticed. People now think you have to tweak windows with OCZ SSD, the fact is you do not.

The SSD forum here has got cross saturation from the gen1 forum where tweaks were needed. Vertex, Agility, Turbo and Summit are all what we call Gen2 and do not need tweaking at all. On the most part win7 in AHCI mode will do all the tweak you need for single disk operation all by its self...it looks like people on the whole have forgotten that part.

Be aware...I am not saying do not tweak the system if you wish, what I am saying is most think you HAVE TO tweak the system....fact is you do not.

AHCI mode is highly recommended.

The best AHCI driver is now the Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (RAID) driver version 9.6.0.1014 for Intel® Desktop Boards.
This driver has shown performance improvement from the previous best rated MS driver.


How to set up Windows on a VERTEX

Drive maintenance...what can I do to keep it running at full speed?

For use within windows 7 there is absolutely no maintenance needed apart from allowing the machine to idle at the login screen for a few hours each week, this allows the garbage collection time to recover the drive and free up space TRIM has not been able to deal with.

3- Anything else I need to know?

Just do some research, to get familiar with the recommended methods.

Remember, you will find a lot of information for tweaks to Gen1 SSDs, these are not necessary for Gen2 SSDs.

 

[steve-pressman]

I would have a read of this my friend


http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/70822-ssd-tweaks-optimizations-windows-7-a.html


Steve

 

[sygnus21]

I have never seen anyone say that they regretted getting a SSD. It's usually 'I wonder why I waited so long, I will never go back to a HDD for my OS'.

I've never doubted the performance... it's the price per gigabyte that keeps me on the sidelines. As noted earlier, I need at least a 120gig drive

AHCI mode is highly recommended.

The best AHCI driver is now the Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (RAID) driver version 9.6.0.1014 for Intel® Desktop Boards. This driver has shown performance improvement from the previous best rated MS driver.

I never run without it. I tend to update these drivers anyway so it's not an issue

Thanks, you provided some very valuable info. And I've already been to OCZ's forums, and you're right, there is a lot of stuff to absorb, but from what I gather, and you and pparks have confirmed, is that there is really no maintenance to be performed with these new sandforce drives, especially under Windows 7.

Now I just need to decide if I want to drop the $300 bucks for it

Thanks.

And thanks for the link steve-pressman.

 

[BugMeister]

OK, so after my strong opposition to the price per gigabyte of these drives, I'm seriously contemplating on getting this... Amazon.com: OCZ Technology 120 GB Vertex 2 Series SATA II 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive (SSD) OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G: Electronics

Since I know nothing about SSD drives, questions are in order....

1- What kind of maintenance is required? I don't want to have to wipe my drive every so often. My habits are to set it and forget it; I'm not into reformatting every month.

2- What kind of "prep" is required/needed?

3- Anything else I need to know?

Thanks.

- you're safe with Windows 7
- and OCZ have just gone up several rungs on the ladder, as far as I'm concerned..

- totally ace support..!!

 

[Dave76]

The SSDs are pretty easy to maintain now, just check if there is anything else you want to tweak besides what win7 does.

Hate to bring this up, but you just missed a great deal for the OCZ 120GB Vertex2, $238.

Keep checking the usual sites and you should be able to find a good sale for that SSD.
There are quite a few sales for SSDs lately.