AHCI and SSD

[cadillacmike68]

Thanks for the info dr_st.

True on the preferences. Reviving from a hibernation would hang my machine while it tries to re-establish a non-activated internet connection.

On the pagefile being on an SSD, wouldn't all those writes shorten the life of the SSD? I know that the newer ones are supposed to be much more reliable but there is still a finite number of writes a particular SSD cell can tolerate.

I'm still a ways away from getting an SSD, need to get a win 7 license (not going to bother with an SSD and XP), and figure out a way to port the applications - if possible, because there are so many to bring over. That's probably not possible, so the rule of inertia will likely dig in and cause me to put this off even further.

[dr_st]

On the pagefile being on an SSD, wouldn't all those writes shorten the life of the SSD? I know that the newer ones are supposed to be much more reliable but there is still a finite number of writes a particular SSD cell can tolerate.

. Perhaps. So? There are a finite number of actions any device can take. Should we read in the dark because there is a finite number of hours the lightbulb can work? There is also a finite number of breaths we can take. Should we stop breathing?

As was said earlier in this thread, by myself and Thinkrob at least, with modern SSDs there is no need to be too concerned with writes. I haven't seen a single survey or practical research that showed that normal read/write patterns shorten the life of the SSD below what is still about twice the life expectancy of the average computer. The average hard drive will probably die way before that.

[loyukfai]

As far as I've read, cases of SSD dying unrelated to flash endurance are not unheard of, but cases of SSD dying related to flash endurance haven't crossed my mind, yet.

It seems that sometimes people forget that electronics are/can still (be) consumables, they just usually last (much) longer than their mechanical counterparts.

Cheers.

[spuddog]

I love ssds, use them to the max, but remember have a good backup/recovery plan. When they quit, they usually give no warning.

Scott

[ThinkRob]

"Prefetch", at least in Windows terminology, is probably not a useful feature with an SSD. It's exactly what it says on the tin: pre-fetching data that the OS expects to use so as to avoid waiting on slow IO (particularly slow random IO.) SSDs don't suffer from slow seek times and are generally fast enough that I wouldn't bother.

Hibernation? Keep it if you use it, drop it if you don't. Personally I don't use it since it's a serious security risk for those of us that use encrypted filesystems...

[burns334]

Folks, there is a thread on another forum that seems to read like garbage collection takes place using Xp and a Crucial drive, any comments? see link below

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2229683

[rumbero]

Hibernation? Keep it if you use it, drop it if you don't. Personally I don't use it since it's a serious security risk for those of us that use encrypted filesystems...

Hmmm, Windows or Linux? I use hibernation on an SSD in Linux with a LUKS encrypted LVM setup. This way everything apart of the small boot partition hosting the kernel is encrypted, included the swap volume used for hibernation.

[ajkula66]

Folks, there is a thread on another forum that seems to read like garbage collection takes place using Xp and a Crucial drive, any comments? see link below

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2229683

I haven't seen a proof of that statement in the linked thread...

[FrankL]

Hmmm, Windows or Linux? I use hibernation on an SSD in Linux with a LUKS encrypted LVM setup. This way everything apart of the small boot partition hosting the kernel is encrypted, included the swap volume used for hibernation.

afaik both BitLocker (asks for my encryption key when I resume from hibernation) and (afaik) TrueCrypt also encrypt the hibernation file, so I have no idea where this security issues is supposed to pop up.

S3 Standby, that is a security issue indeed for full-disk encryption. Hibernation? would be new to me.

[burns334]

I haven't seen a proof of that statement in the linked thread..

I like the work "proof", exactly how can one see if it is collecting garbage or not?

[ajkula66]

I like the work "proof", exactly how can one see if it is collecting garbage or not?

Elementary, my dear Watson...

How TRIM works is rather well known and I'm not going to explain it here.

We ALL know that there's no TRIM support in XP or Vista.

Therefore, one would need a program that can be run manually in order to perform "garbage collection".

I'm well aware of such utilities for Intel and Samsung SSDs, but not for Crucial ones although C300 and M4 take the second and third place on my "Top Five" SSD list.

The fact that someone states "yes, that's what the drive does when it's idle" doesn't hold much water, not with me anyway.

In the world where marketing is (almost) everything, I'm dead certain that Crucial themselves would be loudly advertising such a capability if it were there in the first place...

[ThinkRob]

The fact that someone states "yes, that's what the drive does when it's idle" doesn't hold much water, not with me anyway.

It may not, but it is imperically-observable. Anandtech's benchmarks do a good job of demonstrating this.

[cadillacmike68]

On the pagefile being on an SSD, wouldn't all those writes shorten the life of the SSD? I know that the newer ones are supposed to be much more reliable but there is still a finite number of writes a particular SSD cell can tolerate.

Perhaps. So? There are a finite number of actions any device can take. Should we read in the dark because there is a finite number of hours the lightbulb can work? There is also a finite number of breaths we can take. Should we stop breathing?

As was said earlier in this thread, by myself and Thinkrob at least, with modern SSDs there is no need to be too concerned with writes. I haven't seen a single survey or practical research that showed that normal read/write patterns shorten the life of the SSD below what is still about twice the life expectancy of the average computer. The average hard drive will probably die way before that.

Well, My T30 is 10 yrs old, so an SSD should last 20 years?

[loyukfai]

Via Slashdot...

"SSD Write Endurance Considered... Sufficient"

http://ef.gy/statistics:ssd-write-endurance

Cheers.