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Thrax
Cad
Thrax
23,398 Posts

List of SSDs that support ATA TRIM

I'm using this space as a brainstorming area for an article I am considering on SSDs. I need to do more research, but I wanted to get this list of drives out for you guys. These consumer-level drives will give you the most life and the best long-term performance. I'll be adding specs, SKUs, prices and (if my research pans out) digestible longevity data.

SSDs that support ATA TRIM

Crucial M225

Intel X25-M G2

G.SKILL Falcon

G.SKILL Falcon II

OCZ Agility EX

OCZ Agility

OCZ Summit (Nov)

OCZ Vertex EX

OCZ Vertex

SuperTalent UltraDrive
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What sort of life expetancy can you expect from a SSD drive using ATA-TRIM over a drive that doesnt utalize it, if there is a difference? Although this may be a false stigma, the fact that these drives can "wear out" is the biggest deterrant for me(and probabley others)from purchasing one with the prices being as high as they are for the latest featured drives.

If these companies offered and incentive such as a rebate on another after the drive has reached its life expectancy would be nice.
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Thrax
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Thrax
23,398 Posts
ATA TRIM isn't a longevity thing, it's a performance thing. When windows deletes a file, it simply marks that space available for overwriting--the files aren't actually purged. That's fine for mechanical disks, because they don't get any slower when that happens. It's bad for SSDs though, because write performance is directly tied the fullness of a NAND cell.

If NAND cells the drive wants to write to are full with 10% legit files and 90% bullshit (unpurged deleted files), it has to copy all of the legit user data to cache, erase the cells to clear the 90% useless data, modify the cache's data with what YOU want to write, then copy it all back. This is called write amplification, because the amount of data being moved around is an amplified amount, relative to the data you're actually looking to write.

The ATA TRIM command deletes the file from the NAND cells the minute they're deleted in the OS, so the cells only ever contain active user data. The only time it would have to perform this read/erase/modify/write action is if the cells it wants to write to are 100% full with real user data.

Obviously this extra file juggling does have some longevity considerations, but they're minimal. The real benefit of TRIM is an SSD that does not sharply degrade in performance over time through simple usage.

As for your longevity questions, i.e. "How long do I have before this drive is dead?" That is exactly what I am looking to answer and, possibly, clear the air about. I don't have a clear answer for that yet, because every drive controller has a different write amplification factor that can be as big as 40:1, or as little as 1.1:1. If my research pans out, I will be able to say "These SSDs are good for XXXGB of data per day for XXX years." That is my goal.
Preacher
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Thrax,
Very interested in an article and recommendations. I have the OCZ Vertex and as I am about to put Win 7 on three computers over Turkey Day. I'd like to make sure I install the OS correctly on the SSD with TRIM firmware and Win 7.
Thrax
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Thrax
23,398 Posts
Short version: Use the SSD as the boot drive. Move the swap file to a mechanical disk, disable 8.3 file name support, disable the SuperFetch and Windows Search services. Do not use the SSD for mass storage, use it to store your most intensive programs and large data sets so that they load quickly.

Do not full format the disk. Quick format only.
GooD
C# Disciple
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581 Posts
Loved the way you did summerize everything in this short version, its the best "all-in-one" short post i've read about how-to-use-a-SSD

Can't wait to read your article !
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Preacher
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Short version: Use the SSD as the boot drive. Move the swap file to a mechanical disk, disable 8.3 file name support, disable the SuperFetch and Windows Search services. Do not use the SSD for mass storage, use it to store your most intensive programs and large data sets so that they load quickly.

Do not full format the disk. Quick format only.
Still eagerly awaiting the article, but thanks for the executive summary. I already had setup the SSD as my boot drive and apps only as well as disabling the Window Search. However, I had forgotten to move the swap file, to disable Superfetch, and 8.3 filenames. Many thanks.
pragtastic
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Out of curiosity, what's the problem with having your swap on the SSD? Too many unnecessary writes?
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Snarkasm
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Yep. I'm curious about superfetch, though.
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pragtastic
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I believe I have my swap pointed to my SSD at work right now... gonna have to fix that.
Thrax
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Thrax
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All of them make unnecessary writes to disk, and superfetch is merely a crutch to overcome the relatively low burst of mechanical disks.
RyderOCZ
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Disable any fetching (pre, super, etc), Drive indexing, auto/scheduled Defrag (for sure). Those are the only "tweaks" I use in 7.

I have a swap file on my 7 installs, I have not gone to tweaking that yet.
pragtastic
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I went ahead and moved my swap file over to the mechanical disk on my workstation today.
GooD
C# Disciple
GooD
581 Posts
stupid question maybe, but how can we tell to windows that we want it to swap file over to another drive ?

Is it in Performance options / advanced tab / virtual memory ?

I can disable the swapping on C: and enable it on my D: , is it how we can do it ?

Just curious since i will buy and SSD drive sooner than later
Thrax
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Thrax
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That's how you do it.
pragtastic
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pragtastic
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Exactly the process I used today GooD
propedor
New to the neighborhood
propedor
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Hope you research the pagefile's effect on longevity as well. I suspect that pagefile writes to an SSD don't add up to a lot of harm. If you choose to move the pagefile to a hard disk, you trade some performance for that unknown gain in longevity. And you probably got the SSD for performance in the first place...
Thrax
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Thrax
23,398 Posts
I'm willing to make the assumption that anyone who runs a performance SSD has at least 4GB of RAM, thereby minimizing page file usage. As a result, moving the page file to a mechanical disk would have a minimal performance impact outweighed by the addition of an SSD and the benefit of improved SSD lifetime.

As a hard and fast rule, any writes to an SSD not made by the user are a bad idea.
propedor
New to the neighborhood
propedor
4 Posts
As a hard and fast rule, any writes to an SSD not made by the user are a bad idea.
Looking forward to seeing how costly SSD writes are in practice.
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