SSD Advice.

[Gunnergolly]

Hello

 

Have just bought a OCZ Vertex 3 SSD and have been reading various other forums on how to configure them for installation.

 

1) I'm i right in believing that you must never do a full format of an SSD before installing windows 7.

 

2) During Windows setup you only need to do a quick format.

 

3) Once Windows is up and running is it ok to use the Disk management program in Windows 7 to partition my drive ?.

 

4) Can you defrag them like any other hard drive.

 

5) In the future if i ever wanted to do a full install of Windows again, how would you go about erasing the drive ?.

 

Basic questions but i'm just wanting to avoid any "expensive" mistakes !!!.....

 

Thanks......

[Malefic Rage]

Basic questions but i'm just wanting to avoid any "expensive" mistakes !!!.....

 

Well, as a SSD user, as far as I'm aware there isn't too much that you can do to completely fizzle a SSD just through using it. If you drop it in water or use it as a lightning anchor, well that's another matter.

 

1) I'm i right in believing that you must never do a full format of an SSD before installing windows 7.

 

This is news to me. As far as I recall, Windows XP has potential issues with partition misalignment causing limited performance loss however in general a full format won't hurt the drive, aside from wasting a write cycle. If you mind my asking, where did you hear this?

 

2) During Windows setup you only need to do a quick format.

 

Yes, no need for a full format, the drive handles internal errors, bad blocks, etc quite well on its own.

 

3) Once Windows is up and running is it ok to use the Disk management program in Windows 7 to partition my drive ?.

 

No different to a mechanical drive.

 

4) Can you defrag them like any other hard drive.

 

Defragmenting is of no value to a SSD. It accesses data in a very different manner to a mechanical drive so gains very little benefit from a defragmented partition or file relocation. The only thing defragmenting a SSD will achieve is to needlessly reduce available write-cycles.

 

5) In the future if i ever wanted to do a full install of Windows again, how would you go about erasing the drive ?.

 

Exactly the same as a mechanical drive. Really you only need to blow away the existing partitions. Only do a full format if you absolutely want the security of removing remnants of old data which, if your SSD and OS support the TRIM command (yes in your case) may be a moot point anyway.

 

 

Hope it helps.

Edited May 23, 2011 by Malefic Rage

[Malefic Rage]

Oh yeah... and a Vertex 3? Lucky bastard :)

[Gunnergolly]

Hello Malefic Rage.

 

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

 

I've been on Google reading various support/discussion forums but gave up in the end as the threads just go on and on !!!...

 

Many of the answers were not really concise and helpful as to how you actually prepare an SSD for windows installation and maintain it once it's up and running.

 

I can't find the exact source again but one guy advised never to do a full format on an SSD as he somehow managed to break his....

 

Reading stuff like that makes your arse twitch when you have just paid £250 ($380 Aus) for a 120 Gb drive....

 

Needless to say at that kind of money i'll not be buying another one for a while !!!!...

 

Once it's installed it'll be interesting to see how it performs with DCS.

 

Thanks again.......

[topdog]

Full format isn't necessary, quick format is. If there's any doubt as to whether the drive has ever been used before (or you need to do a reformat and reinstall yourself) then 'format' isn't what you want to do, but an operation called a 'secure erase' which resets the nand flash to 'factory' performance levels.

 

Presumably you have it installed already now, but if you haven't or you might be doing it again anyway to get it right:

 

OCZ's own guides (on the vertex 3 product page is a link to it) are fairly large but very good, I suggest going through it and picking out the bits that are important for you and creating a checklist.

 

Things to importantly check for are partition alignment (though unless there have been significant mistakes, Win7 is good at doing this automatically), and switching to AHCI mode ensuring Win7 enables its Trim support. Tools like AS SSD and Crystal Disk Mark/Info will help report whether these items are on.

 

Having Win7 setup with your SSD properly also helps it avoid doing something stupid like defragging it (this is a fairly big no-no to do) on a schedule (even bigger no-no).

[hassata]

Would an SSD Disk with DCS on it in conjunction with a regular HD with WIN on it still yield the same advantages purely DCS-wise?

[topdog]

There's 2 main ways you can go to get good performance.

 

1) Full-on SSD for everything.

 

2) Use part of the SSD's space, if the SSD is a secondary drive, for Windows' ReadyBoost which will cache and serve clusters requested frequently from the mechanical HDD.

 

Whether the latter will help with the micro-stutters that have been observed in A10C I don't know, but it's a good method to getting the performance of a mechanical HDD up to SSD levels, it will just take some time for the cache to gain knowledge on the most frequently accessed disk areas so won't be an instant improvement either.

 

Generally speaking it's good to have the following on the SSD directly:

 

1. OS

2. swap

3. indexing

4. readyboost

5. Any other apps/data you have room for

 

The app doesn't have to be on the SSD necessarily to gain the benefits but I don't have the gubbins or time to test out the variations for precise information on how they compare from DCS' perspective.

[Rhinox]

Generally speaking it's good to have the following on the SSD directly:

 

1. OS

Agree.

2. swap

Negative. If you can afford to spend a few hundreds $/€ on SSD, you can spend a few tens $/€ on RAM too. SSD is still much slower than DDR, so do not use it for swap. Even better, turn swap off, if you have plenty of RAM.

 

3. indexing

Very big fat negative. Indexing not only reads, but also writes periodically small chunks of data to disk, which is the best way to kill SSD performance, and exhaust its write-cycles. Moreover, indexing does not bring any real performance boost.

 

4. readyboost

The same as for 2: buy RAM instead, and use SSD for what it is meant to be used. When it comes to disk read/write, "readyboost" is even worse than swap on most systems, as it reads/writes to readybosst-medium even long before it is really necessary just for the case more memory might be needed, than what is currently available. BTW, some operating systems use swap the same way: try to keep RAM mirrored in SWAP all the time, utilising free cpu/io cycles, just for the case more memory is needed (then simply some memory-page is marked as "free & paged", no need to wait till it is copied it to swap, as it is already there).

 

5. Any other apps/data you have room for

Agree, with one exception: do not use all your space. It is worth to keep some space empty. Wear-leveling works better if you have at least 10% space free...

[topdog]

Whilst no more than necessary is prudent, some amount of swap can be necessary regardless of RAM, it's just how some things (applications and system operations) work.

 

Writing periodically but random reading small (4k) sizes of data are where SSDs shine, so for pagefile and Windows Search (which is what I meant in Windows 7, didn't mean to be referring to the indexing services) they are actually a prime candidate (this is after all, the premise behind readyboost too).

 

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx

 

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.

 

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/content.php?306-SSD-ABC-Guide

 

--> http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?79848-THE-BASIC-GUIDE-amp-FAQ-ABC-for-OCZ-SSD&p=567577&viewfull=1#post567577

 

In Windows, turning it off does not mean it will never create one.

If it needs to, Windows it will create a temporary one of it's own choosing.

Moving it to slower storage will result in it's functions being slower.

 

In Win 7 put it on your SSD.

 

Most Win 7 operations are reads, most writes being sequential.

 

These are underpinning arguments to eventually manage the Page File.

 

Don't let it manage your install.

 

--> http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?79848-THE-BASIC-GUIDE-amp-FAQ-ABC-for-OCZ-SSD&p=567582&viewfull=1#post567582

 

Windows Search is standard in Windows 7 and Windows Vista.

 

Leave it on.

 

It is enabled by default and replaces Windows Desktop Search (WDS).

 

Windows Search was an add-in for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

 

Hope that helps qualify/clarify.

[topdog]

Also to qualify the use of readyboost, this is for mixed disk environments. If you have SSD only, ReadyBoost isn't even available for you in Win7 it'll be off and unavailable for your system drive.

 

If you have both SSD and HDD, then the readyboost cache is for speeding up the (frequently accessed) data on the HDD, which no amount of RAM can compensate for. So "buy ram instead" isn't applicable.

 

Overprovisioning with a modern drive takes care of the wear-levelling needs I believe, but sure, some slack room won't hurt as the overprovision space is also needed for failed cell swapouts / remapping.

 

In any case, follow OCZ's guide, it's about as valid as advice gets.

Edited May 23, 2011 by topdog

[Malefic Rage]

switching to AHCI mode ensuring Win7 enables its Trim support.

 

I believe the TRIM command will be utilised regardless of bus mode. The main factor in TRIM support is the OS, which I think has only been natively implemented in Windows 7 to date. The most direct benefits of AHCI are hot-swapping and NCQ support, the former being of little use to an internal drive and the latter being of little use to a SSD.

 

Negative. If you can afford to spend a few hundreds $/€ on SSD, you can spend a few tens $/€ on RAM too. SSD is still much slower than DDR, so do not use it for swap. Even better, turn swap off, if you have plenty of RAM.

 

From what I've read in the Microsoft forums, disabling the swap file is stongly discouraged. While the OS will work, it has been designed around the assumption that the swapfile exists and will be utilised. Even with a Terrabyte of RAM, Windows may still use the swapfile to a limited extent, although I do agree that the best way of minimising this is to install as much RAM as is reasonable.

 

Furthermore, I agree with topdog and would argue that the SSD is by far the best place for the swap file and the argument that it consumes too many write cycles is highly subjective at best. See this post for a more detailed explanation.

 

Very big fat negative. Indexing not only reads, but also writes periodically small chunks of data to disk, which is the best way to kill SSD performance, and exhaust its write-cycles. Moreover, indexing does not bring any real performance boost.

 

I disagree with this entire statement. Small, random IO is what a SSD excels at and so, like the pagefile is an ideal destination for indexing. I have never encountered the argument that indexing degrades a SSD's performance before, I'm not aware that it is even technically possible. Indexing is designed to run in the background only under idle conditions. As for exhausting write cycles, I do not believe that the amount of disk writing that indexing performs is sufficient to reduce the drive's write-life by any considerable factor. I refer again to the link above. As for disabling indexing, all I can say is that it's solely a matter of personal preference.

[topdog]

I believe the TRIM command will be utilised regardless of bus mode. The main factor in TRIM support is the OS, which I think has only been natively implemented in Windows 7 to date. The most direct benefits of AHCI are hot-swapping and NCQ support, the former being of little use to an internal drive and the latter being of little use to a SSD.

 

Hmm.. yes that is right with ide and Trim :doh:. I recalled on my mobo there are 3 modes of operation it'll work in, IDE, AHCI, and XRAID. I know I wouldn't get TRIM whilst in a RAID config but even a single drive not setup for proper Raid 0/1/etc. on an XRAID config wouldn't have TRIM support.

 

I was trying to think of the other reason why I wanted/needed AHCI and other than what you mention, I think it was the Intel Rapid Storage Tech drivers which offer better performance for a vertex3 on p67 chipset than the MS IDE driver would. Those (Intel RST drivers) work only in RAID or AHCI mode I believe, so it was the combination of things that narrowed down my line of thought into believing TRIM = AHCI.

[GaryIKILLYOU]

Agree.

Negative. If you can afford to spend a few hundreds $/€ on SSD, you can spend a few tens $/€ on RAM too. SSD is still much slower than DDR, so do not use it for swap. Even better, turn swap off, if you have plenty of RAM.

 

Very big fat negative. Indexing not only reads, but also writes periodically small chunks of data to disk, which is the best way to kill SSD performance, and exhaust its write-cycles. Moreover, indexing does not bring any real performance boost.

 

The same as for 2: buy RAM instead, and use SSD for what it is meant to be used. When it comes to disk read/write, "readyboost" is even worse than swap on most systems, as it reads/writes to readybosst-medium even long before it is really necessary just for the case more memory might be needed, than what is currently available. BTW, some operating systems use swap the same way: try to keep RAM mirrored in SWAP all the time, utilising free cpu/io cycles, just for the case more memory is needed (then simply some memory-page is marked as "free & paged", no need to wait till it is copied it to swap, as it is already there).

 

Agree, with one exception: do not use all your space. It is worth to keep some space empty. Wear-leveling works better if you have at least 10% space free...

What this guy said^