To SSD or not ?

[Davidk]

More on the technology ... in case anyone was wondering
RAM only has to retain it's contents while power is available - lose volts and the store content is lost. Happens on every system with a power shutdown.
SSD OTOH, has to retain content even in a powered down condition, and the cell design is different. Even old EEPROM's had to do that, and still do: there's a version of that tech which holds the BIOS in every system, and is the essence of every cold start. The latest SSD designs use technology that is many times the grandson of that tech. Along with fast cell operation, small size et al. And the cell design thus has a life. In an SSD, even one or a few cells failing to hold content is sufficient to make it unusable - but how would you know? And could you - like tools do with HDD - mark an address or a block of addresses in the device as 'unusable'.

Which is the substance of the last query by skipper. Disks of any sort these days implement the SMART interface which allows various parameters (eg temperature, read errors, CRC errors etc) of the disk to be monitored by disk tools and these give a pretty good indication. But the life of the cells in the unit versus how much of that has been used? The best answer I can offer is to ask the manufacturer.

[Ken Berry]

One very minor footnote for those who are just now contemplating installing an SSD: if you go ahead, one of the first things you should do is disable any defragmentation program you might have. As I understand it, an SSD has its own structure for managing its space, so an external defrag program is unnecessary. Doing away with it also means (far) less rewrites on the SSD and thus potentially a longer lifespan.

[Davidk]

Absolutely.
Because an HDD is essentially a serial access device, defragging the disk - means, ensuring that blocks of data from the same program or file are in successive blocks on the disk, thus ensuring that the read heads generally don't move much between successive data accesses and thus seek or wait time for that specific file is minimised - is a periodic maintenance task that is essential. Keeping an amount of disk space 'unused' - eg, say 20% - is a way of making defrag times fairly fast and most of a file blocks of data can be written serially, one after another (just as derag would arrange it).

OTOH, an SSD is a random access device, just like RAM. Data access time is constant: just the address time, which is the same for every location on it. Getting data from a location at the start of the SSD and the end of the SSD in successive operations is simply the time it takes to change the address. And thus, defrag not required, and as Ken says, more likely to help towards the life limit than improve any performance issues. And you don't have to keep an eye on space usage either - data access on a full disk is just as fast as on an empty one.

[Charlie Wilkes]

Samsung SSDs (and I think most SSDs oi any make) record the volume of data writes. Samsung provides a utility called Samsung Magician that allows you to configure your system for maximum SSD performance/reliability, and also tells you how much data it has written over its lifetime.

http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/mi ... oad/tools/

I seem to recall that the new version available for download may not recognize older Samsung SSDs and the old version doesn't work with new SSDs. But they might have fixed that. Try the current version and if it doesn't work, I'll upload an old version to my Google drive and post a link.

[iNate]

One very minor footnote for those who are just now contemplating installing an SSD: if you go ahead, one of the first things you should do is disable any defragmentation program you might have. As I understand it, an SSD has its own structure for managing its space, so an external defrag program is unnecessary. Doing away with it also means (far) less rewrites on the SSD and thus potentially a longer lifespan.

Windows will not defragment an SSD. It Trims by default, and there is no option to defrag them. The OS typically handles this, and optimizes once a week or so automatically (though you can use vendor applications to do this, as well - but I'm pretty sure they do so with the OS' functionality, anyways).

[iNate]

Just when I thought I was learning something worthwhile from someone who "knows" along comes another and trashes truth with their own version.
Clearly there is truth here but just who is writing it? I am not taking sides with any contributor in this thread and my technical understanding is insufficient to voice comprehensive analysis
However my PC has been running a Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD since March 2015 when an upgrade for my then "old" (march 2012) machine was deemed worthwhile.
In the last month a glitch of unknown origin had me thinking something had died in the heart of the beast and all was lost, but not so, a little tinkering and she runs to fight another day
Well for now at least, hense my interest in building a new "box" with the right stuff inside, which will certainly include a larger SSD drive for operating system with room to let VS do its thing before I move any completed files over to a seperate HDD.
What would be interesting to learn is "if" it is possible to interogate the SSD and determinethe number of re-writes it has undertaken or if there is another way to tell when the drive is coming to the end of its reliable life expectancy? My 3 years of service may be tiny compared to the work others do in a similar time frame

For Samsung, this is their Magician Software, which displays your Total Bytes Written in its main pane:

https://imgur.com/a/jXkYLw7

And I have an Intel 535 240GB SATA3 SSD in my older Notebook. It's been there since late 2014 and only has about 65-70 TB (Terabytes) written to it. Unless you are a really heavy user, you probably have something around that ballpark, so that is likely not the issue your system is having.

[Scubbie]

It's interesting to read through the comments here.

My main computer is a laptop. It has two drives in it, as I realised that a single drive wouldn't be enough at the time.

Initially, it came with two 1TB HDDs. I later changed this to a 1TB SSD and a 2TB HDD.

Even though I use it a lot, with both HD and 4K footage for videos, the SSD is still well within the specified usage limits for its life.

[Skipper]

My comments of yesterday brought forth a flurry of responses, all good and proper - thanks all.
After posting I decided it was "up to me" to try and learn more about SSD's and thus I spent an hour or more reading various tech bulletins on line and gained a better understanding
One thing I picked up is in the filing process the overall speed of the SSD becomes slower over time depending on the number of re-writes performed in any given cell. Newer SSD's use a system that spreads this re-write function so that all cells get something equating to average use rather than dumping new information into particular random cells that may become available more frequently.
There is yet another component in all this with the development of multilayer SSD's which provide cheaper storage but slower speeds dependent on quality and number of layers.
So for my money, I believe I shall let sleeping dogs lie, keep the existing PC going a bit longer and still aim to build that new box but not carry over any of the existing storage, SSD or HDD.
It is not unreasonable to expect a bit more life from my 3 year old SSD but new technology, more storage for a reasonable price and a fresh start all seem good reasons for change?

And yes - SSD's do have a finite life which is probably going to be somewhat less than HDD's but that is the price for speed and I dislike waiting around for things to happen. Also, I will keep the proprietary softwear supplied with the SSD this time and not discard it as "yet another intrusion from a manufacturer wanting to take control of my system"

[Davidk]

I've been seeing SSD issues with Win 10 discussed for a while now. And that may be because SSD's were not of a size (storage capacity) nor very affordable when earlier OS's were current.

And today I came across this article by a tech mag in the UK, published on 24 May (2 days ago) on this very topic, FYI
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/24 ... _ssd_woes/

[RobertOZ]

I am affected by that problem, have a Toshiba SSD, so waiting for the official update release on Tuesday, hopefully the update will be smooth

[Davidk]

Three months on, and I've bitten the bullet and upgraded a 6 year old laptop to SSD. So this post is a report of relative performance - same OS and hardware platform using a 320gb Toshiba HDD versus a WD Blue 500gb SSD unit.

The one old HDD in the device was getting too full of data, and taking what seemed like forever to do basic chores like a whole of disk anti-virus scan, backups etc. I compared the samsung and WD units at the same capacity, and altho the specs were essentially the same the price for the WD unit was $50 cheaper. Good reviews for both units. Bought a WD blue unit at 500gb, $A150 and installed it.

Backing up (Acronis True Image 2018) all the folders on the HDD except the one holding a local copy of a prior backup, took about 3 hours (C drive was largest/longest, at about 1.8 hours) on the day before any change was made. Next day, the actual physical changeover was simple and booting from a DVD to partition the SSD was also straightforward. As was booting from DVD to recover the system reserved partition and C drive. I expected to spend about 3-4 hours on this part of the task - prior experience was that recovery took about 2x the time for backup. And was absolutely dumbfounded when both the reserved partition and C drive were done - even using DVD-based tools - in less then 10 minutes. Booting the laptop then using the now recovered C drive was fast (detail below), and using the recovery tools on it for the remainder of the drive partitions - also similarly fast. And, all done (from time the case was cracked until final shutdown) in less than 2 hours. To say I was impressed - both at speed and no problems - is a massive understatement.

So, performance comparisons:
- boot time, using windows 7 current patches and 8gb RAM: using old HDD 2 mins 5sec; using new SSD 1 min 10 sec. Basically a 50% improvement.
- whole of disk AV scan: using HDD (49,800 folders, 304,880 files, 112.2Gb) 43minutes 16sec. Using new SSD (49,699 folders, 304,159 files, 106.4Gb) 23minues 18sec. Again, a 50% improvement.

[asik1]

few days ago I ordered from AliX 120G ssd for 26$ , I'm going to put it in my old, hardly used asus EEE netbook and install Lubuntu to see how it will go and will it revive this piece of junk with 7 starter. I also order 2G ram for 5$.

[tletter]

- boot time, using windows 7 current patches and 8gb RAM: using old HDD 2 mins 5sec; using new SSD 1 min 10 sec. Basically a 50% improvement.
- whole of disk AV scan: using HDD (49,800 folders, 304,880 files, 112.2Gb) 43minutes 16sec. Using new SSD (49,699 folders, 304,159 files, 106.4Gb) 23minues 18sec. Again, a 50% improvement.

Yes but the question is whether a SSD speeds rendering or editing when using VS.

VS is not I/O bound when rendering (see lack of disk activity whilst rendering). Similarly I've not found that a SSD facilitates editing.

tletter
https://www.youtube.com/user/tletter

[asik1]

Why should SSD speeds rendering? 99% of it, is less than play speed.

[Scubbie]

My main laptop has two drives in it. When I purchased it I had 2 1TB hard drives. Later I replaced the primary drive with a 1TB SSD and the second with a 2TB hard drive.

My reasoning is that the core data could be kept on the HD and the programs and other data could be kept on the SSD. It also allows me to directly compare rendering content on either drive.

Whilst I don't have any specific figures to hand, I know that rendering content from a 4K source works far quicker when it is on the SSD than the HD.

I also increased my RAM from 8GB to 16GB. This too has helped a lot. Occasionally I do see my laptop using more than 8GB of RAM, but not that often. When I do, I know that the computer isn't saving as much to the page file, thus slowing the computer down more.

Normally I would recommend 8GB for a computer, but if you are editing a lot of video content you may wish to consider increasing the RAM too.