View Full Version : SSD harddrive vs standard harddrive?
Comparing between:
desktop, self built;
Intel core2 extreme q9300 2.53ghz
Nvidia 9800gtx
2gb ram
harddrive: western digital raptor SATA 10krpm 74gb (old drive from my older desktop i built sept 2004)
windows xp 32bit home sp3
laptop, kobalt comanchi (jan 2009);
Intel core2 quad core q9550 2.8ghz
Nvidia 9800m gtx
4gb ram
harddrive: OCZ SSD 128gb
windows vista 64bit home premium
Ive been using an SSD drive for almost 6 months now. Ever since i started using it in my Comanchi laptop there doesnt seem much difference compared to a standard drive?
The only real noticable differance ive seen is when loading games. My laptop loads the games around twice as fast as my desktop. But then my desktops drive is quite old but was the fastest of its time, so if it was a new SATA II drive then maybe both drives would load games at about the same speed?
But for anything else, transfering large files to/from external drives to USB or over a LAN, no differance. Same with browsing through folders on my laptop its not any faster than browsing on my desktop.
So i realise SSD might be a little faster, but considering the extremely high price tag on the SSD its no way near worth it?
SSD's are typically 10 times faster at random I/O 4KB writes (comparing an OCZ Vertex to a Western Digital 7200rpm) and therefore almost everything that your laptop does should be faster i.e. opening programs should be near instant, boot and shutdown times should be a lot faster (my Nexus takes just 5.5 seconds from pushing the off button to being completely shutdown and power off! Im using a Vertex 250GB). If your Vertex is not performing as fast as you would like then I would ask you if you have performed any SSD tweaks? and more importantly do you use the wiper program? Are you aware that SSD's performance drastically reduce as the drive gets used more and that the only way to reverse the effect is to use the wiper program or completely factory reset the drive?
Cheers,
Andy
It takes mine about 20-40 seconds to close down, it varies each time.
And from when i click the on button it takes about 30 seconds to get to the desktop screen, then a further 20-30 seconds to load the start-up programs, all which i use/need.
Loading the system browser takes 1 maybe 2 seconds, once loaded all the folders open instantly, usually.
Internet explorer and firefox takes anything upto around 5 seconds to fully load. Thats with an empty temp inet folder/cache, cleared history, but keeping my cookies.
All the programs installed i need/use so theres nothing worth deleting.
Same for the startup menu, theres nothing there worth removing as i do use whats there.
Installing software takes forever, and i meen a dam long time... compared to my desktop.
The drive doesnt need defragging, there are no errors on the drive.
The only other thing im aware of which affects performance, is if the system registry might need a clean but i never go there so i have no idea how to sort that out as theres nearly always something you end up removing which screws something else up. In the past whenever i have a look online for a program that cleans the registry it either has a virus/spyware inbuilt with it or requires you to buy it or purchase a pincode. Its a nightmare. Ive never tried any of that on my laptop just incase it screws up its performance, yet look and behold... sigh :p
Ive never done any overclocking on my laptop, as im quite a newb in that department.
Same for SSD tweaks, never done that either. And a wiper program? ive never used or done that before. To be honnest im surprised it would need that or a reformat as its not even had 6 months wear and tare, i do use the laptop alot but not half as much as i used to on my desktop PCs some years ago as a hardcore gamer... like most of the day, most days of the week.
I agree, I have two Vertex drives in raid on my rig and whilst quick I wish that I hadn't bothered and saved myself some considerable money.
In my opinion the performance gains over say a good mechanical HD whilst good don't justify the drastic costs involved.
And as for degrading speed Andy, thanks that's now something else to worry about.:(
neil@kobalt
12-07-09, 15:32
If it's loading games twice as fast as your Raptor then it suggests they are working fine. It's doubtful that you will see any benefit with an SSD whilst using external HDDs as the transfer speed will be limited by the USB/network connection bandwidth rather than the internal drive data transfer speed. USB 2.0 is 60MB/s max transfer, I believe it's below that of a Raptor but definitely below that of your Vertex.
As your (Sparkatb) laptop seems to have some issues which Andrew is already helping you with I would suggest any lagging or performance issues are being caused by that.
neil@kobalt
12-07-09, 15:33
For some reason I'm getting the same issue with posting that was reported yesterday.....so appologies for multiple posts, will edit asap!
Ok this could be a very long post! :)
First of all, Never defrag an SSD as it has absolutley 0% effect on its performance (this is due to the way that the drive accesses its data) and in actual fact it actually reduces the life of the drive. I suppose at this point it would be a good idea to point out that SSD's do have a finite life (i.e. number of writes to each sector). I am guessing that you didnt know to much about SSD's when you bought one (which to be honest about 80% of people are in the same boat). In terms of tweaks for an SSD there is absolutely nothing complicated at all to do, it is simply turning of some features of Windows that were designed to speed up mechanical drives (but they actually slow down SSD's!). A long long time ago (Im sure some members will remember :)) I promised to produce a guide for tweaking windows and SSD's in order to maximise performance and life, however I have been extremely busy at work and at home and have not had chance to finish it yet (I will try and finish as soon as possible). Until then you could visit the OCZ forum (although information on there is very fragmented and it can take a long time to find the info you want). Can I also ask you a few questions (to determine if you have the stutering effect caused by an incorrectly offset partition):
1. What operating system are you running? XP, Vista, Windows7 RC? Is it 32 or 64bit? Once you answer this question I will ask a few more. EDIT: scratch that question as I have just re-read your original post. I will be back with some more questions/comments after you have shown us the benchmark results detailed below.
And dont worry, you will soon be laughing at you mechanical drive as your SSD will leave it for dust!
Finally, just a few numbers for you to compare with (the following are times it takes my properly tweaked SSD to perform tasks):
open Firefox = 0.5 seconds
install WinRAR = 2 seconds (installation from file on SSD, not on a CD or USB disk)
Installing software = at least twice as fast as my 7200rpm HDD
As soon as windows desktop loads I can open any firefox instantly without any delay.
Finally 2 (lol), can you downlaod this (http://release.crystaldew.info/CrystalDiskMarkSetup) SSD benchmark program and run it (by clicking the "All" button) using 5 runs on 1000MB (settings are at the top of the program) and post a screen shot of the results, as this will show the true speed of your SSD and we can see just how fast or slow it is running. The benchmark tool may take about 10 mins to complete.
Finally 3 (not to sure how many finally's there are going to be ), if you would like an explanation of why mechanical drives perormance decreases with use, and how the wiper program works to solve this problem then just ask (but I will leave it out of this post now as it could take a few more lines and this is already a long post)
Cheers,
Andy
Interesting! thanks
Loading firefox takes about 1sec.
--------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 2.2 (C) 2007-2008 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
--------------------------------------------------
Sequential Read : 148.481 MB/s
Sequential Write : 26.239 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 138.723 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 12.047 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 14.862 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 0.818 MB/s
Test Size : 1000 MB
Date : 2009/07/13 16:59:26
As I suspected your write speeds are drastically slow (by a factor of 10!!!!) this is most likely due to the fact that the SSD's has been in use for a while and never had the wiper program ran on it. The 4KB write speed is what determines the "resposiveness" of the system and the other write sizes generally correspond to large file transfers. By the way the reason it seems like it is performing at the same speed as a mechanical drive is because it is!! My WD5400rpm gets about 0.7MB/s 4KB random write speed IIRC.
Ok the next step is to get you to run the wiper program on it (by the way the wiper program is produced by OCZ themselves). However the first thing we need to know is what firmware version you have installed on your SSD? You can find this out by going to device manager and looking under disk drives, let us know what it says.
Here are some results for you to compare with (I just performed the test on my OCZ 250GB Vertex) (You can run crystaldiskmark on any drive, so you could also check out the speed of your Raptor, I have used before to benchmark my RAMdisk and got results that were astomically fast!)
--------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 2.2 (C) 2007-2008 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
--------------------------------------------------
Sequential Read : 224.896 MB/s
Sequential Write : 145.899 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 153.897 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 138.815 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 15.899 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 11.933 MB/s
Test Size : 1000 MB
Date : 2009/07/13 21:35:31
driver date: 21/06/2006
driver: 6.0.6001.18000
not too sure if driver and firmware are exactly the same thing.
Here is an easier way to do it:
Run this (http://release.crystaldew.info/CrystalDiskInfoSetup) program and it tells you what firmware vesion is installed.
Ok you have one of the earliest versions of firmware on your SSD and it does not support the Wiper program. In order to be able to use wiper you will need to be updated to at least v1.1 or v1.3 (v1.3 is the latest firmware version and also the best as it has been out for over a month now and has no major bugs reported). HOWEVER, to update to v1.3 you must first update to v1.1 (dont ask why, you just have to do it this way). Now unfortunately updating your firmware to v1.1 will wipe all data off the drive and so you will need to make backups of any files you want to keep. Once the drive is updated to v1.1 you can do ahead and install your OS (Vista) and any drivers that your laptop requires. You can then go ahead and flash to v1.3 (flashing to v1.3 does not wipe any data from the drive).
Below are links to firmware v1.1 and v1.3 and their respective installation guides:
firmware v1.1 (http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/920660/VERTEX_1275.zip)
firmware v1.1 flashing guide (http://www.ocztechnology.com/drivers/Vertex_Firmware_Flashing_Guide.pdf)
firmware v1.3 (http://www.ocztechnology.com/drivers/Vertex_1.30.zip)
firmware v1.3 flashing guide (http://www.ocztechnology.com/drivers/Vertex_1.30_Guide.pdf)
Ok sounds good. I wont do that at the moment as this laptop is going back in for a hardware fix within a week, no idea how long kobalt will have it for, then i think i might as well wait for Windows 7 to be released, then do this firmware update and then use the wiper program (whatever that is? where do i get it, do i need a specific wiper? is it easy to use etc?).
Thanks Andy
By the way, why dont Kobalt do this when theyre building the laptops with SSD's? ie use most recent firmware and have a wiper program.
Actually, andrew has told me that they do update the firmware on the vertexs that they use. How long ago did you get your vertex? I think v1.1 only came out about 3 months ago (it maybe less than that), also the wiper program only got released at the same time as firmware v1.1. Initially, the first version of wiper didn't work with all computer configs, for example it didn't work with certain motherboards, it didn't work with 90% of 64bit OS's, and it didn't support raid configs. However, with the most recent version of wiper most of the motherboard issues have been fixed and 64bit is now supported, however raid configs are still not supported. I will link the most recent version of wiper with instructions of how to use it when you have updated your firmware (because by then there maybe a new version of wiper available). THE GOOD NEWS: you may not even need to use wiper with windows 7 because OCZ are working on a new firmware that supports auto TRIM by windows 7.
Andy
Yea i bought it before firmware 1.1 then, was back in January 2009.
Windows 7 seems to get better and better :)
Hopefully it is microsofts best ever OS.
andrew@kobalt
18-07-09, 16:45
Yup spot on Andy (resident SSD expert ;)). We do install the latest firmware but with the first few months after release things were quite messy and the wiper software wasn't even available. We are currently working on a full FAQ's part to the website (Andy might nab some of your bits if that's ok) with full downloads, advice etc but it's taken longer than we hoped because of recent issues with component supply.
Sparkatb when we get your laptop back next week we'll have a good look at it and we'll look at the SSD closely.
From our experience of Windows 7 so really does look like the OS we've all been waiting for both for SSD's and gaming. Roll on the October release :)
Yup spot on Andy (resident SSD expert ;)).
:D :D :D :D
Sparkatb when we get your laptop back next week we'll have a good look at it and we'll look at the SSD closely.
I dont know what technical problems Sparkatb is having with his PC? But if it is only to do with his poor performance then this is almost 95% certain to be due to the fact that all the 512KB sectors have been writen too at least once during its life now and so it needs to be "factory reset". This can be done in 3 Ways:
1. By running the wiper porgram (which Sparkatb's SSD requires a firmware update)
2. By running Sanitary Erase (I have never used this method myself and so dont know exactly what it involves)
3. By updating the firmware to v1.1 (and then v1.3) it will resest the drives performance. It is the updating to version v1.1 that resets the drives performance (this is because the update to v1.3 only "updates" part of the firmware and does not wipe the drive completely clean).
By the way just for anyone who reads this and doesnt know: Reformatting an SSD does not reset the drives performance (one of the above 3 methods must be used).
Andy might nab some of your bits if that's ok
Yeah thats fine. I should have that SSD guide finished soon and will post it in the original thread that I started. You are welcome to move/edit or add to the guide as you see fit.
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