Solid State Drives (SSD's) explained

isonomicjedi · 4 Jan 2013 at 09:19

As my new pc arriving next week will have the Samsung 840 250GB SSD I was wondering if there are any main do's & don'ts associated them to reduce the writes as much as possible.

I only really want Windows 7, Microsoft Office ( as I have many very large linked Excel spreadsheets with dozens of dynamic ranges ) and games on my ssd.

I have read mentions of what to do with Steam but I'm not sure if I should or shouldn't put steam on my SSD.

Phage · 4 Jan 2013 at 09:50

It's fine, put everything on the SSD other than sheer storage of MP3, Video, Databases and other large files which can go on the HDD.
Nowadays it's fine to enable indexing of your SSD, but make sure that you disable defrag.

isonomicjedi · 4 Jan 2013 at 10:26

Being the idiot I am I forgot to ask my main question.

I use my PC on and off all day for 16+ hours a day and use standby when I'm not using it.
Does Windows7 even have a standby and should I use that or hibernate or leave ithe pc running. (I don't care about the electric use so much as I hardly have any heating on anyway)

What is best for the SSD? on/hibernate/standby ?

Phage · 4 Jan 2013 at 11:49

Makes no difference to the SSD in my experience. I haven't had much luck with W7 hibernating anyway. Whether this is due to the overclock or otherhardware issues I can't say.

JohnnyDrama · 28 Feb 2013 at 19:22

About to do the first format of my 18 month SSD. Is there anything special I should do or just format it the same I would a normal hard drive?

mickeyp · 5 Mar 2013 at 11:49

just a normal format on those , but ive been told theres no need for a defrag . only had mine 2 weeks ago and its flying

jeffa123 · 19 Sep 2013 at 12:51

I don't know if it is me or is it the norm for the moment but everyone seems to be worrying about if too many writes go to the drive and how many times they format the thing and basically are they to treat an SSD like a normal Hard drive.
I am sure I am not the only one whom is at the point of screaming! What the hell are they saying when it is a new revolution and these drives are robust and run at low temperatures and of course no moving parts. The problems arise when you look at the manufacturers saying that the drive shouldn't be treated like your old drive and you need firmware updates every now and again, then come the disclaimers!
If I pay ten times the amount I would pay for a mechanical version of the drive then I expect to have a safe reliable storage medium. All this talk of Trim and space adjust and cluster spacing makes me want to ..... well be sick.
Let's be honest the makers are being careful to protect their investment and so are you, but to treat a hard disk storage device like a fragile pussy cat is like giving into fear.
These drives need to be treated like the standard hard drives and used on the same systems and pushed in performance to see if those safeguards that they say are in place are there. If we think there is something to worry about check the one thing you don't have to buy, its built into every UEFI Bios today and even some very old bioses, the SMART status of the drive.
Check the Smart Status and then read write speeds. If there is an overload in data backup the important data on the hard disk and format and reinstall. then check if it was basic data corruption after the install. You will not find these things out unless you push the boundaries in a normal everyday operating mode. If you are constantly checking your drives then you just don't need them. Sometimes piece of mind is more palpable than speed freaking.
I have numerous SSD's and haven't broken one yet. Makers should start stepping up to the mark considering the money they are making out of the market.

Captain_Bosh · 8 Feb 2014 at 13:37

Great post, thanks Clocka

Mobius 1 · 29 Apr 2014 at 11:11

recently put a samsung EVO 840 250gb ssd in my acer laptop. and i cant believe the boot time from cold on these drives.

incredible!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTcFOrU1NbA

a one million percent yes to putting one of these in your computer as an upgrade.

Psypher5 · 30 Apr 2014 at 13:34

might be an idiotic question but I just want to "make sure"...

simply put: I have a p55 mitx dfi motherboard, it has sata 2 ports. Can I use an ssd (seagate 480gb)?

I'm reading yes, but obv it'll be "slower". but some places say ssd's "dont work" on sata 2?

Anyway, Ill be upgrading to z97 itx when they are out and I've just buggered up my mechanical 1tb hdd so looking to grab an ssd now and stick my mech hdd in an external caddy.

Syphon · 20 May 2014 at 21:02

Hi, wondering if you can help me out rather than starting a new thread.

I was set on the M500 for the M.2 support as I'm looking at the most recent motherboard chipsets and the speed improvements on storage. Will this make any odds real world if I was to get the EVO instead as I understand it doesn't support M.2? or are SSDs not yet fast enough to take advantage of the new Mobo speeds? Or am I just generally confused

Thanks.

WhyMoyes · 19 Mar 2015 at 14:03

Are SSD more optimized with W8.1 now or is W7 still the king?

ED209 · 19 Mar 2015 at 14:26

Psypher5 said:
might be an idiotic question but I just want to "make sure"...

simply put: I have a p55 mitx dfi motherboard, it has sata 2 ports. Can I use an ssd (seagate 480gb)?

I'm reading yes, but obv it'll be "slower". but some places say ssd's "dont work" on sata 2?

Anyway, Ill be upgrading to z97 itx when they are out and I've just buggered up my mechanical 1tb hdd so looking to grab an ssd now and stick my mech hdd in an external caddy.

I have a X58 board with a I7 950 and a Samsung evo 840 SSD.

I am currently using sata 2 ports as the sata 3 ports are crap on my board. the read and write speeds are 270mb each.

double check on the SSD when you buy it but think most of them will work with sata 2 as well as 3. I had no issues using mine on sata 2

ED209 · 19 Mar 2015 at 14:28

WhyMoyes said:
Are SSD more optimized with W8.1 now or is W7 still the king?

I am having no issues with my SSD and I am running windows 7 64 bit which was installed over the weekend.

I just turn off disk defrag, system restore and lower down my page file to save on space on the SSD

I have sued my SSD on windows 8.1 and 10 with no issues on any

mahius · 7 May 2015 at 22:42

About to format my Intel 330 120GB SSD for the first time since my laptop died. It used to be a boot device, but for now, it will hold my files (since the tablet I'm using has a measly 20gb built in storage). I will be buying a Samsung 750 Pro (faster/newer) for the boot drive of my build next month but I'm wondering what to use this old Intel for?

Gray-Fox · 26 Jun 2015 at 13:52

Can I use an internal SSD as an external one?

Captain_Bosh · 26 Jun 2015 at 18:04

Gray-Fox said:
Can I use an internal SSD as an external one?

Sure just use a 2.5" caddy and you can connect it via USB.

T4HO · 16 Jul 2015 at 03:13

Tauren said:
recently put a samsung EVO 840 250gb ssd in my acer laptop. and i cant believe the boot time from cold on these drives. incredible!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTcFOrU1NbA

a one million percent yes to putting one of these in your computer as an upgrade.

Is that your video ? Darn, it's so fast as you just pressed Power On and it was already turned on ! Windows 8 generally is fast and adding a SSD makes it even faster, I wonder what are the results with W7 ? I have seen that it can take up to a 18 seconds to load, LOL.

I have a question regarding SSD, does only installation of a game and updates "wears out" life of SSD or does reading data of it does it as well ? If I'm not wrong when you play a games on a computer, the data is only read not writed until there is update or some kind of modification to it ? I was thinking about installing GTA V on my SSD as apparently it needs fast load of elements when playing as opposed to level-loads so I wouldn't wear my SSD that much if I do install this game on my computer ?

I have also found this statement Online which says that having GTA on my SSD will increase performance:

"Yes, especially games like STALKER series or GTAIV/EFLC, which are ones with more open worlds as opposed to level-loads, that constantly are prefetching data and drawing objects as you move around the game world. In which case it CAN help to have such games on an SSD. Arma series also does a lot of prefetching throughout the game world and you also have a lot of AI to account for. While the AI alone is more limited by CPU/RAM/Chipset of your specs, Arma2 & 3 load up anything pretty much instantaneously when on a decent SATA2/3 SSD, compared to when being on a HDD.

I mainly tested with STALKER series w/ mods, as well as GTAIV/EFLC w/ mods. I can honestly say without a doubt such games greatly benefit from the SSD read/write speed. But again your RAM comes into play as well. And having 8GB minimum RAM helps. But I prefer 16GB as you can pretty buffer an entire game in RAM w/ 16-32GB of RAM.

Now I can run all my hi-res textures in STALKER, as well as fully realistic looking world in GTAIV via ENB and such mods. All without a hiccup due to poor read/write performance of the host drive. GTAIV looks as good as GTAV once you inject and tweak an ENB mod and mod the game with HD textures, as well as a few other mods to add more realism to the GTA world."

clocka · 18 Jul 2015 at 18:22

Hi everybody, I have updated the 1st post of this thread as it was 6yrs old and much of the information was no longer accurate. I have included lots of new innovations such as NvME, M.2, U.2 and other new advancements that have happened.

wigster · 30 Oct 2015 at 09:39

Ive not seen much talk about the SSHD,As im going to be using my pc to convert videos and edit photos would a SSHD be better?