What specs to look at when buying a ssd?

[k1ngkev1n1]

Looking into getting a ssd drive nothing fancy just something like 40gb what specs do i need to look at to know i am getting a good qulaity drive?

 

[geofelt]

1) Does it have the trim command?

2) Is it large enough to hold what you want? Windows-7 and microsoft security essentials take about 13gb.


I have used Intel X25-V 40gb and it has worked out very well.

If you can, wait to buy a SSD in the fall when gen3 drives will be cheaper and better.

I would not put too much importance in synthetic benchmarks. They do not represent YOUR workload. That said, the OS does lots of small reads and writes so I would look at
the drive's ability to do small random I/O.

 

[jim_l8472]

Definetly right about the TRIM support, and how much windows 7 takes up depends largely on how much memory you have. My Win7 fresh is under 8GB + All essential apps take up about 3GB and the rest of my 30GB SSD is left for games. I have an OCZ SSD that I got a great deal on, but yes the X-25v is a great drive and they've recently dropped in price. I probably would have gotten that hadI not found such a good deal on my OCZ.

 

[RetiredChief]

Concur with geofelt,
(1) Verify it says Trim enabled; ie bought a intel 80 Gig (Dane-elec) it was the G! not G2.
(2) Pay attention to the 4K RANDOM read/writes. This is the most important. And benchmarks are relavent. If benchmark test is low, your performance will be low.
(3) Ref jim_18472 comment on memory - Not an issue as most set the virtual memory (Swap file) to the HDD, not the SSD. Also disable hibernation, this is a hidden file that takes about 2->4 Gigs). This also reduces the writes to the SSD.
(4) On size, look at your current set-up and add about 20%. Although you can use a 40 Gig, I like to play it safe and look at the 60 -> 80 Gig SSD segment. Get the biggest (Good) one you can afford. If you only put your operating system on it, you are only improving the Boot time, not program loads.
(5) On cost, I agree that 3rd generation (SATA 6) SSD will drive down the 2nd generation SSD. I find that new generation occupies the same price range as the current ones do. That said, there should be some excellent sales for (1) back-to-school sales and (2) the after thanksgiving (Holiday) sales.

 

[jim_l8472]

@Retired Chief
It seems to me that most people set they're page file to the SSD because it's faster, I would do this if I had a page file.

I agree with everything you said though, especially about the price drop coming soon, since the newer SATAIII drives are out I would wait for the old ones to drop.

 

[RetiredChief]

jim_l18472
On the swap file. Could be wrong, But as long as you have enough physical memory the swap file is not used very much and would have little impact on overall performance. Reason most either decrease swap file size and/or increase physical memory. Swap file activity can be checked using the resource monitor. If that is the case, I would still recommend placing on the HDD.

When looking at a 40 gig SSD - Win 7 will set the swap file to about 6 Gigs ( 15% of a 40 gig SSD)

 

[geofelt]

I think the way it works, is that swap and page go to the same file.

Page faults are best serviced by a SSD because they are small, and need to be fast. The cpu waits while a page fault is serviced.

If you use hibernate, the contents of ram are written out to the swap file. If you have 4gb of ram, you might need 4gb of swap space. If you have lots of open apps in the system concurrently, the page file needs to be larger to hold the contents that can't fit in ram. Perhaps a big deal on a small SSD.

I use sleep in S3 mode which keeps your stuff in ram at a low power setting, and I don't think it writes to the swap file. This has the advantage of sleeping and waking up faster. The potential down side is that if there is a power failure without a UPS your in ram contents will be lost and you will have to reboot.

 

[jim_l8472]

The reason I disabled my page file is because although a program technically shouldn't use the page file unless they run out of memory, I find that programs still do store data in the page file. I believe this is data pertaining to parts of the program not frequently accessed. I've noticed that if I disable page filing, programs load faster but obviously take up more physical memory(sometimes twice as much) leading me to believe more data is being loaded into memory(instead of a swap file).

And the swap file amount is usually determined by the amount of ram, windows usually sets the page file to 1.5x your memory.

 

[k1ngkev1n1]

should i just wait to buy a ssd will prices go down soon you think? Id like to get a 60gb one.

 

[guanyu210379]

It is hard to tell if you should wait or buy it right now.
3rd generation will be better than 2nd....the 2nd will be cheaper by then... 4th Generation will be better than the 3rd...the 3rd will be cheaper by then...
and it will always continue that way....
How long will you wait?
Well...you want it you buy it!

 

[hell_storm2004]

Sorry jumping in mid-way... I am new to SSD's. I would like to know what is the trim command in SSD? and how to know that the SSD supports trim command? I checked newegg specifications and none of them explicitly mentioned the support of trim command.

 

[guanyu210379]

Sorry jumping in mid-way... I am new to SSD's. I would like to know what is the trim command in SSD? and how to know that the SSD supports trim command? I checked newegg specifications and none of them explicitly mentioned the support of trim command.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/253953-14-useful-articles

 

[RetiredChief]

Another source for "Trim Cmd"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM

Looking at the specs (Just looked at some 128 Gig SSDs), I noticed most contain a statement "Support trim". A few that I believe do support trim (ie C300) do not contain the statement in the specs; However, as with any SSD, you should see if there is a review - that will often state if has trim support.

Another statement to look for is "Unique Wear-Leveling for product life extension" or equivilant ie "garbage collector" These indicate clean-up for non-windows 7 operating system and/or if AHCI is not used in win 7.

Added
Caution - some that do not state support in fact DO NOT, case in point DANA Elect product is misleading - states use of intel SSD, BUT it is the G! version which does not support trim NOR does Intel tool box utility support the G1.