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Can You Get More Space Or Speed From Your SSD?

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With the market for solid-state drives continually expanding, we wanted to explore some of the most popular tweaks enthusiasts use to purportedly improve performance and free up capacity. We break out the benchmarks and put them to the test.

Benchmark Results: PCMark Vantage Storage Test

All of the tweaks, taken together, have a negative impact on both drives in the Application Loading benchmark. Intel's X25-M sees its performance cut in half, while OCZ's Vertex 2 realizes an 18 MB/s drop in performance.

OCZ suffers again in the Gaming Throughput benchmark, losing 10 MB/s.

The opposite is true of Intel's X25-M, which sees roughly a 10 MB/s throughput increase with all tweaks implemented.

The tweaks again affect both drives negatively in the Video Editing benchmark. Intel's X25-M is hit the hardest: it's performance goes from 130.54 MB/s to 48.47 MB/s.

Another sub-test, another bad outcome. The Windows Defender benchmark shows both drives suffering a performance loss.

...and again. Intel's X25-M performance is nearly cut in half, while OCZ's Vertex 2 is subjected to a 30 MB/s drop.

Surprisingly, after all of the performance disappointments, Vantage's Pictures Import benchmark gives the Intel drive a quantifiable win. The Vertex 2, on the other hand, really isn't affected. 

In the Windows Vista Startup benchmark, the tweaks have a negative impact on both drives. Intel's X25-M sees the greatest effect, going from 198.33 MB/s to 107.33 MB/s.

99 Comments Comment from the forums
  • 09 June 2011 13:44
    Indexing is not used to access files more quickly. It's used to find files more quickly in search. Disabling indexing will result in slower searching.

    Hibernation: Amount of space saved by turning this off is equivalent to the amount of RAM in your system. Not limited to 2GB.

    Also, hibernation has benefits over standby where hibernation will allow your system to return to a fully working state after removing power whereas standby requires power to still be supplied to your system. Laptops for example you'll want to hibernate to avoid discharging the battery while in sleep mode.
    Reply
  • compton 09 June 2011 14:01
    With system restore disabled, no swap file, and some of the additonal tweaks mentioned here, my two small capacity SSD's are running Win 7 effectively in a small footprint -- my 60GB Agility has 37GB free, while the X25-V in my laptop has over 20GB free. The best part is keeping lots of extra space help longevity, while the tweaks enhance performance while keeping my drives free of junk.

    Thanks for another excellent article -- I'm surprised I haven't seen an article on this subject that's as comprehensive. Toms to the rescue.
    Reply
  • anttonij 09 June 2011 14:08
    Thanks for another great article. I would love to see a part 2 of the article where you would explore the causes of the performance drop.
    Reply
  • cangelini 09 June 2011 14:26
    KWReidIndexing is not used to access files more quickly. It's used to find files more quickly in search. Disabling indexing will result in slower searching.Hibernation: Amount of space saved by turning this off is equivalent to the amount of RAM in your system. Not limited to 2GB.Also, hibernation has benefits over standby where hibernation will allow your system to return to a fully working state after removing power whereas standby requires power to still be supplied to your system. Laptops for example you'll want to hibernate to avoid discharging the battery while in sleep mode.
    Thanks for pointing both of these things out. You're absolutely correct about indexing.

    I've updated the story for the author to reflect hibernation as well. I added clarification re: desktops and notebooks, though I'd suggest powering down a notebook with an SSD is comparable to putting it into hibernation. I don't think anyone would recommend putting it into standby; as you mention, that continues to drain power.

    All the best!
    Chris
    Reply
  • damric 09 June 2011 15:29
    Why are they testing last generation Sandforce and Intel SSD's?

    SSD's are changing faster than any other computer technology. The current generation SSD's are already twice as fast as the SSD's tested in this article. Tom's Hardware is being left behind in the dust with reviews like this.
    Reply
  • HalfHuman 09 June 2011 16:57
    the article is very useful.
    disabling system rstore is usually a good idea, sometimes it's better to just limit it's size form the 10% default value.
    swap disabling is not a good idea, as you said. i'd rather have the swap on a secondary, mechanical drive.
    indexing is very useful. you can relocate the address to where indexing data is stored. i put it on a mechanical drive.
    disabling superfetch and turbo cache are really useful. ssd may be faster than hdd, but they are weak compared to ram speed. read caching really makes a difference.
    hibernation file is not really useful on a desktop but it's a matter of taste. better have it on a mechanical drive if possible
    another thing that really helps is putting firefox profiles on a ram drive. i develop on visual studio and there is a directory where lots of small files are written on build. having this temp folder on a ramdrive helps a lot regarding speed and writes as well.
    Reply
  • HalfHuman 09 June 2011 17:00
    oops... i meant having windows superfect and turbo cache (not sure about actual names) active is really useful. the memory that is occupied by caching gets liberated quickly if it's needed by apps. in the mean time it can really help on read caching.
    Reply
  • ravewulf 09 June 2011 17:20
    None of my controllers mention AHCI, but my motherboard is set to use AHCI. I do see "AMD SATA Controller," is that it? I also don't see any ATA Channels as in the screen shot, just two IDE channels with no devices on them. I don't have an SSD, so no need for TRIM, but I would like to verify that I'm using AHCI.
    Reply
  • nyrychvantel 09 June 2011 18:22
    This article is excellent for those SSD users who have just installed/reinstalled their OS. I will also forward this article to all my friends using SSD.
    Reply
  • haplo602 09 June 2011 19:46
    who came up with that idiot description of hibernation ? it was invented to:

    1. save power
    2. restore the previous work withou having to start everything

    I use hibernation a lot on my desktop just because I can leave all the network independent applications running and just power down. after power up, I am in the previous environment state and can immediately continue whatever I was doing before. No need to start applications and reopen saved files.
    Reply