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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.

Test Setup And Method

System Hardware
Hardware Details
CPUIntel Core i7-920 (Bloomfield), 45 nm, 3.2 GHz, 8 MB L3 Cache
Motherboard (LGA 1366)EVGA 132-BL-E758-TR, Intel X58 Express/ICH10R, BIOS: 6.00 PG
SATA DriverIntel Rapid Storage Technology Driver 10.​​1.​​0.​​1008
RAM6 GB (3x2GB) DDR3-1600 OCZ Platinum (OCZ3P1600LV6GK)
HDDSamsung Spinpoint F3 1 TB (103SJ), Firmware 1AJ10001
SSD Test Drive 1Intel X25-M G2 80 GB (SSDSA2M080G2GC), Firmware 2CV102M3
SSD Test Drive 2OCZ Vertex 2 240 GB (P75HAVO6H3N8E278), Firmware 1.29
Graphics CardEVGA SuperClocked 01G-P3-1563-AR GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 1 GB 256-bit GDDR5 (SLI)
Power SupplyCorsair CMPSU-850TX
Benchmarks
Performance MeasurementsCrystalMarkDisk 3.0 x64
PCMark Vantage 1.0.2.0
I/O PerformanceIOMeter 2008.08.18
Fileserver-Benchmark
Webserver-Benchmark
Database-Benchmark
Workstation-Benchmark
Streaming Reads
Streaming Writes
4k Random Reads
4k Random Writes
System Software & Drivers
Operating SystemWindows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit

The test system is configured in much the same way an average enthusiast would set up his machine. It's a great example of tiered storage, with the SSD hosting our operating system and a handful of widely used application. Games, user folders, and all other files are held on the storage drive.

For the purposes of testing, we Secure Erased each SSD before installing Windows 7. Each benchmark was conducted from within the OS with two days between each test to prevent issues with drive throttling, seen mainly with the SandForce SF-1200 drives. More details on that phenomenon can be found on OCZ's own forum in this thread: Understanding SF1200 drives, TRIM, OP area use and Life write throttle.

Additionally, we partitioned our OCZ Vertex 2 drive down to 74.4 GB to equal storage capacity of Intel's second-gen X25-M, and to increase the overprovisioning on the OCZ Vertex 2 drive. To be clear, our goal isn't to compare Intel against OCZ so much as we want to measure speed/space before and after some of these popularly-discussed tweaks.

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