Need advice on SSDs and on speeding my computer up in general

[Pib]

That occurred due to the way you installed Win 7. You sure you didn't select the Upgrade option when doing the install...that happened to me once. And it will also occur if you don't do a new format before doing the clean install like the link you provided mentions. You should be able to delete the Windows.old folder if everything is operating OK.

Edited February 24, 2014 by Pib

[astral]

Following the discussion here I realised that my laptop hard disk was failing fast

Having read this topic I purchased the 1Tb Seagate hybrid drive and installed it today

The performance improvement is amazing, especially at boot time

[Pib]

Following the discussion here I realised that my laptop hard disk was failing fast

Having read this topic I purchased the 1Tb Seagate hybrid drive and installed it today

The performance improvement is amazing, especially at boot time

astral,

Awesome. Can you please give more specifics comparison-wise as the the speed improvement. Like a brief description of your current system (hardware and OS), boot-time speeds before and after, certain programs speeds before and after, etc. I realize you may not have done specific measurements before switching drives so estimates would be fine.

I'm thinking about buying a Seagate SSHD 1TB also...that's why I mentioned it in several of my earlier posts. I thinking about buying one for my almost 8 year old Toshiba Pentium Core Duo, Windows 7 laptop and maybe even for my couple of months old Lenovo I7 (quad core), Win 8.1 laptop. Currently the Lenovo boots really fast already like only 16 to 21 seconds to the Start screen and all programs load/respond really fast. However the Toshiba takes about 65 seconds to reach the Desktop screen.

Preaching to the choir I'm sure that a SSD would be faster than a SSHD (benchmarks for sure but I don't know how much perceived/real world improvement would occur) but a 1TB SSD would cost an arm and leg, and since I want to put the drive into a laptop that gets moved around a lot and fill it up with programs, a SSHD is a better fit for me right now.

Thanks in advance for any specific speed comparisons you can give to give me a better understand what "the performance improvement is amazing" really means in your situation.

[phazey]

FWIW I used to have a little 32GB SSD in my desktop machine. I found some real nice caching software called PrimoCache that essentially turned it into a real nice and nippy hybrid. It worked very well so i thought i'd share it here.

Not affiliated, just a fan.

[klikster]

I got one of those hybrid drives about 5 years ago, pretty fast and still going strong. I put it in wife's cheapie computer and it booted W7 in about 15 - 20 seconds. Because I installed in the old machine it won't boot on my shiny new MB. Because of some important files I haven't re-formatted.

As soon as the newer version of Windows (W9?) arrives I'm going to build a new system, but will use a smaller form factor case and 7200 RPM, 1T desktop version. For me, the issues (price, rewrite) with pure SSD's make me want to stay away for awhile longer.

[Guest]

How large is the SSD part of the 1TB hybrid drive?

Does the hybrid drive show as two separate disks so that I could myself define which stuff will be on SSD part and which is on the HDD part?

[Pib]

How large is the SSD part of the 1TB hybrid drive?

Does the hybrid drive show as two separate disks so that I could myself define which stuff will be on SSD part and which is on the HDD part?

See this previous post for details: Link

But the short answers to your questions are: 8GB and No.

[Guest]

See this previous post for details: Link

But the short answers to your questions are: 8GB and No.

Thanks.

[astral]

The Seagate ST1000LM014 has 1000Gb of real disk and 6Gb of SSD

Cost $175 as opposed to $1000 for 1Tb SSD

It shows as one disk and there is no control

Seagate Adaptive Memory^™ technology effectively identifies the most frequently used data in your computer.

This data is stored in the ultra-fast NAND flash memory, which results in blazing fast boot times,

and a super responsive experience where you wait less and do more.

This technology is constantly working and adapting to way you work and access information.

I did not take any specific measurements, but i used to wait for ever for boot to settle

I know I have too many little apps loaded at boot time

I would guess the boot time has been halved

General response is much better and makes me painfully aware of how slow my internet is,

mainly waiting time......

[Pib]

The Seagate ST1000LM014 has 1000Gb of real disk and 6Gb of SSD

Cost $175 as opposed to $1000 for 1Tb SSD

It shows as one disk and there is no control

Seagate Adaptive Memory^™ technology effectively identifies the most frequently used data in your computer.

This data is stored in the ultra-fast NAND flash memory, which results in blazing fast boot times,

and a super responsive experience where you wait less and do more.

This technology is constantly working and adapting to way you work and access information.

I did not take any specific measurements, but i used to wait for ever for boot to settle

I know I have too many little apps loaded at boot time

I would guess the boot time has been halved

General response is much better and makes me painfully aware of how slow my internet is,

mainly waiting time......

Thanks.

Regarding the SSD size, it's 8 GigaBytes not 6 GigaBits. You are probably confusing the drive's SATA 3 / 6Gb interface speed with the 8GB NAND which is the SSD.

[Pib]

A nice 1.5 minute youtube clip on comparing a SSD, SSHD and 7200RPM HDD in booting, loading apps, etc...with a chart at the very end.

[Guest]

I might be too much of an control freak, but I just need to be able to define and optimize myself where I put data and storage.

WD Black2 Dual Drive with 120GB SSD and 1TB HDD could be the answer. The SSD size is good, but I could live with less HDD storage (and less speed on it). http://www.amazon.com/Black2-Dual-Drive-2-5-WD1001X06XDTL/dp/B00GSJ9X4Q

I'm currently using 120GB Intel SSD and could enjoy if the size would be double.

What amazed me the most was the speed to install OS to the SSD. It took just few minutes to have full Kubuntu installation up and running when installing from memory stick. If I had know how fast it was, I would have timed the operation.

Edited March 7, 2014 by Guest

[Pib]

I might be too much of an control freak, but I just need to be able to define and optimize myself where I put data and storage.

WD Black2 Dual Drive with 120GB SSD and 1TB HDD could be the answer. The SSD size is good, but I could live with less HDD storage (and less speed on it). http://www.amazon.com/Black2-Dual-Drive-2-5-WD1001X06XDTL/dp/B00GSJ9X4Q

I'm currently using 120GB Intel SSD and could enjoy if the size would be double.

What amazed me the most was the speed to install OS to the SSD. It took just few minutes to have full Kubuntu installation up and running when installing from memory stick. If I had know how fast it was, I would have timed the operation.

Well, you can still do that by partitioning the drive....put your OS on C partition and data on D partition just for example. However, the Seagate SSHD "adpative memory" will determine what gets cached on the SSD based on what files you most frequently use...no use to cache files that rarely get used.

And an important point to remember is the files are "cached/mirrored" on the SDD but also exist on the HDD...they are in two locations but being pulled from the SSD portion...files in both location remain identiical/udpated together. If certain files stop getting used frequently they will fall out of the SSD cache but they still exist on the HDD. Think of the SSD portion as just a really big hard drive cache which is normally only in the lower MB's plus the SSD remembers the files stored when turned off where the HD's few MBs of cache don't.

The WD Black2 Dual Drive is completely different from a Seagate SSHD. The WD Black2 is truly two separate drives and pricey. A person should also note these type of true dual drives have made very little penetration into the market because of cost and other issues.

Edited March 7, 2014 by Pib

[Guest]

The WD Black2 Dual Drive is completely different from a Seagate SSHD. The WD Black2 is truly two separate drives and pricey. A person should also note these type of true dual drives have made very little penetration into the market because of cost and other issues.

Yes those are different things. For my usage Dual disk drive (I did not even knew the correct term before) is the one I'm more interested of.

The ability to define what goes where come handy if I wish run apache, databases etc on my laptop. Some of these services can benefit of the SSD speed, while some data is rarely accessed and can be "forever" on the HDD side.

This seems to be a very good simple graph to show the difference between these who type of hybrid drives.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_drive

Personally I would put all the OS stuff (including databases and servers) on SSD along with current year photos and videos. The rest, which is less often accessed could locate on the HDD side.

On linux with symbolic links it's easy to define some files and directories to locate on physically different disk (or behind network), even if the directory structure seemingly looks like everything is in one place.

Edited March 7, 2014 by Guest
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[astral]

My friend seems to have the SSHD approach, labelled as Hitachi

It would be interesting to see a direct comparison between the two methods, from an independent source.........

Both seem to be outside the control of the user.

The pure SSD approach is attractive, but far too costly at this time

Next time round, maybe...............

[Pib]

Don't try to over-complicate a SSHD....it really nothing more than using NAND memory (like 8GB worth in Seagate's SSHD) to greatly supplement the drive's DRAM cache size (which is normally only around 8MB) along with special programming (i.e., adaptive memory) to ensure the most used files/data are mirrored in the NAND memory.

Now the NAND and DRAM caches are different, just like the multiple levels of cache built into today CPUs, but the NAND and DRAM are both still just performing a cache function for faster data access by mirroring other files/data maintained on the HDD/spinning platter(s). And since NAND memory contents are retained even when the computer is turned off unlike DRAM memory, the frequently used files/data remain in memory....like frequently used Windows OS files or just whatever the SSHD adaptive memory determines should be in the NAND memory based on how you use your computer. We all known for a long time that "caching" something speeds-up operations.

[astral]

Perhaps this is "more" intelligent than normal caching?

Time will tell

Startup is the main time I notice the difference.

[Pib]

I expect it's much more intellegent. When it comes to the 8-128MB of cache (buffer) on a typical hard drive that is partially nothing in comparison to a SSHD or SSD drive which will have 8GB to 1TB of NAND memory. While the small amount of buffer on a hard drive helps speeds things up it really only kinda good for small files and as mentioned before it forgets/must start all over everytime you turn the computer off. Heck, the paging file (swap file) that Windows sets up in the 1-2GB range will be caching a lot more data than the few MB's buffer on a standard hard drive.

[deepcell]

I have one machine with a 32gb SSD, 4gb memory, processor core i7 and no HDD at all. I have only 1tb external HD to save all my data. The performance is really good with this configuration.

Do you work with video / images editing ? If yes, then is good to have 16gb of memory otherwise you will never use all this memory.

[NanLaew]

I purchased the Seagate 1Gb SSHD for my ASUS laptop in the UK last month and did a disk clone using Easeus software after I got back here. The old HD was 500Gb and it took the best part of 6 hours to complete the cloning. The first few times, I never noticed any appreciable difference in boot and access times but I have been pounding on this i5 machine for the last 5 days and it is markedly faster than before. I have a C (boot/os/progs) partition of 105Gb and (most of) the rest is 800Gb D partition of workspace, apart from the small, hidden recovery partition.

Very impressed and cost me £75 on amazon which is about 4000 baht. What do they cost over here?

Edited March 15, 2014 by NanLaew

[computerguy]

Desktops are from 1990s. Get rid of it.

Edited March 19, 2014 by astral
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[Pib]

Now I don't have a desktop any more but they can be made to be faster and more capable than a laptop...and definitely more expandable and upgradeable (at a price)...heck you can even install a vehicle looking cooling system and neon lights...it's just they are basically a stationary machine. If I didn't need/want to be mobile with my primarily computer I would build a desktop.

Sent from my Samsung S4 (GT-I9500)

[JSixpack]

So, how long can you expect an SSD to last for you? Longevity depends on how much data you write, and the tune2fs utility makes it really easy to estimate that from your existing filesystems. Run tune2fs -l /dev/<device>. (Tip: if you're using LVM, the stats will be under the dm-X device instead of the sdaX device.) The key fields of interest are "Filesystem created" and "Lifetime writes". Use those to figure out the average GB/day since the filesystem was created. For my laptop, it was 2.7GB/day, and for my workstation it was 6.3GB/day. With those rates, plus a rough guess for write amplification, you can estimate how much life you'd get out of any SSD.

Est. Lifespan (y) = SSDCapacity(GB) * (WriteLimit based on cell type)
-------------------------------------------------
DailyWriteRate (GB/day) * WriteAmplification * 365 (days/yr)

So if I was sizing a 256GB Samsung 840 Evo (which uses TLC cells), with a 6.3GB/day write rate and a write amplification of 3, it should give me around 37 years of service before losing the ability to write new data.
--http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/solid-state-drives-get-one-already?page=0,1

Edited March 19, 2014 by astral
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[JetsetBkk]

<snip>

So if I was sizing a 256GB Samsung 840 Evo (which uses TLC cells), with a 6.3GB/day write rate and a write amplification of 3, it should give me around 37 years of service before losing the ability to write new data.

--http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/solid-state-drives-get-one-already?page=0,1[/indent]

That's the one I've got - a 250 GB Samsung 840 EVO.

Here it is:

It fits in nicely with my 19 TB of storage: