Another question about SSDs

I have read that defragging a solid state drive (SSD) is a very BAD idea, and will not only slow down the access speeds, but could potentially cause data loss or drive damage. I have also read that "Defragger Brand X" is optimized for use with SSDs, which kind of negates the thought that defragging a sold state drive is not a good idea. So what's up? Is defragging really a bad idea for a solid state drive? If so, why?

 

Defragging an SSD is a very bad idea, it will accelerate it's death.

Buy an SSD that supports the 'Trim' command, or at least, has some Garbage Collection firmware builtin.

SSD's access data so much faster than HDD's that defragging is pointless; SSD's have a limited 'write' cycle.

 

For this old tech, the SSD drive is just another 2.8meg floppy. Remember that one? (probably not)

Seagate has just come out with a new Hybrid drive that is basically a SATA drive with MUCHO ram, on-board.
MS said that they would not support a Hybrid drive, in it's original form, so Seagate built all the compatibility software/firmware into the drive itself.

They are bigger, faster and much cheaper than a SSD drive.
Anyone looking to improve their system performance should at least give the new Seagate Hybrid drive a look.

SATA 1 was a great improvement over IDE drives.
SATA 2 was twice as fast as SATA 1.
SATA 3 is twice as fast again, as SATA 2.

My next motherboard upgrade will be to a mobo that supports SATA 3.

I'll avoid the SSD drives, like the plague!

Defragging one? Forgetaboutit. They have a finite number of read/write operations before they shoot craps. (and, they're so darn expensive!)

Likewise, the USB Flash Drives.
If you're writing the "Great American Novel" don't trust a single Flash Drive for you backup. I put Nothing of any importance on a Flash Drive, that I don't have backed up to HD or DVD.

Just a thought.....

:cool

 

Ya, defragging a HDD is good for a bit of extra speed as the read head doesn't have to travel all over the place to retrieve a file. SSD's read things in like RAM. One thing I'm quite impressed with is an SSD's MTBF of 1M hrs!:eek

 

Just because no one has mentioned it yet: The reason you defrag an HDD is to put all the fragments of one file next to each other, so the read arm won't have to hop back and forth as much. Now it can read the file faster. Since an SSD has no moving part, not only is there no reason to defragment it, it won't make one iota of difference either. As far as reducing the drive's life span, yes you will, but when you have a drive that starts with 1 million hours MTBF, then reducing that by a few percent isn't going to be very noticeable. When your drive dies, it will be for other reasons than excessive defragging. I still wouldn't recommend doing it though, simply because it's a complete waste of time.

 

@ Shadow, 2.8MB floppies are old? Just older. 256KB floppies are old. Anyways, I'd trust an SSD over any HDD just because there are no moving parts like bearings to seize up or the devastating head crash. Also, since i bought mine 3 months ago, price/GB has come down quite a bit. They are on the cusp of being a popular choice for a desktop. Mind you I doubt we'll see a 2TB SSD at the same pricepoint as an HDD for quite a few years yet.

 

I wouldn't, for that exact reason. When an HDD begins to fail it's gradual, and you can tell that it's going bad from noises, stuttering, and various other symptoms. When an SSD begins to fail it dies in an instant. It can be working perfectly fine for weeks, and then one morning you boot your computer and the drive is gone. Gone from the OS, gone from the BIOS, and there's nothing you can do.

So I will always split it into SSDs for boot, and platters for storing any data I care about. Platter drives at least give you warning before they fail. SSDs blink and are gone.

 

Hmm, good point Mimsy but that's why backup to optical media will still be necessary until this tech is fleshed out. I arrange my drives the same way you do, OS and AV/FW on the SSD and the rest of the stuff on HDD's. However, I've had a HDD head crash with no warning either albeit some 6 years ago. It just died though the point is well taken.

LOL, you should have seen the swath of disc destruction that the heads did when I opened it up. Too bad I didn't take some pics of the platter condition.

 

I also put the games I play the most on the SSD... load times are so much nicer when they don't exist.

 

Someone posted a series of pictures, about a year ago, of a drive that had gone into "Shred" mode. It was painful to even look at. It gave a whole new meaning to the term, "hard drive crash".

I doubt I'll ever own a SSD drive. But a SATA 3 drive is a good possibility.
http://www.serialata.org/technology/6Gbdetails.asp

6 Meg/Sec data transfer rate is a quantum leap faster than what we had just a few years ago with the IDE/133 drives.

Most PC users still don't know or even want to know what the real bottleneck in Windows really is. Most of the sub-routines that Windows OS uses are in the Windows Kernel. And where is the Kernel? By default, windows keeps the Kernel file on the HD. So every time the OS needs another little sub-routine it has to go to the HD and access it there. That 'go-fetch-it' routine can happen thousands of times a day, on a computer under normal use. That's just one of the SAFE defaults built into Windows, so it will run on a PC with a very little ram. Similarly, the Pagefile, using hard drive space to supplement RAM.

But the MS engineers that wrote Windows, weren't completely daft. They programmed into the registry the ability to load the kernel into fast RAM on boot. Making the change from a slow PC to a much faster and more efficient PC is as simple as changing one little zero to a one in the registry.
The combination of 2 gig's or more of RAM Memory (up to three gig's) for Windows XP, a SATA 2 HD and the registry tweak, will give almost any PC a huge increase in performance.
Here's just one of hundreds of references to this, as listed on the internet.
http://www.recipester.org/Recipe:Place_windows_kernel_into_RAM_33510852

I've been doing this registry "Tweak" for about ten years now, on my own PC and for all my customers. It really does make a difference. At least 512 megs of RAM are required for this tweak.
Having a clean and defragged HD doesn't hurt either!

I actually do a lot more to get the "perfect running PC", but what I've mentioned here is a good place to start.

Cheers Mates!
The Shadow :cool

 

I've read your post several times along with some thinking time and all I can think of for an answer is...:-D