Are you satisfy with your Generation 2 SSD after 1+ yr. usage?

[Happy Hopping]

Quick survey: For those who are using G2 SSD for more than 1 yr., w/ Trim in place, are you happy w/ your SSD performance?

Is there anything you are not happy about it?

Are you constantly worrying about write cycle?

Do you re-format your SSD to re-gain performance?

 

[drescherjm]

Are you constantly worrying about write cycle?

Not at all. I rarely write 20 GB in a day. Intel specifies that I can do that 7 days a week every single day for 5 years.

Is there anything you are not happy about it?

80GB is too small for me to put my OS + a VM.

 

[Damar]

Oh hell yes.

Even after the abuse I've put the thing through it's still remarkably faster than my old HD's were at their best, even without running TRIM as often as I should.

The only things slowing my PC down now are the HD's that I use for my libraries and such, but everything else just screams along.

 

[Lateralus]

Hasn't been a year for me yet, but I'm still extremely satisfied and I don't expect that to change any time soon. Like Limahl said, the lack of immediate response is glaringly noticeable when accessing my spinning disks. I would LOVE to have a 1-2TB SSD for under $400, even if it wasn't the fastest thing on the block.

 

[tronmaster]

Yes, except for one thing, the 80GB is to darn small. I put the "non" essential programs on drive D, and I got like 13GB left. I wish I had the money to purchase the 160GB, will wait till next year to upgrade to maybe a 240GB?

 

[MaxBurn]

Quick survey: For those who are using G2 SSD for more than 1 yr., w/ Trim in place, are you happy w/ your SSD performance?

Hells yes.

Is there anything you are not happy about it?

Wish it were bigger.

Are you constantly worrying about write cycle?

No way, mine hasne budged off of 99 yet.

Do you re-format your SSD to re-gain performance?

No, you only really do that for software reasons IMO...

 

[Surly73]

I voted "neutral" and I'm explaining:

I've only been using mine 6 months, but it's working flawlessly with no degradation. Basic Win7 install, AHCI mode on ICH8R w/latest drivers, no additional tweaking, hiberfile and pagefile still on the SSD. Occasionally I run the Intel optimization tool but it always simply returns green within a couple of seconds - I don't think it's really done much.

No reformats, no defrags, no change in computer usage behaviour, no problems, great results.

 

[Happy Hopping]

I can see every1 who go w/ SSD are all using Win 7

 

[drescherjm]

I am not. I am using 64 bit gentoo linux.

 

[MaxBurn]

Occasionally I run the Intel optimization tool but it always simply returns green within a couple of seconds - I don't think it's really done much.

It isn't, because your setup is working right and it is doing trim on the fly like it should. You don't have to run the toolbox at all when things work automatically.

 

[chrono03]

have a g2 intel drive... love it as much as the day I bought it.

 

[Computurd]

it has revolutionize my personal computing experience. i wouldnt trade it for anything in the world.

 

[Surly73]

It isn't, because your setup is working right and it is doing trim on the fly like it should. You don't have to run the toolbox at all when things work automatically.

I've seen intel comment that even if TRIM is working you should still run the tool. I am guessing at this but I feel that eventually it will start moving highly static data around the disk to improve wear leveling. It is a wear leveling problem to have some Windows files which are read only and haven't changed for a very long time using memory blocks that have only been ever written that one time while other areas are changing rapidly. It would be in the best interest of device longevity to EVENTUALLY do something like a defrag to move the oldest, stalest files around and free up that freshest memory for higher activity use.

The tool says that while it's running, the free space on the drive may appear to drop to 1GB. That kind of thing isn't necessary to be doing a manual TRIM. This is the kind of thing which you'd see if it was moving data.

If the tool does NOT do this, it may actually be a good thing to do some sort of defrag operation on an SSD once or twice per year. Of course even in doing that it doesn't mean that it will move your oldest files since they probably aren't fragmented anyways.

I can't confirm it does this, we'll see if my tool starts doing something some time soon. ONE time it took a little while to return, but usually it is immediate.

 

[Kwisatz Haderach]

I have been using mine for almost a year, and it still does great. My only complaint is Corsair could not bring a stable bios installer out to get trim on my X64 drive. I really don't want to have to send it out for 10-14 days to get trim working.

 

[Old Hippie]

I'm in RAID0 with no TRIM but i'm satsified.

 

[Surly73]

I'm in RAID0 with no TRIM but i'm satsified.

I thought it was degraded, "long in the tooth" and you were jumping to something else?

 

[Lateralus]

I've seen intel comment that even if TRIM is working you should still run the tool. I am guessing at this but I feel that eventually it will start moving highly static data around the disk to improve wear leveling. It is a wear leveling problem to have some Windows files which are read only and haven't changed for a very long time using memory blocks that have only been ever written that one time while other areas are changing rapidly. It would be in the best interest of device longevity to EVENTUALLY do something like a defrag to move the oldest, stalest files around and free up that freshest memory for higher activity use.

The tool says that while it's running, the free space on the drive may appear to drop to 1GB. That kind of thing isn't necessary to be doing a manual TRIM. This is the kind of thing which you'd see if it was moving data.

If the tool does NOT do this, it may actually be a good thing to do some sort of defrag operation on an SSD once or twice per year. Of course even in doing that it doesn't mean that it will move your oldest files since they probably aren't fragmented anyways.

I can't confirm it does this, we'll see if my tool starts doing something some time soon. ONE time it took a little while to return, but usually it is immediate.

I wish sub.mesa would step in here as he knows a lot more about this stuff than I do, but I was under the impression that the SSD controller takes care of wear leveling without any user intervention. I thought it made sure all cells are written to evenly so as not to wear out one part of the drive before another. In other words, let's say you never fill your drive more than 60% full but you do install and uninstall programs and use the drive. If I understand correctly, it's not as if that last 40% is untouched; when new writes are performed, they are written to older cells first in order to make sure cells are wearing at an even rate, no matter what it looks like to the OS (the controller keeps track of this in its tables). Since drive performance remains constant across the whole drive, there is no gain to be had by keeping all of the data at the "beginning" of the drive like you would with a spinning disk.

Now, if you simply filled the drive up to a certain point and left the data static, I'm not sure if the controller would move the data around in that scenario. But rather than defragging the drive, I'd probably run one of those apps that fills the drive's remaining free space and then deletes the newly-written data (or one that writes 0s). Just seems more thorough than a defrag to me.

 

[Makaveli@BETA]

Glad I purchased it and more specifically the 160GB model. Most of my friends were like just get the 80GB model don't spend $500 on the 160GB but at the end of the day I get the last laugh cause right now most of them are running into space issues and constantly having to move stuff on and off the SSD and i've yet to hit 50% used space on mine.

Would I purchase again in a heartbeat! Besides going to an i7 this was the best upgrade I ever did for my pc.

 

[jamesrb]

I got the 80GB and would do it again a year ago.

With the year of experience I have learned that 80GB is not enough. It is passable, but uncomfortable most of the time. At this point in time, I no longer recommend the Intel drives. I have been recommending the RealSSD C300 due to its better performance and would buy the 128GB version myself. This will probably change with the rumored Intel G3 drives this fall/winter.

 

[Surly73]

I wish sub.mesa would step in here as he knows a lot more about this stuff than I do, but I was under the impression that the SSD controller takes care of wear leveling without any user intervention. I thought it made sure all cells are written to evenly so as not to wear out one part of the drive before another. In other words, let's say you never fill your drive more than 60% full but you do install and uninstall programs and use the drive. If I understand correctly, it's not as if that last 40% is untouched; when new writes are performed, they are written to older cells first in order to make sure cells are wearing at an even rate, no matter what it looks like to the OS (the controller keeps track of this in its tables). Since drive performance remains constant across the whole drive, there is no gain to be had by keeping all of the data at the "beginning" of the drive like you would with a spinning disk.

sub.mesa is starting to chime in to other threads.

It's true that FLASH controllers do wear leveling on write and always have (including FLASH used in portable devices for 10 years). What the built in controller does NOT do, AFAIK, is actively move "stale" data around the disk to free those cells for more dynamic use. This has nothing to do with "reserved area", or "unused space".

Say, for instance, your SSD is in a linux system. Your /boot/ partition and pretty much all of /usr/bin may be completely untouched for a year. The way I understand it standard built-in controller wear-leveling is not going to start shuffling those dormant/stagnant files to other areas of the array to allow those nearly new cells (only written once) to be used for more active duty.

A filesystem aware utility such as the Intel optimization tool, however, can understand those factors and move stale data around the drive to further improve wear leveling across the entire device. I believe this kind of functionality is why Intel says that your device free space may appear to drop to 1GB while the tool is running - this is if it's moving all kinds of content around the device. In 6 months of typical system use on my 80GB X-25M I haven't seen the optimization tool do anything this substantial, however. Of course when completed the changes could be made in the sector maps inside the device (sorry I don't know all of the proper names) and the filesystem may never even know the data was moved on the physical device.

Now, if you simply filled the drive up to a certain point and left the data static, I'm not sure if the controller would move the data around in that scenario. But rather than defragging the drive, I'd probably run one of those apps that fills the drive's remaining free space and then deletes the newly-written data (or one that writes 0s). Just seems more thorough than a defrag to me.

I don't think your drive filling proposal would move the static data at all. You just used and freed the remaining free space? How does that move the old data around the array?

 

[Lateralus]

I got the 80GB and would do it again a year ago.

With the year of experience I have learned that 80GB is not enough.

For you.

Remember, everyone's install will be different. Some run barebones Windows + apps while others have Visual Studio, SQL Server, Office, Photoshop, etc...big space hogs and basically everything but the kitchen sink.

I'm actually kind of second-guessing the fact that I bought my 160GB drive because to be honest, 80GB was plenty. I had Win 7 Pro along with a bunch of regular and portable apps on there and usually stayed at about 58GB free out of 74.5GB. Even that would have been plenty of room for a VM and a couple of my most-played games, but I never did put any games on the SSD since load times weren't a big problem. VMs on the SSD are certainly nice, though.

The C300 at its current price is certainly appealing, though. I definitely want to see what the Intel G3 drives deliver in terms of performance, and by then the C300 will have a longer track record (and hopefully a lower price). Win-win!

 

[drescherjm]

Remember, everyone's install will be different. Some run barebones Windows + apps while others have Visual Studio, SQL Server, Office, Photoshop, etc...big space hogs and basically everything but the kitchen sink.

My build folder under visual studio at work is over 100GB and that is just code (4 to 5 million lines) and the generated executables in Debug and RelWithDebInfo mode for a combination of 32 bit and 64 bit builds..

 

[Michaelius]

I'm very happy with my 80 gb intel in subnotebook.

But as for desktop i wish i had cash to buy pair of 256gb drives to put all my games there.

 

[Lateralus]

My build folder under visual studio at work is over 100GB and that is just code (4 to 5 million lines) and the generated executables in Debug and RelWithDebInfo mode for a combination of 32 bit and 64 bit builds..

..which is why I said everyone's needs will vary. My point was that you can't just make a blanket statement that "80GB is not enough" because for some people it is. Heck, I scoffed at the idea of using a 30GB Vertex for a boot drive but in reality it would have been plenty for me. I got the 80GB Intel to have some breathing room. The 160GB for me is honestly overkill unless I want to start dumping games and VMs on there...so as much as I'd like to have a 256GB C300 for bragging rights, I'll probably end up with the 128GB version if I upgrade at all.

 

[Metaluna]

It isn't, because your setup is working right and it is doing trim on the fly like it should. You don't have to run the toolbox at all when things work automatically.

Still, it's probably not a bad idea to run it occasionally, just as people run chkdsk or fsck periodically even if nothing bad has happened (like a bad shutdown). We don't really know how good the various TRIM implementations are. There could be some obscure bug that causes things to not be TRIM'ed properly sometimes, for example.