Is this typical for an X25-M G2? (questions about used performance, TRIM)

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Sabrewulf165

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First shot is after a secure erase with HDDErase 4.0:

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Second shot is after installing Windows 7 Ultimate x64 (RTM) on a 30GB partition and ~30GB worth of games on a secondary partition:

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I'm using AHCI mode and the generic MS AHCI driver - does anyone know if TRIM is enabled yet in these drives, or if there's any way to check if it's active?

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hmm... weird. your access times went up, but the transfer rates went down. i don't "think" that's suppose to be happening since there are no platters or spindles to change the access time/transfer rates
 
Install Intel Storage Matrix Manager and rerun that HD Tune 3.5 to see if your random IOPS goes back up to the 180+ range. That should be your 1st priority.
 
astrallite said:
Install Intel Storage Matrix Manager and rerun that HD Tune 3.5 to see if your random IOPS goes back up to the 180+ range. That should be your 1st priority.
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It did, thanks for the tip. Restored random IOPS to 400+ and eliminated extreme outliers (1-3 seconds) Performance on all others remained about the same though. I'm guessing this is just typical of a disk that's 2/3 full?
 
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You reached steady state performance where all the data has been written over and this reduces overall performance because now data has to be deleted before new data can be flashed. The G1's had a built-in algorithm that provided a TRIM-like result. The G2s have nothing until a firmware update provides TRIM support for Windows 7. Until then (or if you don't have Windows 7 and don't plan to), the G1s have better steady state performance than the G2s.
 
Don't partition the SSD drive. The larger the area the information is spread over the longer the SSD will last. The wear leveling algorithm will have a larger space to spread information and fewer of the same blocks will be written too over and over. Also, I believe the G2 drives have the same updated firmware as the G1 drives so they will slowley bring themselves back up to speed over time. Just look up some of the reviews on the G2.
 
Blk02 said:
Don't partition the SSD drive. The larger the area the information is spread over the longer the SSD will last. The wear leveling algorithm will have a larger space to spread information and fewer of the same blocks will be written too over and over. Also, I believe the G2 drives have the same updated firmware as the G1 drives so they will slowley bring themselves back up to speed over time. Just look up some of the reviews on the G2.
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Partitioning the drive has no effect on which cells data is actually written to, the drive itself controls that, and distributes it evenly per the wear-leveling algorithms you mentioned.
 
The issue is not the partitioning itself but how much of the space in that partition you are using up. Just as with conventional drives you should not fill up the partition with data. There should be some blank space. If you take the data below into account you have around 7% spare room built into your SSD that you cannot access. It is reserved for the SSD's internal operations. If you heed their suggestions then you should have 30%-7% = 23% free space on each of your partitions or the total drive if no partitions. 80GB x 23% = 18.4GB of blank space for optimum operation on a drive with no partitions (ie a write amplification of 1). See Below

http://anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631&p=8

"A used SSD will only have its spare area to use as a scratch pad for moving data around; on most consumer drives that’s around 7%. Take a look at this graph from a study IBM did on SSD performance:

||||Chart||||

Write Amplification vs. Spare Area, courtesy of IBM Zurich Research Laboratory

Note how dramatically write amplification goes down when you increase the percentage of spare area the drive has. In order to get down to a write amplification factor of 1 our spare area needs to be somewhere in the 10 - 30% range, depending on how much of the data on our drive is static."
 
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Blk02 said:
The issue is not the partitioning itself but how much of the space in that partition you are using up. Just as with conventional drives you should not fill up the partition with data. There should be some blank space.
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I have a 30 GB partition with 12 free, and a 44 GB partition with 16 free. Not that it matters. You still fail to grasp how wear-leveling on SSDs work, but thanks for your concern.

Here is a quote: http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showpost.php?p=429478&postcount=3

Wear leveling works at a layer above the partitions. How a drive is partitioned has nothing to do with wear leveling.
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Ok, as I said before the fact that you partitioned the drive has nothing to do with this. The concern and only concern is performance and for maximum performance (take the high side) 23% free space is suggested. This will keep your write amplification at or near 1. I do not care how wear-leveling works because that is not what I am talking about hear.
 
Blk02 said:
Ok, as I said before the fact that you partitioned the drive has nothing to do with this. The concern and only concern is performance and for maximum performance (take the high side) 23% free space is suggested. This will keep your write amplification at or near 1. I do not care how wear-leveling works because that is not what I am talking about hear.
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Fair enough. And my drive has 28% free space. So I'm still not sure what you're getting at. Where the data is written on an SSD has nothing to do with how the drive is partitioned.
 
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Ok, I said don't partition the drive because you said you were going for 2/3 or so full with static data. Partitioning a drive is completely fine as long as you leave some blank space as suggested. Once TRIM is fully implemented this will no longer be a concern because of the statement below.

Same Source:

"What TRIM does is help give well architected controllers like that in the X25-M more spare area. Space you’re not using on the drive, space that has been TRIMed, can now be used in the pool of replacement blocks. And as IBM’s study shows, that can go a long way to improving performance depending on your workload."
 
Blk02 said:
Ok, I said don't partition the drive because you said you were going for 2/3 or so full with static data. Partitioning a drive is completely fine as long as you leave some blank space as suggested. Once TRIM is fully implemented this will no longer be a concern because of the statement below.

Same Source:

"What TRIM does is help give well architected controllers like that in the X25-M more spare area. Space you’re not using on the drive, space that has been TRIMed, can now be used in the pool of replacement blocks. And as IBM’s study shows, that can go a long way to improving performance depending on your workload."
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Yeah, and I'm looking forward to TRIM being enabled soon, but I don't recall saying I was aiming for 1/3 free space. It's more coincidence than anything that that's how much I ended up with. 7 Ultimate x64 RTM + all my software + the few games I play = ~45-50 GB.

For what it's worth, the thing still feels nice and fast, I just wondered if the results I posted were typical for other X25 owners.
 
Sabrewulf165 said:
Fair enough. And my drive has 28% free space. So I'm still not sure what you're getting at. Where the data is written on an SSD has nothing to do with how the drive is partitioned.
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I dont have time to look this one up, but I assume that the SSD will not take extra scratch area from partition A in order to give it to partition B once partition B reaches a full static state. The 7% of extra free space that is not visible on the drive will be used however the controller sees fit but beyond that it would be better to leave the extra space on each partition as suggested.
 
So I guess it's a good idea to partition the drive to specifically make the total partitioned size (regardless of number of partitions) say, around 75% of total drive capacity (leaving 25% unallocated drive space that you couldn't access even if you wanted to).
 
Blk02 said:
I dont have time to look this one up, but I assume that the SSD will not take extra scratch area from partition A in order to give it to partition B once partition B reaches a full static state. The 7% of extra free space that is not visible on the drive will be used however the controller sees fit but beyond that it would be better to leave the extra space on each partition as suggested.
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AFAIK the wear-leveling firmware doesn't care where unused blocks are located (i.e partitioning is irrelevant)... just as long as the blocks are unused.
 
I think the spare area you have should work well as long as it does not fill up any further. I did this study on my data usage before I bought and I ended up with the 160GB Intel drive. I will try and get some SSD scores on my drive to see if what IBM says holds up with the new Intel firmware (well, old now I guess)
 
Blk02 said:
I dont have time to look this one up, but I assume that the SSD will not take extra scratch area from partition A in order to give it to partition B once partition B reaches a full static state. The 7% of extra free space that is not visible on the drive will be used however the controller sees fit but beyond that it would be better to leave the extra space on each partition as suggested.
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I'm fairly certain that all space on the drive is used however the firmware sees fit, and that partitioning of the drive has zero effect on this process. But I'm open to being shown otherwise. I agree that filling the SSD to the brim would likely hamper performance - I think this is generally accepted as truth these days - but the same can be said of any hard drive.
 
Grimgor said:
So I guess it's a good idea to partition the drive to specifically make the total partitioned size (regardless of number of partitions) say, around 75% of total drive capacity (leaving 25% unallocated drive space that you couldn't access even if you wanted to).
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No, I would not go that far I would just take into account your data usage patterns and plan accordingly. Hopefully TRIM will be implemented in short order once the official W7 release happens and all this stuff wont be as much of a concern.
 
Christ, and I remember when I upgraded my WD 40MB (yes, that's right, megabyte) HDD to a 120MB, back in what, 92-ish, and thought to myself, "fuuuuck what am I going to do with all that space!?", and soon 120MB was simply not big enough.

It's funny how technology advances but still makes the ownership experience wheel turn 360'. Those were the days of disk compression utilities and the eternal quest for disk space. SSD's have made us return to those days, which is a bit odd considering we've been spoilt by massive, cheap storage over the years.

But watch this space - just as HDD tech has made enormous leaps and bounds (to the extent that SSDs aren't necessarily such a total quantum leap in performance), so SSD performance and longevity will improve by leaps and bounds as the tech matures.

In five years, SSDs are going to be AWESOME, and the only way to fly. The conventional HDD is going to be a relic. Then we can all get together with our stacks of conventional HDDs, and recompense all those years of wasted milliseconds, with some sledgehammers! Or high-calibre rifles :D
 
I have been wonding about a question that I have been unable to locate the answer to. I currently am running Vist64 on my Intel SSD, as soon as W7 ships to me, I will be reinstalling it on the drive. Currently I do not have TRIM support on the drive, my question is, Once TRIM becomes available will it restore (lost) performance even thought the current configuration has no support for it?

Another example would be..
Lets say friend has been using an intel g2 ssd for 3 months on Windows XP and has filled the drive multiple times, thus reducing performance by some... If I were then to purchase that drive from Him and install W7 with TRIM support, would I recovery the lost performance, and if so would I then be able to run Windows XP or Vista on it with recovered performance?

Just trying to wrap my head around TRIM and SSD's.
 
ShiShKaBoB said:
I have been wonding about a question that I have been unable to locate the answer to. I currently am running Vist64 on my Intel SSD, as soon as W7 ships to me, I will be reinstalling it on the drive. Currently I do not have TRIM support on the drive, my question is, Once TRIM becomes available will it restore (lost) performance even thought the current configuration has no support for it?

Another example would be..
Lets say friend has been using an intel g2 ssd for 3 months on Windows XP and has filled the drive multiple times, thus reducing performance by some... If I were then to purchase that drive from Him and install W7 with TRIM support, would I recovery the lost performance, and if so would I then be able to run Windows XP or Vista on it with recovered performance?

Just trying to wrap my head around TRIM and SSD's.
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You could always do a secure erase on the drive using hdderase as per some of anandtech's articles. Will restore the drive to "like new" performance.

TRIM will probably restore performance as dirty cells are TRIMed, but I would think it'd be a more gradual process, not instant. It would take a bit of use before the drive would be TRIMed back to optimal performance.
 
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