First of all, let me apologize for responding more to the general discussion
about SSD drives than the original poster's question. Like most folks here,
I'm still in the reading about it phase, instead of being an experienced
user when it comes to these drives.
For people who are interested in researching more about these new drives and
learning about their benefits, handicaps, and differences in the types of
drives out there (largely based on the controller they use), I highly
recommend reading what Anand Shimpi has written on them. He's been an early
adopter of these drives and is very excited about them, because they address
one of the biggest performance bottlenecks in modern computers, the
mechanical hard drive. His review of the Intel X25-M, back in September,
2008 introduced what makes these drives so exciting.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3403 This was followed up
by his "SSD Anthology" (March, 2009), which looked into some of the
performance issues with these drives (particularly, degradation of
performance after the drive had been used for a length of time) and compared
performance between Intel's product and some of its competitors, focusing on
the controllers being used.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=1 This overview has
been updated with his "SSD Relapse: Understanding and Choosing the Best SSD"
(August, 2009) http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631. Some
of his most recent articles address TRIM (November, 2009)
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3667 and a promising new
drive controller, which is being debuted in OCZ's Vertex 2 Pro SSD
(December, 2009) http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3702.
Anandtech has other articles on the subject, as well, usually focusing more
specifically on various SSDs released by different manufacturers. You can
scan through the list of articles in their Storage section to get an idea of
what else is available. http://www.anandtech.com/storage/
As for using these drives with Windows XP, they will work, but some of the
tools available for addressing the degradation of performance over time may
not (this appears to be true for TRIM, anyway). It may depend which drive
you buy and what controller it is using, when it comes to being able to
address this. My very basic understanding of what is at work here is that
how these drives keep track of the data written to them can eventually lead
to a performance hit, because they don't erase data or their record of where
the data on the drive is, until they run out of empty space on the drive.
Once this point is reached, writing more data starts to take longer because
of the need to add an extra step. Processes like TRIM address this by
freeing up space related to deleted files on the fly; so, it isn't left to
do as part of the write operation. Pre-dating TRIM (and as an alternative),
other tools can be manually run, periodically, to free up space that is no
longer actively being used.(This is off the top of my head without rereading
Anand's articles; so, it is probably not quite accurate but hopefully in the
ballpark.)
Anyway, I'm certainly keeping an eye on the development of these drives. I
think that we'll all want one eventually, but they remain very pricey
compared to mechanical drives, and there appears to be a teething process
underway when it comes to designing and implementing a fully mature
controller for them.
John Sproule
----------- Some of the Original Thread ---------
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 2010 09:07:35 -0500
From: Richard Glazier <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: SSD Drives with XP SP2
That was second article was from last May.
That is an eternity in cutting edge technology.
The Intel site is full of problems right up to November of 2009.
That is what the new generation of the Trim kit is all about.
BTW: (I don't have one.) grin.
Rick Glazier
From: <vandervoort>
Apparently, according to Fred Langa, the OS does make a difference:
clipped
This article has a great deal more info:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9132668/Analysis_SSD_performance_is_a_slowdown_inevitable_
"One thing you can be sure of is that the shiny new SSD you just bought
isn't likely to continue performing at the same level it did when you
first pulled it out of the box."
The NOSPIN Group Promotions is now offering
our special coffee mugs and mouse pads
with the PCBUILD logo... at a great price!!!
http://freepctech.com/goodies/promotions.shtml
|