Setup | Recommendation | Test platform

Installation and experiences

Installation of a SSD drive is no different than installing any other drive. Connect the SATA and power cable, and you are good to go. Once you power on that PC of yours, the first thing you'll notice; no more noise. That by itself is just downright weird.

My system boot drive was a WD Raptor and when that HD is crunching, you know the HDD is alive alright. That's just no longer a reality. You will look at the SSD wondering "is that thing even working?", while the Windows Vista logo has already appeared on your monitor. So no more purring and resonating or other weird noises. Completely silent, I love it.

The second factor you can rule out is heat. Modern day HDDs tend to get hot. When not cooled they can reach 40-50 Degrees C pretty easily. No worries though as the HDD can have it, yet the SSD remains completely cool to lukewarm. Most SSD drives will get roughly 28-30 Degrees C.

Then there's that first boot up on the SSD, weird ... it's fast ... really fast. That's where you'll get the first smile to your face. But let's startup some actual tests.

Some recommendations: drive wearing on a MLC based drive will always ghost in the back of your mind. Here are some recommendations and tips for a long lifespan and optimal performance. Basically, what is needed is to eliminate the HDD optimizations within Vista (that causes lots of small file writes like superfetch and prefetch), things like background HDD defragmentation (that causes lots of small file write drive activity). In short:

• Drive indexing disabled. (useless for SSD anyway, because access times are so low).
• Prefetch disabled.
• Superfetch disabled
• Defrag disabled.

So make sure you disable prefetchers. Also make sure you disable defragmentation on the SSD disk. You do not have a mechanical drive anymore so it not needed, let alone you do not want defragmentation to tear out your drive. If your SSD is JMicron based, disabling these features have performance advantages as well.

Use Vista's services to disable them. And to disable defragment:

Vista Automatic Defrag:

1. Click Start2. Click Control Panel
3. Select the Control Panel Home
4. Click System and Maintenance
5. Under the Administrative Tools section at the bottom, click Defragment your hard drive
6. You may need to grant permission to open the disk fragmenter
7. Click or unclick Run automatically (recommended) depending if you want this feature enabled or disabled.
8. Click OK

Hardware and Software Used

Now we begin the benchmark portion of this article, but first let me show you our test system plus the software we used.

Storage

Patriot Warp Series SSD v2 MLC (128GB)
Silicon Power SSD SLC (32GB)
Samsung SP0802N ATA (80 GB)
WD15 00ADFD0 Raptor (150GB)
G.Skill SSD MLC (64GB)
G.Skill SSD Titan MLC (128GB)

Mainboard

ASUS X58 ROG edition Rampage II Extreme
Processor

Core i7 965 @ 3750 MHz (3.6 + Turbo mode).

Graphics Cards

GeForce GTX 260 SP216 (65nm)
 

Memory

6144 MB (3x 2048 MB) DDR3 1800 MHz OCZ @ 1500 MHz

Power Supply Unit

1200 Watt

Monitor

Dell 3007WFP - up-to 2560x1600

OS related Software

Windows Vista Business Edition 64-bit SP1
DirectX 9.0c/10 End User Runtime June update
NVIDIA ForceWare 185.63
 

Software benchmark suite

PCMark vantage HDD test Test 1 to 8
ATTO Disk benchmark v2.02
SiSoft Sandra Storage Benchmark
HDTach 3.0.4.0