Solid State Drives are build into many computer systems these days. They are build into netbooks for example, are offered by web hosts to run in dedicated servers or purchased by tech enthusiasts. SSD are basically a new generation of hard drives which will eventually replace the existing ones that are build into the majority of computers. This will take some time as they are currently more expensive even though they provide less storage than conventional hard drives. Positive aspects are a fast read speed, silence while running and better shock resistance.
Their biggest downfall besides the price is the write speed which can be low. So low that it will slow down the computer system when data is written on that drive. Many programs, including web browsers, email programs, editors but also the operating system itself cache data on the hard drive or use the hard drive to store temporary data. That’s a problem if the cache folder of that application is located on the Solid State.
What can be done to speed up the overall computer system?
- Move the temp folders of the operating system to another hard drive.
- Move the pagefile and System Restore locations to another hard drive
- Move the cache of applications to another hard drive, e.g. web browsers, email clients.
- Disable programs that access the hard drive and that are not needed, like Windows Indexing Service
- Upgrade the computer memory of the computer system (only makes sense if sub 4 Gigabybtes on a 32-bit system)
Most of these tips center around moving the cache to a new hard drive and disabling features that slow down the computer system. If you cannot install a second hard drive to the computer system you might consider adding a fast external device that can be used for caching. The downside of this method is that you need to have it near the computer system all the time which can be annoying if the system is mostly used on the road.
Newer Solid State Drives (check the OCZ Vertex review for instance) are slowly introduced that beat conventional hard drives fair and square both in write and read performance. They come at a price though but this is going to change in the future. Prices will drop, capacities increase and the slower SSD will slowly cease to exist.
Related posts:
- Solid State Hard Drives
- Optimize Windows For Solid State Drives Usage
- Ridata introduces new Solid State Drives
- Solid State Drives Test Results
- SSD Security: Erase Solid State Drives Data
- Should You Defragment A SSD?
- Got A Slow SSD? Try FlashFire To Speed Things Up
- Samsung SS805 SSD
With 2-4GB ram you dont need to use page file any more. I dont use on Vista, even if only 3.3GB are visible. Btw, MLC SSD are slow, I got SLC SSD on my server and it rocks. 4core server + SLC SSD is faster than 8core with HDD, mostly due to SQL operations that need to be saved frequently.
Thinker which hoster are you using? How much do you pay for the server?
Martin, I use OVH – I think one of the biggest company in Europe, from France. They got German page too, look at http://www.ovh.de/ – EG SSD is one of the servers I use.
Interesting I have never heard of them before. They provide some great hardware for the buck and I like their money back guarantee. Do you know where their servers are hosted? All in France?
Yes, they got server-farm in France. But don’t worry about that, I live in Poland and OVH servers have better pings than our local host companies :D Now I pay for 8 their servers. My first I bought about 2 years ago and I’m really happy that I found that firm.
Sound impressive. Did not think you run that many servers, ha. Can you post some short infos about uptime, support and so on? That would be really helpful.