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Optimize Slow Solid State Drives

Martin Brinkmann — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 08:28:26 +0000

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.

Solid State Drives Test Results

Martin Brinkmann — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 09:45:11 +0000

I ordered and added the OCZ 64 Gigabyte Core Series Sata II Solid State Drive to my computer and have been playing around with it for some time now. This Solid State Drive has some serious advantages over conventional hard drives. The boot speed is faster and you also notice that some applications load up faster than normally. It’s a visible speed bump.

The question however is if you want to shell out the extra bucks for that visible speed gain and I think it comes down to a discussion among video card enthusiasts. Some purchase the top product that produces a few additional frames but costs double the amount of the video card that computes less frames. Still both make the games playable.

It’s the same with the current generation of Solid State Drives except for a few scenarios where they really shine. They need less energy to run and are completely silent which makes them an ideal candidate for a notebook hard drive replacement. That’s in my opinion the number one reason to purchase a Solid State Drive, to place it in a mobile device or computer that is being used as a media player.

samsung hard drive benchmark

ocz core series ssd benchmark

samsung hd103uj benchmark

ocz core series ssd 64gb benchmark

Where operating systems and desktop computers are concerned I would probably wait for the next generation that surely sees another huge price drop and speed increase.

Don’t get me wrong.. The Solid State Drive is faster than my shiny new Samsung hard drive, it loads pretty much everything faster but some of its gains, the silence, can only be effective if I would remove the conventional hard drives and that is not possible until the flash drives come with sufficient storage space.

Conclusion:

You should consider buying a Solid State Drive if..

You turn on and off the operating system regularly
You load and close many applications and files during the computer uptime
You do not need space but energy efficiency or silence
You want bragging rights
You got the money to buy one

Everyone else is better of waiting for the next generation of flash drives in my opinion.

Test the Speed of your USB Flash Drives

Martin Brinkmann — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 20:05:40 +0000

The speed difference of USB Flash Drives that support the USB 2.0 standard can be more than 15 MB/s with maximum speeds of about 30 MB/s for fast drives. That’s still less than modern hard drives are capable of but better than a few years ago. I think it’s really astonishing that there are only a few recent comparisons of USB flash drive speeds available on the first results pages of Google. A recent (another one) comparison from May 2008 that tested seven USB flash drives showed differences of more than 15 MB/s between the fastest and slowed drive while copying files of a certain size

If you already have an USB flash drive and want to know how it compares you can test the speed of it with the free version of HD Tune which can benchmark USB drives as well. The free version will only test the read speed and access time but it should give a good impression of the capabilities of the device at hand.

To make the test accurate you should set the test speed to Accurate in the benchmark options. The last two steps are to select the USB flash drive from the pulldown menu at the top and to click on start to start the benchmark.

Those speed differences are really interesting. It’s probably a good idea to research USB flash drives extensively before buying one. What’s your experience with those drives ?