FlashFire is a software program for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 that can speed up computer systems with SSDs noticeably. The description on the developer’s website is a bit vague. FlashFire seems to make use of computer memory to speed up random writes of a connected SSD. Probably something comparable to a RAM disk.

The good news is that the software works. It works that well that the performance gain is very noticeable after installation of the software and a reboot of the system. There is another aspect that is kinda confusing. Some users state that they have a icon in the system tray upon startup. Some users on the other hand say they do not. This apparently depends on the version of the software program. There are two things that users need to know: Flashfire needs to be started with parameters and settings can only be changed in the Windows Registry.

To start Flashfire a user would use the command flashfire.exe on to turn it on or flashfire x where x is the drive number that the program should speed up. Users who use flashfire.exe on have to make sure that a SSD is the configured drive in the Registry. They need to navigate to

HK_Local_Machine\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ffire\Enum

and check the drive number of the Solid State Drive there. They then need to navigate to

HK_Local_Machine\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ffire\Parameters

and make sure that drive number is the value of the Disknum key. Flashfire can be turned off easily by issuing the command flashfire.exe off. Several users reported great success with Flashfire on Asus EEEPCs with Solid State Drives. Flashfire can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

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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.

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OCZ on the other hand seems to be one of the driving forces in SSD technology at this point in time. Their OCZ Vertex drives look really promising in both read and write performance. Old Solid State Drives usually excelled in read performance but lacked the necessary write performance.

Their latest hardware that was first shown at the Cebit in Germany is the OCZ Z-Drive. This piece of computer hardware is connected via PCI Express to a computer system taking up two slots because of its dimensions. It is made up of four 256 Gigabyte MLC-based OCZ Solid State Drives and 256 Megabytes of ECC DDR2 RAM. This adds up to a total storage capacity of 1 Terabyte and promises maximum read rates of 600 MB/s and read rates of 500 MB/s. The sustained write speed is said to be 400 MB/s.

The only drawback is the hefty price tag which is expected to be between $1500 and $2000. The OCZ Z-Drive is expected to be available in April 2009 with additional models following later this year.

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24 drives equals a total storage of 6 Terabytes. The other system specs are as impressive. They added a combination of two Intel 3.2GHz QX9775 Quad-Core cpus, two ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 cards, 4GB of 800MHz FB-DIMM DDR2 SDRAM, two Corsair HX1000W power supply units, an Adaptec 5 Series RAID card, an Areca 1680ix-24 RAID card and of course the 24 256GB MLC Solid State Drives.

How fast was the system after all? They managed to top 2 Gigabytes of sequential write and reading speed. They performed some tests like loading all Microsoft Office applications (in 0.5 seconds), all 53 apps of the Windows start menu (in 18.09 seconds), copying a 700 Megabyte DVD rip (0.8 seconds) or recycling 700 files with a total size of 5.6 Gigabytes (instantly).

The viral marketing campaign is highly successful with more than 250K views on Youtube already. Can you imaging running a system like this? What are your thoughts, let us know!

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A recent review of the OCZ Vertex Series 120GB SSD might be a turning point though as it is one of the first Solid State Drives that leaves even the fastest platter driven hard drives behind in both benchmarks but also real life tests. Benchmarks are great to compare speeds but the situation can be different under real life circumstances. CD Freaks have posted an extensive test of the OCZ Vertex Series 120GB SSD and compare it to other platter driven hard drives like Samsung’s Spinpoint F1 or Seagate’s Barracuda 7200.10.

The results are astounding: The OCZ Vertex Series 120GB SSD booted Windows Vista to the Welcome Screen in 11.54, install Vista SP1 in 16.12 minutes compared to roughly 40 minutes for all other tested hard drives, performed a Microsoft Office installation in 2.13 seconds compared to 3.43 minutes for the second place finisher or 24052 points in PCMark Vantage HDD suite result while the platter driven hard drives managed scores around the 4000 mark.

The conclusion of the reviewer is absolutely positive:

The OCZ Technology Vertex series drives are quite incredible. This is the first SSD drive I can honestly say is completely stable when used as a system drive. It’s also incredibly fast.

Reading access times are lightning fast and applications load in an instant, making the Vertex series of drives ideal as the operating system drive with all the user’s installed applications.

The only negative aspect about that drive is the price. The OCZ Vertex Series will ship with 60, 120 and 250 Gigabytes of capacity and retail for $199, $399 and $829 respectively.

Additional reviews:

PC Perspective

The new OCZ Vertex solid state drive is one of the most impressive SSDs we have tested to date. I know that there is much excitement in the hardware community about this drive and for good reason: it uses a brand new controller from a brand new company and as such performance was an unknown. Many in the community have been billing it as the first true competitor to Intel’s X25-M line of mainstream MLC drives and it indeed lives up to that status.

Benchmark Reviews

Based on the collection of benchmark performance tests we’ve conducted, the OCZ Vertex offers linear bandwidth so far ahead of previous competition that it might require calling this a new generation product in order to justify how so many other ‘new’ products have just been left behind. The MLC Samsung flash modules paired to a 64MB cache buffer on this 120GB Vertex SSD help yield a 0.10 ms response time. ATTO Disk Benchmark tool reported an impressive 249 MBps maximum read bandwidth in our tests, but only 138 MBps maximum write. HD Tach recorded additional high-performance results, with approximate bandwidth speeds reaching 236.6 MBps read and 162.6 MBps write. EVEREST’s linear full-sector bandwidth performance was a steady 247.6 MBps read-from, and an impressive 225.2 MBps write-to speed.

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The only real downside of SSDs was their rather low write speed which was especially true for last generation’s drives. This is quickly changing with the release of this generation’s SSDs that have a twice as fast write speed as last generation thanks to multiple parallel channels and interleaving single-layer cell NAND flash memory.

Samsung has announced a state of the art SSD that is aiming for a release in the first quarter of 2009. The Samsung SS805 Solid State Drive will offer 100 Gigabytes of storage space with a sustained sequential read rate of up to 250MB/sec. and a sustained sequential write rate of up to 170MB/sec.

To put that in comparison. The OCZ Core Series II SSD drive that I bought last year had a sustained sequential read rate of up to 170 MB/sec. and a sustained sequential write rate of up to 98MB/sec. and won almost every read speed benchmark at that time.

Samsung’s SS805 SSD will increase the read speed by about 50% and the write speed by almost 100% in comparison. The only factor that could play a role in the drive’s success is the retail price of the device.

Intel’s 32 Gigabyte X25 Solid State Drive retails currently for a price of $650-700 at most online shops.

The SS805 SSD is therefor aiming at the enterprise market but hints at what the consumer market will see in the near future.

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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.

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Some information about the drive. I ordered an OCZ 64 Gigabyte Core Series Sata II 2.5″ Solid State Drive which can be connected with the normal SATA cables. It’s pretty tiny, completely silent and I had to think a bit before I found a placement in my computer for it. Since I’m not moving my computer I put it on top of the 3,5″ bay.

It was immediately recognized by the Bios if my computer and by Windows without having to install drivers or do a Bios update. Keep in mind that I have a relatively new Bios from January 2008 though.

The only thing that I did so far was to install Windows XP on the drive and do all the driver and system updates. I have not installed any applications except for Firefox and Thunderbird yet.

Please point me to any benchmarking tests or other tests that you would like to have performed so that we can evaluate how fast the drive actually is. I’m thinking of benchmarking system start and startup of several applications that I will install on both hard drives. (I have another Windows XP system on my old hard drive).

So, if you got anything let me know and I will perform the test if I can grab the right software to do it.

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