So who's went over to using SSD drives in their computers?

[egrep]

I've been replacing the optical drive in my MacBook Pro's for 3-4 years now. I boot from the SSD and keep the OS and other select bits there. I also replace the fixed disk with a slightly faster 7200PRM Seagate. I partition it into 3 partitions. first is a mirror of the SSD volume that clones every 2 hours using SuperDuper!. I hardly ever notice it running because it just syncs changes each time. I create another volume with the unused space and use that for 'storage'.

This gives me dramatically fast boot times and system responsiveness. It also gives me a full time hot spare that I can boot off of (the fixed disk system mirror) built into the box. Of course I use time machine to do incremental backups of the entire system. The extra benefit here of course is the revision tracking that allows me to go back in time on any file.

 

[Th232]

I've been replacing the optical drive in my MacBook Pro's for 3-4 years now. I boot from the SSD and keep the OS and other select bits there. I also replace the fixed disk with a slightly faster 7200PRM Seagate. I partition it into 3 partitions. first is a mirror of the SSD volume that clones every 2 hours using SuperDuper!. I hardly ever notice it running because it just syncs changes each time. I create another volume with the unused space and use that for 'storage'.

This gives me dramatically fast boot times and system responsiveness. It also gives me a full time hot spare that I can boot off of (the fixed disk system mirror) built into the box. Of course I use time machine to do incremental backups of the entire system. The extra benefit here of course is the revision tracking that allows me to go back in time on any file.

I'd just like to say thanks for this, I've got two SSDs in my desktop at the moment and have been ticking over the reliability issue for some time now. This sounds like a great solution!

 

[kuksul08]

They aren't worth it quite yet IMO. I will wait another year or two until I can get a 500GB one for a reasonable price.

 

[s.urfer]

...raid 1 ... Wickedly fast.

Don't you mean RAID 0 ? RAID 1 is the same speed or less as one drive.

 

[Jrubin]

Well, after some hard drive issues in my Dell laptop earlier this year (a slow but certain HD death), I decided to try out an SSD drive. I'm not as computer-savvy as I used to be, so I had a local computer shop source a relatively less-common EIDE SSD for my older Dell, as well as install & configure it (I undertook the WinXP reinstall :scowl.

BTW, do any of the computer gurus here know of a way to turn off last-fileaccess-time stamping with removable media using WinXP & Fat32? I'm tempted to convert the CF card from Fat32 to NTFS and/or make it a 'fixed' volume to facilitate this, but I'm wondering if there is a more straightforward approach ... ? :thinking: I also want to enable write-cacheing for this drive, so I'm inclined to make it a fixed volume...


well i will kinda weigh in on this SSD, i have not run XP for years but i dont remember it writing last access to fat32 usb drives, but give this a try and see if it helps

Create a new DWord value under [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem] called NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate and set it to 1.

First backup your registry, just in case. of course this assumes your running NTFS on your XP computer

Also as an aside its probably not an issue of wearing out your SSD with constant writes, as windows is pretty good about not always updating SSD's. it will usually wait until it needs to access again for some other reason than update. or when you eject it i think it updates all files, hence why its bad to just pull the USB out with out first ejecting it.
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[It01Firefox]

Don't you mean RAID 0 ? RAID 1 is the same speed or less as one drive.

If it's implemented correctly in the OS then read operations can be sped up. On write operations you are correct.

 

[The_Driver]

For 1 1/2 years now I have been using a Intel X25-M G2 80GB SSD in my Laptop. It's been working great, the only annoying thing is having only 80GB in my laptop. The things I really like about it (in addition to the speed) is that it makes no noise what so ever and makes the laptop very robust.

 

[LEDAdd1ct]

BTW, do any of the computer gurus here know of a way to turn off last-fileaccess-time stamping with removable media using WinXP & Fat32?

well i will kinda weigh in on this SSD, i have not run XP for years but i dont remember it writing last access to fat32 usb drives, but give this a try and see if it helps

Create a new DWord value under [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem] called NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate and set it to 1.

First backup your registry, just in case. of course this assumes your running NTFS on your XP computer

Kestrel specifically stated he is using FAT32.

 

[Jrubin]

Kestrel specifically stated he is using FAT32.

yes i did see that, i guess i just assumed that when he said removable media using WinXP & Fat32? he was saying that xp was the OS and fat32 the USB drive. if he converts his usb to NTFS windows XP Fat32 would not read it Correct? at least all my fat32 devices wont. but i could be wrong in this case.

Edit: well i was able to mount a ntfs drive to a Linux fat32 computer, so it works there, but still unsure if xp fat32 will mount it?

 

[Kestrel]

Thanks, folks; I've been checking in but have been too busy to post a detailed follow up w/ replies, maybe this coming weekend. I am really happy with this setup, FWIW, I just want to dial in some of the finer aspects now.

FWIW, of the 64 GB SSD drive, everything I want is now installed, only ~9 GB used - I'm definitely no 'power user' anymore. My Docs & Settings folder is another ~20 GB (mostly my ~700 KB photos), but those are on the 32 GB high-speed CF card. I'm pleased with this arrangement.

The short version, I've already disabled last access time stamping via the registry, but WinXP only seems to apply it to fixed volumes (my NTFS SSD HD) and I'd like to apply it to my (Fat32-only) CF card and even my USB drives if possible. Just hoping to get a slightly snappier system and less wear&tear on the flash memory in the bargain, that's all. Couldn't care less about time stamping on my files. I'll be looking into this more later.

Anyway, thanks all. Keep it coming,

 

[Jrubin]

So are new time stamps being added, your files with time stamps currently will continue to have them. But after changing registry (and rebooting) are new one still being added? Thanks

 

[fyrstormer]

Thanks, folks; I've been checking in but have been too busy to post a detailed follow up w/ replies, maybe this coming weekend. I am really happy with this setup, FWIW, I just want to dial in some of the finer aspects now.

FWIW, of the 64 GB SSD drive, everything I want is now installed, only ~9 GB used - I'm definitely no 'power user' anymore. My Docs & Settings folder is another ~20 GB (mostly my ~700 KB photos), but those are on the 32 GB high-speed CF card. I'm pleased with this arrangement.

The short version, I've already disabled last access time stamping via the registry, but WinXP only seems to apply it to fixed volumes (my NTFS SSD HD) and I'd like to apply it to my (Fat32-only) CF card and even my USB drives if possible. Just hoping to get a slightly snappier system and less wear&tear on the flash memory in the bargain, that's all. Couldn't care less about time stamping on my files. I'll be looking into this more later.

Anyway, thanks all. Keep it coming,

FAT32 only supports last-access datestamping, not timestamping. The datestamp doesn't get overwritten more than once a day. It's not a significant load on flash memory.

It's really not a good idea to use FAT32 as the filesystem on your bootup hard drive nowadays. FAT32 doesn't have journaling, which means the computer doesn't pre-record a list of the changes it's going to make to the files before it actually makes them, so if your computer crashes (and you know it will eventually), the half-completed changes can't be completed or rolled-back on reboot, and the files will become corrupted. There's a reason all these features were added to modern filesystems, and unless you have a technical explanation why you don't need them, then you almost certainly do need them.

 

[Kestrel]

So are new time stamps being added, your files with time stamps currently will continue to have them. But after changing registry (and rebooting) are new one still being added?

Yes, disablelastaccess continues to have no effect on my (Fat32) CF and USB drives. If I can convince WinXP to make at least my CF drive NTFS, I will gain a lot of flexibility as to how I want the file system to handle my 'auxiliary hard drive'. This would be pretty cool IMO, as I have no intent of removing the CF drive until I can get ~128 GB Sandisk CF cards at a very reasonable cost. I'm excited about this configuration, as that next upgrade is going to be the easiest storage upgrade I've ever done. Once I can fit my DVD library on my CF card (via MPEG-4), I'll be stylin'.

FAT32 only supports last-access datestamping, not timestamping. The datestamp doesn't get overwritten more than once a day. It's not a significant load on flash memory.

This is CPF, when did we start worrying about only significant things, lol.

It's really not a good idea to use FAT32 as the filesystem on your bootup hard drive nowadays. [...]

It isn't on my bootup hard drive. There's also nothing wrong with trying to use NTFS on my "removable" flash media as well, even though WinXP (Home) seems to need some convincing of that. My hard drives have been NTFS since 1996 - that's over 15 years of solid use, with virtually no issues. I haven't been so pleased with file/disk management since Stacker 4.0.

 

[LEDAdd1ct]

1) Is there a compatibility reason for which your CF flash cards can't be formatted NTFS?

2) Is there another reason for which your CF cards can't be formatted NTFS?

3) Are you willing to format your CF cards to NTFS?

Since NTFS supports the change you desire, it seems like a step in the right direction.

 

[Kestrel]

Since NTFS supports the change you desire, it seems like a step in the right direction.

"It's not a bug, it's a feature".

WinXP (Home) doesn't permit NTFS on "Removable Disk" media, Fat32 is the best it can do unless I trick it via regedit or something similar, to fool NTFS into thinking its a fixed disk. Then my options are wide open and I can do all sorts of things.

I think that one route would be along the lines of what fyrstomer suggested a few days ago re: the Hitachi driver.

This and/or this.

 

[Jrubin]

"It's not a bug, it's a feature".

WinXP (Home) doesn't permit NTFS on "Removable Disk" media, Fat32 is the best it can do unless I trick it via regedit or something similar, to fool NTFS into thinking its a fixed disk. Then my options are wide open and I can do all sorts of things.

I think that one route would be along the lines of what fyrstomer suggested a few days ago re: the Hitachi driver.

This and/or this.

so i dont have a Winxp and for sure a XP home to try this on but here is a link that seems to address your issue. they present a simple workaround that might work. but i dont know for sure that it will work on home version. also if you have someone with an xp pro/vista/windows7 or even DOS you can just format it to NTFS and you will be good to go

to format the CF card under XP Pro:

1. Place the CF in a USB to CF reader/writer​

2. Use UFDPREP.EXE on the CF, which is seen as a usb device. UFDPREP will allow for the CF to be partitioned and formated with NTFS.​

This only works on XP Pro since UFDPREP.EXE will only work XP.

of course its possible that partition software will fix this problem. i use easeus (its free) on windows 7 and vista to format drives and its compatable with xp home

http://www.partition-tool.com/download.htm

you might just try that and see how it goes. of course you lose all data when you do this but you can work that out for sure.​

​

[url]http://lifehacker.com/5195783/format-a-usb-drive-as-ntfs-in-windows-xp





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[noglider]

Hi there. This is my first post here, which is funny, because I'm here to learn about flashlights, but I saw this post and thought I'd respond.

I'm an independent computer consultant. Mostly I serve small businesses and individuals. I hope to move my practice to only businesses eventually, but for the time being, I'm having fun. Most of my experience is in large corporate environments with lots of servers and/or large systems.

I've had a small amount of experience with SSD. It's very exciting, and as a colleague said, now that SSD is coming, everything we know about storage management is going to be wrong. A lot of our long-earned tips apply to the characteristics of hard drives (with platters), with their advantages and disadvantages. So it seems to me that head crashes and similar mechanical failures are the main reason for RAID. So I wonder how useful RAID is when using SSD. I recently replaced a RAID-1 array for a client with a single SSD. I suspect it will be at least as reliable, though that's based on my educated guess. Any opinions?

I've worked with a couple of laptops with hybrid drives that have a small cache with SSD and otherwise hard drives. In theory, they're a good idea, though I can't say they seemed fast.

In my own system (a Mac Pro with four drive bays), I put my operating system on a 32 GB SSD and the user files on a 1TB drive. It's similar to having a hybrid drive. And I think it doesn't seem particularly fast.

Earlier, I used the same 32GB SSD in my Macbook, the first model from 2006. Man, did it make the machine fast! It booted in about 10 seconds and shut down in about 4. It operated about as fast as the modern models. Sadly, the machine died, so I'm without a laptop for now.

 

[Kestrel]

to format the CF card under XP Pro [...]

Sounds good, I'll try this, I've started the format now.

of course you lose all data when you do this

Wait, what ?!?!?


LOL, j/k.

I'll see about exploring this topic more over the weekend.

Oh, and noglider, welcome to CPF. :wave:

Best regards,
K

 

[daimleramg]

Just remember with FAT32 it only support files up to 4GB's... so if you plan on having files larger then 4GB's on that drive make sure its formatted as NTFS.


I've been using my 120GB OCZ Agility 3 Sata 6Gbps SSD for about 8 months now and been very happy with it.

 

[ElectronGuru]

SSD quick tip: software behaviors designed to improve HDD performance can have the opposite effect on an SSD. These are often turned on by default, with few ways to turn them off. Defragmentation, for example, has no benefit and will wear an SSD out prematurely.