Luminous Landscape Forum

Equipment & Techniques => Computers & Peripherals => Topic started by: Ellis Vener on July 01, 2012, 01:45:15 pm

Title: About adding an SSD or migrating your OS and applications to an SSD
Post by: Ellis Vener on July 01, 2012, 01:45:15 pm
Check out http://thessdreview.com/ssd-guides/beginners-guide/ssd-migration-or-fresh-system-installation-an-ssd-primer/
Title: Re: Thinking about adding or migrating to an SSD based system?
Post by: schrodingerscat on July 01, 2012, 02:53:41 pm
Pay particular attention to the bit about TRIM and Garbage Collection. If you system(OS) doesn't enable these, there will be little advantage to an SSD drive and in fact it may have a negative impact in the long run. In Macs, only machines that come with an SSD installed have this capability, tho there is scuttlebutt that it may be user enableable in a future version of Lion. Some third party SSDs have both built into the drive, so may be fine in currently unsupported machines and it would probably be wise to contact the drive vendor to confirm compatibility. Not sure how this plays out with the various versions of Windows and have not seen any discussions as to how this plays out in RAIDS.

When researching adding a second drive to my 2010 27" i7 iMac I got all excited about sticking an SSD in there, until I started reading about TRIM and GC. Finally went with Seagate's hybrid 750GB instead. 750GB for less than a 256GB SSD(way less than a high end SSD with TRIM built in). So far it seems to be working as advertised, and don't think I'd see much of an advantage of an SSD over it.

YMMV

PS - SSDs do wear out, just like HDDs, so probably a good idea to change them out periodically.
Title: Re: Thinking about adding or migrating to an SSD based system?
Post by: Ellis Vener on July 01, 2012, 10:36:19 pm
Thank you for making me aware of the issues of Garbabe Collection and TRIM and how they can affect SSd performance. I did some research and found the following two articles informative, especially if you are looking at Mercury Electra SSD drives from OWC.

If you are considering moving your OS and Applications to an SSD  two issues you need to be aware of are Garbage Collection and TRIM and how they can affect SSD performance. I did some research and found the following two articles informative, especially if you are looking at Mercury Electra SSD drives from OWC.

First why would you even want to consider having Screw Top Cranial Surgery ( thank you Steve Martin and Carl Reiner!) performed on your computer?  to get a higher level of performance out of your existing computer and extend its working life.This is why I am looking into having it done on my late 2009 iMac.

Short synopsis of TRIM and Garbage Collection issues: One of the differences between a standard hard disk drive (HDD) and a Solid State Drive (SSD) is how both deal with storage space where data that has since been updated is located, used, and freed up or tied up. For an SSD drive one of the things you have to consider are the Garbage Collection and TRIM functions.

Read this one first for a more detailed (but still readable) overview of what TRIM and Garbage Collection do and how they work: http://thessdreview.com/daily-news/latest-buzz/garbage-collection-and-trim-in-ssds-explained-an-ssd-primer/3/

Next, if you are looking at the Mercury Electra Drives from OWC, read this one: http://blog.macsales.com/11051-to-trim-or-not-to-trim-owc-has-the-answer
Title: Re: About adding an SSD or migrating your OS and applications to an SSD
Post by: Josh-H on July 02, 2012, 06:38:53 am
Quote
Next, if you are looking at the Mercury Electra Drives from OWC, read this one: http://blog.macsales.com/11051-to-trim-or-not-to-trim-owc-has-the-answer

Extremely useful - thank you.
Title: Re: About adding an SSD or migrating your OS and applications to an SSD
Post by: Ellis Vener on July 02, 2012, 11:56:34 am
You're welcome. The whole series At the ssdreview  site is very well written from the point of view of a  non computer engineer. A minimum of jargon and and a maximum of explaining what are the important things to know and consider  with  SSD storage technology. Had I read this before hand I might have spent the extra money on a 6G  instead of a 3G SSD even though my machine is only capable of dealing with 3G performance. But even with this knowledge, I suspect that by the time I am ready to repalce this computer SSD prices will have continued to fall and spending the extra $100 for 6G or 3G would not have been a great investment.
However if I get a new laptop (probably a non-retina Mac Book Pro) I'll get a 6G SSD for that.

The ssdreview.com series starts here: http://thessdreview.com/ssd-guides/beginners-guide/introduction-to-solid-state-drives-ssd-benefits-to-the-consumer/
Title: Re: About adding an SSD or migrating your OS and applications to an SSD
Post by: Thomas Krüger on July 02, 2012, 04:07:55 pm
The Paragon Hard Disk Manager has a feature called "Migrate OS to SSD", works great moving a Win7 partition to a new installed SSD. Intel has the program "Intel SSD Toolbox" for SSD maintenance.
Title: Re: About adding an SSD or migrating your OS and applications to an SSD
Post by: woof75 on July 03, 2012, 04:33:07 am
I was worried about the TRIM thing, until I put an SSD in my macbook pro. It's so much faster than a regular hard drive it's ridiculous. I think the TRIM thing must be more of a theoretical issue. Anyone who has put an SSD in there mac will attest to that I'm sure. I've had my SSD in for about a year now and haven't noticed any performance drop off at all.
Title: Re: About adding an SSD or migrating your OS and applications to an SSD
Post by: Ellis Vener on July 03, 2012, 08:52:12 am
So woof, Do you have a single SSD installed  or did you replace the optical drive wit han SSD and keep the HDD as well, or do you know have two SSDs installed in your mac Book Pro? Also which model and year of MBP?
Title: Re: About adding an SSD or migrating your OS and applications to an SSD
Post by: studio347 on July 03, 2012, 12:07:08 pm
Even though I don't have deep understanding on the subject, I use Samsung SSD 830 as a dedicated Capture HD for tether shooting with 2008 MacPro.
I enabled "Trim" through changing the related code of OS X_10.6.8.

http://www.hardmac.com/news/2011/03/27/the-universal-solution-to-activate-trim

I did change the file manually and don't use the "Trim Enabler".

I didn't have any problem for about 6 months with this setup. It's not a clean way, but I think it works. For some reasons, I think the manual code change is a better way to go than the automatic way, "Trim Enabler".

I also use OWC Extrem Pro SSDs, 100GB, as a system HD and a storage HD, which are not Trim enabled. I followed the advice of OWC.
I didn't have any problem for the system SSD. I only use about 45 GB in the system SSD.
When I use the other SSD, at the near full capacity for a while, using around 80 GB or over in 100 GB capacity, the SSD showed a serious problem. The writing speed was reduced from around 230MB/s to around 20 MB/s. The read speed was normal as around 240 MB/s. I removed files from the SSD. After about one day, the normal writing speed came back for itself.

Even though I'm not so sure about the exact cause of the problem, I'm trying to use about 50% capacity when using OWC SSDs now. Not over 70%.
I'm not sure this issue is related with only OWC SSD or not...
I sent the SSD back to OWC and am waiting for a replacement since I can't use the SSD for any serious job.

Even though I have very limited experience and knowledge on this subject, for now I like Samsung 830 SSD with Trim enabled through the code change of OS X.
Also I'm dealing with Raw files which are compressed files. I heard that Samsung SSD is good for dealing with compressed files.
And trying to use less than about 70 % of total capacity of a SSD.
Title: Re: About adding an SSD or migrating your OS and applications to an SSD
Post by: aaronleitz on July 03, 2012, 05:46:29 pm
I have an OWC Mercury 3G 60gb SSD in a 2011 15" Macbook Pro and though it is definitely faster than a stock 5400rpm HD I'm not getting quite the performance that I expected.

The drive is almost exactly half full and using BlackMagic disk test I get about 100 MB/sec write and 160 MB/sec read.

I will probably buy a larger SSD later this year as prices hopefully fall a bit.
Title: Re: About adding an SSD or migrating your OS and applications to an SSD
Post by: PierreVandevenne on July 03, 2012, 05:59:03 pm
Apple uses either a Toshiba controller or a Samsung controller in its new machines. Essentially an 830 controller. TSxxx is Toshiba SMxxx is Samsung. The Toshiba controller itself appears to be a rebranded/licensed SandForce design, which means it will be significantly slower writing compressed or encrypted files. The 830 family os now below 1$ per GB and a very stable and mature architecture.

ArsTechnica recently had a SSD Revolution special: well worth reading

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/inside-the-ssd-revolution-how-solid-state-disks-really-work/

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/inside-the-ssd-revolution-mobile-devices-and-modern-oss/
Title: Re: About adding an SSD or migrating your OS and applications to an SSD
Post by: andyptak on July 05, 2012, 08:10:08 am
I just got a new Asus laptop which has room for an mSata drive.

I'm going to get one and use it but I'm unsure what I should put on it. I've read other forums where people state that it should be reserved for LR/ACR cache, while others claim that the O/S should go on it.

I'm confused.
Title: Re: About adding an SSD or migrating your OS and applications to an SSD
Post by: Ellis Vener on July 09, 2012, 10:48:57 pm
Initial report: Much, much faster and quieter.
Title: Re: About adding an SSD or migrating your OS and applications to an SSD
Post by: francois on July 10, 2012, 07:04:00 am
Initial report: Much, much faster and quiter.

Ellis,
What did you up installing in your Mac?
Title: Re: About adding an SSD or migrating your OS and applications to an SSD
Post by: Ellis Vener on July 10, 2012, 07:19:49 am
Ellis,
What did you up installing in your Mac?

OWC Mercury Electra 256GB 3G SSD. I also purchased OWC's case for the optical drive but at least for the Optical drive used in the 2009 iMac  the case  is about a quarter inch too low of profile.

I thought about getting the 6G Mercury Electra version but
A) my late 2009 vintage i5 iMac can use 3G SSD speed (the 6G version is backward compatible)
B) by the time I hope i have to retire/ recycle this machine in late 2013/2014 I suspect SSD prices will have fallen significantly.
Title: Re: About adding an SSD or migrating your OS and applications to an SSD
Post by: francois on July 10, 2012, 07:55:34 am
OWC Mercury Electra 256GB 3G SSD. I also purchased OWC's case for the optical drive but at least for the Optical drive used in the 2009 iMac  the case  is about a quarter inch too low of profile.

I thought about getting the 6G Mercury Electra version but
A) my late 2009 vintage i5 iMac can use 3G SSD speed (the 6G version is backward compatible)
B) by the time I hope i have to retire/ recycle this machine in late 2013/2014 I suspect SSD prices will have fallen significantly.

Ellis,
Thank you for the information and for sharing your reasoning. I'm in a similar situation and came up with the same conclusion (3G over 6G).
Title: Re: About adding an SSD or migrating your OS and applications to an SSD
Post by: jrsforums on July 10, 2012, 10:14:06 am
Just to share a little experience...

I had a Thinkpad X201 running Win7-64 bit.  It had slowed down to the point that I found it a pain to use.

I purchased a Crucial 256GB SSD http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-2-5-Inch-Solid-Transfer-CT256M4SSD2CCA/dp/B004W2JL84/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1341928863&sr=8-7&keywords=crucial+m4

This came with a cable an software to transfer the OS, etc. from the installed drive.  BTW...the installed drive was larger, but not fully populated.

The transfer went off without a problem.  System booted with no problem.

It is like having a whole new machine.  Boots fast...runs fast...no problems at all.

I looked at Ellis' post and checked out the optimization.  Don't plan to go through most, as I am happy with the performance, but I did check the 'TRIM'....it was properly enable...not sure if it was the transfer or Win7, but it is set.

Could not recommend the change more highly.

BTW...I do have my two desktop towers set up with SSD.  The one with CS6 and LR4 has two for the catalog and cache. 

John
Title: Re: About adding an SSD or migrating your OS and applications to an SSD
Post by: Ellis Vener on July 15, 2012, 11:24:14 am
One week update: everything is much, much faster with the SSD installed and the OS, applications and affiliated files migrated over to it. After backing up and cleaning out  most of the files on the existing internal 1TB HDD on my iMac ( leaving about 860GB free) I now use that drive as the primary scratch disk for Photoshop CS6 and created a folder on it for importing new projects into Lightroom and a second folder for projects that'll be stitching, doing any post processing on and printing from.
Once a project is no longer hot or active it will be archived on the Drobo and RAID arrays.