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How are garbage collection issues addressed on Intel SSD 320?

G

g-boac

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 7, 2007
291
1
Question- I've heard a lot of great things about the Intel 320 SSD on here. In currently running an OWC mercury 3G 240GB and
needing to upgrade to a larger drive. It's been great and I tried an OWC 3G 480GB but experienced a lot of trouble (gremlins/beachballs/uncommanded sleep, refusal to wake), so I returned it. No issues, ever with my OWC 240GB.

I'm essentially sold on an Intel 320 600GB based on capacity and reviews on here, but wanted to ask: if TRIM is not supported and Intel drives don't have their own garbage collection as SandForce (e.g., OWC) drives do, how IS the issue of garbage addressed??? Are these drives simply subject to performance degradation once each block has been written to?

Thanks,
Mark
 
I think all modern SSDs do some level of garbage collection but 320 Series's GC isn't very aggressive. Its performance may degrade over time if you don't enable TRIM, though I wouldn't worry too much.
 
i run 320 fully encrypted meaning it is the ABSOLUTE worse can scenario since I can't trim or garbage collect.

But it still works fine. Feels as fast as my unencrypted x25-m g2.
 
bozz2006 said:
Right, but the problem is that it slows down over time, after every block has been written to.
Click to expand...

Like I said, I already incur the worse case scenario because the entire drive is filled up, then I not only incur a penalty from the erase-write cycle but also the bit flipping from the encryption.

Still the effects of the 'dirty' SSD are overstated. It'll slow down b/c of the cycle but it won't get down to 7200 RPM speeds. It shouldn't even affect read operations; only writes.
A multi channel SSD such as the large 320s shouldn't get slow down too bad.
 
Eddyisgreat said:
Like I said, I already incur the worse case scenario because the entire drive is filled up, then I not only incur a penalty from the erase-write cycle but also the bit flipping from the encryption.

Still the effects of the 'dirty' SSD are overstated. It'll slow down b/c of the cycle but it won't get down to 7200 RPM speeds. It shouldn't even affect read operations; only writes.
A multi channel SSD such as the large 320s shouldn't get slow down too bad.
Click to expand...

Ah, I see. I don't think that you'd mentioned that the drive was completely full. Just that you ran it fully encrypted.
 
Eddyisgreat said:
i run 320 fully encrypted meaning it is the ABSOLUTE worse can scenario since I can't trim or garbage collect.

But it still works fine. Feels as fast as my unencrypted x25-m g2.
Click to expand...

Eddy,

Are you using True Crypt (or something else)? I have had colleagues ask about encrypting their whole drive and I have remained vague on the whole subject.

I would be genuinely interested in hearing your thoughts since you are doing the whole drive.

Cheers!
-P
 
Hellhammer said:
I think all modern SSDs do some level of garbage collection but 320 Series's GC isn't very aggressive. Its performance may degrade over time if you don't enable TRIM, though I wouldn't worry too much.
Click to expand...
Thank you - do you mean enabling TRIM via the hack posted in the Mac Pro forum?

Eddy - thanks for the data point on encrypted drive speed.

cheers,
Mark
 
Pentad said:
Are you using True Crypt (or something else)? I have had colleagues ask about encrypting their whole drive and I have remained vague on the whole subject.
Click to expand...

PGP WDE. Pretty decent price for what you get (WDE + applicable license for Bootcamp/Windows as well as PGP Zip and PGP Disk capabilities) but of course unencrypted is best for performance. 10.6.6 broke our machines unless you did a combo update, such that you could not boot, but the data was still there (but that was more Apple's fault than anyone else's). Also PGPs code apparently doesn't support AES-NI on the mac, which is intel's hardware based encryption accelerator (available on all recent MBPs).

I'm about due for a license upgrade (20 or so bucks I believe) but i've been holding out to see if lion will offer anything.
 
WonkyPanda said:
Do you guys recommend the trim hack for the 320?
Click to expand...

I have been using Trim Enabler on my 320 160GB with no issues for three weeks now. Daily boot/shutdown cycles and i allow it to sleep. No beachballs etc. Make sure you get the version for 10.6.8 (Trim Enabler 1.2) once you upgrade to that.

bozz2006 said:
I don't recommend it for any SSD. Too many issues.
Click to expand...

From what I understand, Cindori is just adding the serial of the 3rd party ssd to a kext which whitelists it for TRIM activation. Unless Apple is using a non-universal implementation of TRIM I don't see how it would be any different than a Windows PC for non-sandforce SSDs.

dagamer34 said:
Avoid the TRIM hack on any SSD that already has some form of garbage collection (SandForce-based SSDs)
Click to expand...

+1
 
Intel 320 SSD in MacBook Pro quad core i7

I have 2 intel SSD 600gb drives and I'm putting both of then in my MacBook Pro. My question is when I put them in is there any way for me to know if the drives support TRIM by looking through the menu or by downloading a program? I have been doing a lot of reading via google searches. There seems to be conflicting information. I would just like to know if when LION come out will there be something in the profiler that will say "TRIM Support". Another thing, is it true that TRIM IS NOT SUPPORTED IN RAID 0 configuration?
 
I'm rollin' with an OWC (Sandforce) SSD. How well does the garbage collection actually work on these things? Is it likely that I'll see significant performance degradation over time?
 
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