Question: SSDs, writing files

[bigwig]

One of the problems I have with flash thumb drives is that when you've been using them for a while, all the memory cells become "dirty". When that happens, writes to the drive become slow as molasses as the drive is forced to do reset-empty-cell-then-copy operations on every memory cell you write to. Since SSDs are also based on flash, do they also have this problem?

 

[Zortrium]

One of the problems I have with flash thumb drives is that when you've been using them for a while, all the memory cells become "dirty". When that happens, writes to the drive become slow as molasses as the drive is forced to do reset-empty-cell-then-copy operations on every memory cell you write to. Since SSDs are also based on flash, do they also have this problem?

Yes -- SSDs degrade over time as you write to them. The degree of this, however, depends greatly on the particular drive selected, since the disk controllers can be quite different. A quality drive like the OCZ Vertex 2 will show much less degradation than a lot of the cheaper and older SSDs like those that shipped in the original MBAs.

Do some googling and you'll find much more info on this topic than you're looking for.

 

[bigwig]

Yes -- SSDs degrade over time as you write to them.

Is the dropoff extreme? It was like dropped off a cliff on my thumb drives.

 

[Transporteur]

Is the dropoff extreme? It was like dropped off a cliff on my thumb drives.

As already being said, it all depends on the specific controller the drive uses. There is no general number.

For example, Intel and Sandforce based drives do not degrade at all (at least not to an extent that would affect the use of the drive, it is recognisable in benchmarks, not in real world applications, though).
The old Indilinx based drives (still used by Apple these days) degrade quite much, though. You should check anandtech.com for specific numbers on the drives you're looking at.

 

[grooveattack]

They will degrade slower than a normal hard drive. i have been told numerous times (i am unsure if this is fact) that a normal hard drive will fail way before you see problems with an ssd.

i personally use this one:
http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-vertex-2-sata-ii-3-5-ssd.html

and have heard good things about this one:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/inte...xtreme_SSD_Sandforce/Solid_State_Raid_Edition

SSD's are a great upgrade, far better than normal hard drives.

 

[toxic]

As already being said, it all depends on the specific controller the drive uses. There is no general number.

For example, Intel and Sandforce based drives do not degrade at all (at least not to an extent that would affect the use of the drive, it is recognisable in benchmarks, not in real world applications, though).
The old Indilinx based drives (still used by Apple these days) degrade quite much, though. You should check anandtech.com for specific numbers on the drives you're looking at.

Indilinx drives were the best non-Intel drives from a couple years ago. it was the old JMicron drives that were crap, and what Apple was using.

right now most drives use Micron, SandForce, or the newest Indilinx iteration. all of them are good, though Indilinx is the slowest. not unexpected since it's last-generation technology. the next-gen Intel SSDs are supposed to be released sooner or later, too.