SSD's and how they work

[Rafalski24]

Ok so lets say I get a Intel 80 GB SSD, I am guessing that my drive will be pretty darn full considering it will have OS X SL, FCS, Photoshop, AE, etc I know having a very full Hard Drive slows it down considerably. Does this happen with SSD's? Considering I won't be writing much with the drive, guessing speeds will be really good for a while right?

thanks everyone!

-Rafalski

 

[GoCubsGo]

You're not going to want to load your drive up. I really think you need to read up on SSDs. The first place I think you need to go is here. Not understanding SSDs could cause more headaches than they're worth.

 

[Rafalski24]

surprisingly I have read that article, and while that article clearly covers reads and writes and TRIM functions, it doesn't cover so much my question. I understand how they work overall, its just how they work full. Thanks for linking me to that article, it is definitely the best SSD article out there.

 

[nanofrog]

Ok so lets say I get a Intel 80 GB SSD, I am guessing that my drive will be pretty darn full considering it will have OS X SL, FCS, Photoshop, AE, etc I know having a very full Hard Drive slows it down considerably. Does this happen with SSD's? Considering I won't be writing much with the drive, guessing speeds will be really good for a while right?

thanks everyone!

-Rafalski

As they're not mechanical, they will maintain their throughputs as they fill. But as mentioned, you don't want to fill it for other reasons. The less available space, the fewer cells are usable for remapping as they begin to go bad (wear leveling).

 

[spt]

Ok so lets say I get a Intel 80 GB SSD, I am guessing that my drive will be pretty darn full considering it will have OS X SL, FCS, Photoshop, AE, etc I know having a very full Hard Drive slows it down considerably. Does this happen with SSD's? Considering I won't be writing much with the drive, guessing speeds will be really good for a while right?

thanks everyone!

-Rafalski

The short answer: no. Since the location of the data on the disk does not matter for ssd's, it won't slow down like it does with regular harddisks.

For the long answer you have to dig into the matter: since trim functionality hasn't been implemented yet etc. your ssd will slow down a little after a while. This has to be seen in it's right perspective though: only random write performance will slow down (this is just one out of multiple different types of disk activities), and even after the slowdown random writes will easily be >10x faster than on a regular harddisk.

 

[frimple]

Read speeds are consistent, the only time write speed is noticeable affected is when the drive has to clear out a cell and then overwrite it with your new data. Also the intel drives come with about 10% extra space that's just used for this staging (it's not user accessible space) to help alleviate the problems as the drive fills up. tl;dr I don't think you'll notice much of a degradation in speed as you use it, however the programs that you listed probably won't take up 40Gigs (assuming that you'll keep your working files on another drive).

 

[Rafalski24]

I guess I was just being cautious, about how much I would use, I know I don't have all the applications that I will have on my Mac Pro on my Macbook Pro and the application folder is already 30 gigs. Thanks everyone for your help! Its been quite enlightening.
Do you guys things that the Intel drives will be on sale on Black Friday? Thats my wish is that I find it cheap at Fry's or something.

 

[VirtualRain]

Anandtech recommends having 20% free space on an SSD.

This is probably good advice for any drive.

If you look back at some of Anand's other articles, you will see that the Intel's held up much better under normal usage than other brands. However, Trim has improved things considerably, but only under Win7 in limited circumstances.

For OSX, you are best served with an Intel SSD, and sizing it to ensure you will have 20% free space.