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View Full Version : Maximize The Life Of Your SSD


Brad Wasson
05-25-2011, 02:00 AM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://lifehacker.com/5802838/how-to-maximize-the-life-of-your-ssd' target='_blank'>http://lifehacker.com/5802838/how-t...ife-of-your-ssd</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"All SSDs have a limited number of writes before they wear out. As we've pointed out, most modern SSDs will become outdated before they die, but that doesn't mean you can't make a few adjustments to maximize the life of your SSD-if nothing else as a safety precaution."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/wpt/auto/1306283316.usr110171.jpg" style="border: 0;" /></p><p>A Solid-State Drive (SSD) is a physical storage medium that uses microchips to store data, in a very similar way your portable USB flash drives do. Their, at least potential, advantage over the traditional "spinning disk" drives with magnetic read/write heads is that they have no moving parts, are much quieter, more durable, and are faster. They are not, however, completely fail-safe. Lifehacker has written another nice, fairly in-depth, technology article, this time on SSDs and how to maximize their lifespan. There are number of proactive steps you can take, including carefully configuring the way your operating system uses the drive, and monitoring applications that write heavily to the drive. The Read link will provide some interesting reading on these steadily proliferating drives, as well as links to additional articles they have written about this technology. It's all good reading.</p>

freitasm
05-25-2011, 02:22 AM
I've just replaced (a month or so ago April 2011) the original 500 GB HDD on my laptop with a Crucial C300 256 GB SSD.

Performance improvement is clearly visible. After POST my laptop boots Windows 7 into desktop, ready to use, in about ten to fifteen seconds. Programs just jump in front of you when opened.

Of course I did a fresh Windows 7 install, which pretty much guarantees less programs in startup (first time I "refreshed" my HP laptop since I got it a couple of years ago). It also guarantees Windows 7 will install the proper TRIM support when it recognises the installation is on a SSD.

Not cheap (about $498) but worthy as an update...

Brad Wasson
05-25-2011, 02:38 PM
Thanks for that note. It would be interesting to hear if that performance improvement continues indefinitely.

freitasm
05-25-2011, 09:01 PM
One thing to have in mind: you don't need defrag. Too many writes are bad for your SSD, even though they come with three or even five (Intel) years warranty.

I was exchanging email with a PerfectDisk person and I'm told their tool won't defrag SSDs, instead using an algorithm to consolidate empty spacve, which is all is needed really.