20 replies to this topic

[SyberSmoke]

I have been reading up on SSD's and the good, the bad, and the ugly that comes with them. The good is near instant accesses to any data on one. The bad that leads into the ugly is that if an application like to do allot of read writes to one...they die...FAST!

What I am curious about is is MWO being designed in a way so that the updater, preferences, and other transient files can have their locations altered?

So an example, Say I have an SSD as my system and have taken proper precautions to remove drive killing processes. So when I update MWO, I do not want the updates temp info to go onto the SSD. I also do not want transient files like say preferences on the SSD. And in many cases there are other files written to the Documents, AppData (Hidden Directory), and other directories. Thus increasing the wear and tear on my drive.

To those smarties out there, Yes I know that I can "Junction Points" to redirect the folder destinations to a standard HD. But for those out there with out a clue about the finer points of maximizing your SSD's life...this is why I ask.

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As a helpful thing, here is a link to an article about how to make an SSD NOT burn out in under three months flat. Enjoy!

http://lifehacker.co...ife-of-your-ssd

[Scouten]

SSD's don't die FAST but its true their life span is not as long as a HDD

the best thing you can do for your PC is to have an SSD Boot drive with enough space for a few applications. the files you are talking about are so small its not even worth looking at. the main thing you dont want on your SSD is your Page file and that is pretty much it. as long as your SSD is set up with TRIM it should last you long enough until you upgrade your rig 3-4 years down the line.


-has an SSD and runs the **** out of it no problems so far

Edited by Scouten, 02 July 2012 - 05:59 PM.

[Zynk]

Buy a flash drive with enough memory to hold game and updates, you can get them with 256GB but IMO a 64GB which starts at $30 will do.

[D3athScyth3]

I have been running an SSD as my primary drive for about 3 years, it was the primary in my gaming computer at home till that died, then spent 2 years in my work laptop, thats 8-9 hours a day every day being used, it is now in my wifes Alienware m17 as the primary OS drive and i have a new one in my Alienware m14x. so i wouldnt say they die fast, i have had hdd's die within 3 years with less use.

from my experience they are brilliant, and you get the same issues as you do with hdd's some fail, some last forever. ive been lucky so far with my 2.

Hope that puts your mind at ease

[Zynk]

Hybrid

[Kuxai]

Older ssd's certainly had the issue of burning out, most of that was contributed to the controller chip inside of them.

If your talking about wear and tear of the ssd, putting an os would be the biggest killer. Its a win loss situation.

Anything recent will not have the issue. Consider picking a 64 gig one for your os. I've bought 2 ssd's (intell and G.Skill) over the last 3 years and they both are working perfectly. Go with intell, they make the best ones out there.

15 sec full boot times are the best.

[Scouten]

Cruical m4 one hell of an SSD mainly for reads as writes are about the same as a HDD perfect for a boot drive as is what i use mine for for ALTHOUGH loading games instantly can still be a pain as you have to wait for slower people with Hard drives to catch up im looking at you starcraft 2 map is loaded within 12 seconds have to wait another 80 seconds for others to catch up

[xstrider]

I have a crucial SSD and I hate it. I mean, when I play Skyrim and enter a building it loads too fast and I have no time to get up and grab a new drink and something to eat anymore. Right guys? Guys?

Edited by xstrider, 02 July 2012 - 06:21 PM.

[Livebait]

SSD Cache by Crucial is whats on my list of tech goodies. It acts like a HDD buffer. A really big buffer! Try that if you wanna keep a spinning HDD for reliability.

Edited by Livebait, 02 July 2012 - 06:22 PM.

[D3athScyth3]

Scouten, on 02 July 2012 - 06:14 PM, said:

Cruical m4 one hell of an SSD mainly for reads as writes are about the same as a HDD perfect for a boot drive as is what i use mine for for ALTHOUGH loading games instantly can still be a pain as you have to wait for slower people with Hard drives to catch up im looking at you starcraft 2 map is loaded within 12 seconds have to wait another 80 seconds for others to catch up

Always loved the game load times, bad company 2 was the best, i could be in the game and have the first point caputered and on the way to the second before the enemy even spawned

[Vashts1985]

this only applies to writes i think. reading does not degrade the SSD

i also hear that reliability and longevity of SSD has come along way in a few years.

[C0LD]

First, unless you're creating and deleting a PLETHORA of 4k files, this shouldn't be an issue. Steps are taken to ensure your SSD lasts about 3-5 years (under normal use). For example: Wear leveling, X amount of extra memory (you don't see, used for when clusters go bad), etc. While the write cycles aren't crazy high for most consumer based items using MLC, you shouldn't have an issue.

You can do some simple things to expand the life though:

1. Move your %TEMP% directory to magetic storage (for example a set of raid 0 or raid 10 disks).
2. If it's your boot/OS drive disable (if you want) system hibernation (i do this, it's a desktop... I do it on my laptop too).
3. Move your page file to magnetic storage.
4. Buy more system RAM so you don't page memory too much.
5. Update to a 64 bit OS to take advantage of said ram, as anything above 4GB can only be data and can't execute (with windows 32-bit).
6. Don't use disk defragmentation tools on it, pointless with the architecture of an SSD.

Edited by C0LD, 02 July 2012 - 06:30 PM.

[Project_Mercy]

Modern OSes generally keep a chunk of the disk cache in memory. More memory, more disk cache. Plus, SSDs have on disk cache. There isn't as much writing to the flash chips as you might imagine. I've also run a purely SSD system for a few years, without any issues.

[W0lfnMan]

Just upgraded my laptop to a OCZ Vertex 4 128GB in anticipation of a certain upcoming game. Luckily I have a laptop with dual drive bays so I was able to keep my 750GB HDD for mass storage and install of less performance sensitive games I have. Also moved my pagefile over to the HDD along with web cache for IE, FF, and Chrome. Haven't dove deeper into pointing more files to the HDD. As pointed out by others, many of the "bad" to "ugly" issues of early SSDs have been minimized if not solved in the most recent generations.

[Havoc3D]

My SSD in my M11x laptop has been solid for 18 months, and I have a year ok on my desktop's SSD. With the desktop, since it's an option, I've moved my pagefile to a secondary HDD; I'd recommend that since it's easy and within spec (no manually editing things you really shouldn't). I might not have even moved my pagefile but that I have only 4GB of memory (more on order now!) and APB and BF3 were working my pagefile ALL the time, which would wear out an SSD faster.

For steam games, there is a program called SteamTool that easily adds symlinks to another location, so it's just select a game and send it to another drive, which is good for space saving rather than uninstalling to save space. For other games that let you choose an install location, you can always point that elsewhere; many games you can just move the whole directory out of c:\program files to somewhere else and the game will still run (APB for instance will do that, WoW did last I checked, lots more)

There are lots of hacks out there that purport to lengthen the life of your expensive SSD, but they are just that, hacks. A lot of them SHOULD work, but you can't believe everything you read on the internet. For instance you can move your user profile directory off to another disk, but this isn't a supported thing from MS and they don't recommend it. It's POSSIBLE, but you really should just put on big boy pants and manage your own files outside your user profile if you have a small SSD

EDIT: Also, looking at that lifehacker article, a lot of it is a little out of date. Win7 with a fresh install on an SSD will automatically configure a lot of things; like disabling defrag and such.

Edited by Havoc3D, 02 July 2012 - 06:46 PM.

[GamedroidX]

I wouldn't worry about wearing out of a modern(last few years) SSD, the wear leveling in them does a good job. Where I work we have a 128G OCZ Vertex SSD that has had 3 years of heavy writing done to it 24/7 and it's still going, and another 128G Vertex 2 that has had 1 year of the same treatment and is still going good.

In my opinion it's a waste of time making a game to handle writing files on SSDs. Most game files are written once when installed and maybe when an update is done and apart from that never get changed, which means they are very SSD friendly compared to other types of programs.

Also just to clarify it's writing that wears them out not reading.

[SyberSmoke]

As some people have said some of the issues have been negated. BUT you can still melt down a modern SSD. Go to neweff and check out the comments in their SSD's. The majority of the failures come from the writing of transient files...like the Search index, Browser Cache, Page File, and so on.

What people do not get is that unlike a normal HD, the SSD works by being broken up into small blocks of data, 256k I believe is the usual. So each time you write a 4k file to the SSD, that 4k goes into its very own 256k block. And once a block is written, you can not add more to it unless you take the data out and write it to a new block. Thus the reason to turn off hibernation by the way, because during the idle time the SSD will use the Trim operation to wipe "obsolete" data. ;-)

SO, how do they melt if the data can be removed? GLAD YOU ASKED!!! Simply put flash memory works by holding a charged state. One state is yes, the other is no...and some SSD's are allowed to have more states per cell. Well each time the damn things change state, there is a residual charge left in the gates...heck even reading leaves a minuscule residual charge degrading that cell...but that is negligible. Any way the more times you change states, the more residual charge builds up, and with enough...the cell can no longer change states.

(Write up at Ars Technica...Very Technical!)

So this is not something that can just be fixed unless you good at altering the fundamental nature of the universe! THUS the reason to ask the question! Since these files exist, and these issues exist...and we do not know if the launcher/updater will let us choose a place to put the updates...shouldn't companies that do create transient information take this into consideration since many people will not?

Edited by SyberSmoke, 02 July 2012 - 07:02 PM.

[DraigUK]

I got a 120GB for a Windows boot drive and it is amazing. It totally transforms your system performance and once you have one you will never go without one again. Best money I spent on a PC component by a long stretch. I keep windows 7 on mine along with Office type apps and a couple of games I currently play. I have a 2TB HDD to store the rest. Don't worry about it just get one. I use Steam extensively and move game locations regularly from the HDD to the SDD and vice versa. (SteamTool is a fantastic utility to help with this)

What I'm seriously thinking of now though is either getting a small cheap one (60GB or so will do) just for my "currently played" games, so my boot drive will be literally just for windows and office type apps.

You can get one for less than £60 now. Prices on SSD have dropped massively recently. Everyone should get an SSD as soon as they possibly can, they are simply fantastic.

[X Man]

Not all SSD's are built the same The read and writes can vary quite a lot. And failures are more prone in some models. Samsung, crucial, Corsair seem to be good drives.

[SyberSmoke]

X Man, on 02 July 2012 - 07:47 PM, said:

Not all SSD's are built the same The read and writes can vary quite a lot. And failures are more prone in some models. Samsung, crucial, Corsair seem to be good drives.

But the basic principles of how an SSD works are the same.