New SSD hard drive in laptop computer what a difference in boot time

[momaka]

Re: New SSD hard drive in laptop computer what a difference in boot time

No, a SSD has a seek time of sub 0.1ms, that is their advantage, i.e. they are an order of magnitude faster than mechanical HDD's at random seeks.

Yup, you're right. I just looked at some of the benchmark tests on my test PC, and indeed most are 0.1 ms or thereabouts. Even a very old 6 GB 2.5" laptop IDE/PATA SSD of mine had sub-1 ms seek.

No, you should not do a defrag on an SSD, it is determinal to its life, an SSD does not become faster by having the data in a continuous block:

I know, but I was hoping the defrag would at least move (i.e. write/re-write) some of the files around, making the HDD faster again. I didn't do it, though, since it crossed my mind it probably won't do anything.

A way to fix it is to use some SSD manufacturers tools that can "prime" this buffer, Intel calls it something like SSD optimization in their toolbox software,
but anyway even if your SSD does not support that you can do it in a manual way:
After having done that backup do a secure erase and then write back the backup, that will take care if it a "brute force" way.
There is also a less "brute force" way by using the software "diskfresh"

You can read this article for some more in-depth details, albeit aimed at Samsung it is also valid for other brands too:
https://www.techspot.com/news/65661-...msung-ssd.html

Thank you for that information!

I will give this (diskfresh first... then a full secure erase + clone) a try when I have some more time off from work. I already cloned the SSD (onto another SSD ).

However, the more I look into the problem, the more I'm starting to think it may not be related to the SSD. In particular, if I start Outlook and close it down, then try to open it again... it won't work. Doesn't matter if I kill the Outlook.exe process or not. It just won't ever start a second time. Same goes for the proprietary monitoring software/program we use for work (which uses Net Framework and/or Visual C++ libraries, IIRC.... and it's a buggy piece of turd at best.) IDK, does that sound like a possible SSD problem? The only way I can see this to be so is if these programs have some data moved from memory into the Windows pagefile (which is on the SSD), and then data getting corrupt there??

Anyways, don't mean to hi-jack this thread with my work laptop's problems. Perhaps I'll just try the cloned SSD and see if anything changes.

[Per Hansson]

Re: New SSD hard drive in laptop computer what a difference in boot time

Also worth noting is that the Inland Pro series SSDs do NOT have cache, so they aren't even that fast compared to other SSDs. But the access/seek time compared to a regular mechanical HDD is still much smaller (a millisecond or two vs. 8-14 ms.)

No, a SSD has a seek time of sub 0.1ms, that is their advantage, i.e. they are an order of magnitude faster than mechanical HDD's at random seeks.

In any case, I'll probably clone its current image soon again, just so I have a recent backup. (And maybe do a defrag on the SSD to "refresh" some of its cells?? Sounds reasonable??)

No, you should not do a defrag on an SSD, it is determinal to its life, an SSD does not become faster by having the data in a continuous block:
That is for mechanical HDD limitations to not have the read arm hunt back and fourth thus incurring the multi millisecond latency in the first quote above.

What you should do is just use a driver (AHCI) that supports the SSD TRIM command, that way the SSD will keep track of this itself.
Some SSD's do become slower with age because their lookup table becomes really complicated, and this is worse on a SSD without cache.
The cache is NOT for speeding up data writes, it is a cache for the lookup table of where all the data is spread out.

A way to fix it is to use some SSD manufacturers tools that can "prime" this buffer, Intel calls it something like SSD optimization in their toolbox software,
but anyway even if your SSD does not support that you can do it in a manual way:
After having done that backup do a secure erase and then write back the backup, that will take care if it a "brute force" way.
There is also a less "brute force" way by using the software "diskfresh"

You can read this article for some more in-depth details, albeit aimed at Samsung it is also valid for other brands too:
https://www.techspot.com/news/65661-...msung-ssd.html

[momaka]

Re: New SSD hard drive in laptop computer what a difference in boot time

I guess I'm joining in a bit late to put down my 2 cents, but here it goes.

Last year when I started at my new job, they didn't have enough new laptops to give out to all of the techs. Since I needed one for my job, I went to the IT folks in our office and picked an old laptop from a box of retired ones - a Dell Latitude E6430 (with a 3rd gen i7, 8 GB of RAM, and Windows 7 Pro.) Anyways, the laptop belonged to a previous tech and had a few issues. Besides being extremely dirty and sticky, and its battery dead, it would also not boot reliably or boot at all most of the time. I took out its original HDD - a 500 GB Seagate - and cleaned its head amp PCB contacts. This got the HDD to boot more reliably, but the laptop was still quite slow.

So, as an experiment (and out of need), I went to my local Micro Center and grabbed the cheapest SSD I could find - an Inland Pro series 120 GB 2.5" SATA SSD for a little over $18 after taxes. Then, I cloned the original HDD to the SSD (after removing a bunch of junk, as the 500 GB had way too much crap on there and would not fit on the 120 GB SSD.)

The results: massive!
The old Seagate HDD would take about 2-3 minutes to boot to desktop and have everything loaded and ready... and sometimes longer. The SSD: 20-35 seconds tops from pressing the power button. Not only that, but loading anything while using Windows is many times faster with the SSD. It really is night and day difference! Also worth noting is that the Inland Pro series SSDs do NOT have cache, so they aren't even that fast compared to other SSDs. But the access/seek time compared to a regular mechanical HDD is still much smaller (a millisecond or two vs. 8-14 ms.)

To confirm the results from my experiment above weren't due to the flaky Seagate HDD, I also cloned the OS to a Toshiba 320 GB HDD that had good SMART parameters. The results with the Toshiba HDD weren't much different from the Seagate HDD.

So in conclusion, even that cheap Inland SSD was well worth my money, given how much booting time and battery life it has saved me (FYI, I changed the original 6-cell battery to an extended 9-cell battery, as the original would not hold even for 5 minutes, while the 9-cell did about 2 hours when I first installed it.) It's also worth mentioning here that I boot my work laptop 2-5 times per day... and sometimes even more (up to 10 on busy days.) Thus, I've put a lot of read cycles on that cheap SSD. It's been a year more or less since I put it in the laptop, and it's still holding up OK.

Lately, however, I've been noticing that Windows will sometimes load a bit slower on boot (take an additional 10-30 seconds) or load certain programs more slowly than before. Not sure if the SSD is starting to wear out or what. I also had my first "soft crash" yesterday, where the laptop just didn't want to load anything and was just sitting there. Of course, this could also be due to the interface, because even without an HDD/SSD, sometimes this laptop would sit at a black screen and never get to POST or would freeze on HDD detection in POST (and I've seen some other Dell Latitudes from that era have had this problem too.) So it may or may not be my SSD at fault here. In any case, I'll probably clone its current image soon again, just so I have a recent backup. (And maybe do a defrag on the SSD to "refresh" some of its cells?? Sounds reasonable??) Coincidentally, when the whole slowness at bootup started, we also had a bunch of software updates that week for our VPN software. So that may have something to do with the slowness too. While I do have MS Windows updates off, our work laptops do have Symantec AV, which seems to like hoard quite a bit of the HDD activity.

In any case, even if that SSD dies on me, I will happily go back to the store and get another one. There is just no way I can go back to old mechanical HDD in a laptop - or at least on my work laptop with all of the company bloatware on there. (Though in all fairness, our company is pretty mild compared to many others, so I shouldn't complain too much here.)

Now on the desktop side, I don't mind the good old mechanical HDDs. Of course, my desktops are for my personal use, and they don't have automatic updates, anti-virus, or any other software that updates automatically and slows down the bootup times. So because of that, most of my desktops boot quite fast (especially the ones with single-platter 250 GB WD Blues - about as fast as my work laptop with its SSD.)

[lti]

Re: New SSD hard drive in laptop computer what a difference in boot time

Well actually for cell phones, cheap is good. I see lots of people toting around phones with cracked screens - this is not fault of the design... but sh*t happens and easier to replace...

I don't think the expensive phones are worth it, but that's because it seems like paying more just gets you more pointless crap that only exists to pad out the marketing and give the manufacturer an excuse to release a new model. Why do I need six cameras?

The cheap SSD I got didn't work out, as I predicted earlier.

It should saturate the drive interface (and probably cause stability problems, considering the "quality" of the motherboard).

It's stable, but it's slower than the old hard drive when it's installed in that computer. I loaded an image onto the drive through a USB converter, and it wrote at the speed I expected. When it's in the computer, the continuous read speed is 19MB/s.

[Curious.George]

Re: New SSD hard drive in laptop computer what a difference in boot time

u could also just do it anyway since the drives are free and see how long they last in the name of science and also to see if they last the claimed 500 or 1000 or whatever p/e cycles as claimed by samsung in their 840 evo tlc datasheet. hehe... i believe ssds have a SMART parameter that records total LBAs written.

The question will be how much life has been used, already. Even rewriting the entire image on boot would last YEARS, given that I rarely use a laptop.

Or, I could recode the image reloader to only write portions of the image that have changed in the belief that most of the OS (and, thus, the image on the media as well as the image to be restored) won't be "touched" in normal use.

another thing u could do is to make the ssd read only after loading a boot image on it. is there an ata command to make an ssd read only or by hacking the ssd firmware? i'm really interested in this as well for a personal project.

The problem, there, is the swap area (page file). If you disable paging, then you limit what the laptop can do before a panic(). (most laptops have small RAM)

then u can write, as in code, the boot loader to load the entire os image into ram and run off ram like u did with your other job where the flash is only written to and updated only once a year for updates and the os runs entirely off ram.

Other project is entirely different. I designed the hardware, I wrote the POST/BIST, I wrote the loader, OS, etc. So, I know EVERYTHING about the system.

By contrast, I don't know ANYTHING about what happens in windows after the disk spins up. All I know is where to put things on the disk so Windows will find them!

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: New SSD hard drive in laptop computer what a difference in boot time

u could also just do it anyway since the drives are free and see how long they last in the name of science and also to see if they last the claimed 500 or 1000 or whatever p/e cycles as claimed by samsung in their 840 evo tlc datasheet. hehe... i believe ssds have a SMART parameter that records total LBAs written.

another thing u could do is to make the ssd read only after loading a boot image on it. is there an ata command to make an ssd read only or by hacking the ssd firmware? i'm really interested in this as well for a personal project.

then u can write, as in code, the boot loader to load the entire os image into ram and run off ram like u did with your other job where the flash is only written to and updated only once a year for updates and the os runs entirely off ram.

[Curious.George]

Re: New SSD hard drive in laptop computer what a difference in boot time

umm dont u frequently overwrite the main drive of those disposable laptops to create a clean copy or clean os installation? overwriting the entire capacity of the ssd with an image may increase the write amplification on the flash and shorten its lifespan esp. since its tlc flash.

With the existing "spinning rust" drives, that is the case -- each boot restores a fresh copy of the OS.

But, I'd have to install that hack in any new "boot media"; so I could choose to NOT install it on an SSD just to get a feel for whether it makes any practical difference in usage. I can always reinstall the rust drive to regain that previous behavior.

I'm also looking into just putting them in external enclosures and making "big thumb drives" out of them. I suspect that may offer the bigger improvement, for me, given how little I use the laptops and that I tend not to "wait" for a machine to boot (turn it on BEFORE heading off to get a beverage or a trip to the bathroom, etc. -- it's ready-and-waiting before you return, regardless of how long it takes to boot!)

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: New SSD hard drive in laptop computer what a difference in boot time

umm dont u frequently overwrite the main drive of those disposable laptops to create a clean copy or clean os installation? overwriting the entire capacity of the ssd with an image may increase the write amplification on the flash and shorten its lifespan esp. since its tlc flash.

[Curious.George]

Re: New SSD hard drive in laptop computer what a difference in boot time

Just by coincidence, I received a "care package", today, with three 250G Samsung 840EVOs. I may try installing in a couple of my "disposable" laptops to see how they fare.

[Curious.George]

Re: New SSD hard drive in laptop computer what a difference in boot time

Incidentally the solid state storage in the phone is still working. I don't know when it will start failing when it runs out of erase cycles.

In consumer devices, there's usually not enough "activity" to wear out the FLASH. I don't do ANY wear-leveling in my current design; the FLASH is only written when the firmware is updated (once a year?) as the products actually execute out of RAM.

It also depends greatly on whether its SLC, MLC, TLC, QLC, etc. And, if the "storage device" is internally overprovisioned.

Finally, how smart the FTL is in distributing writes and detecting read-wear.

[BTW, it's "segue"]

[dmill89]

Re: New SSD hard drive in laptop computer what a difference in boot time

Well actually for cell phones, cheap is good. I see lots of people toting around phones with cracked screens - this is not fault of the design... but sh*t happens and easier to replace...

I got to admit that I have deep scratches in my 10 year old phone. Screen's made of plastic so no crack...

X2, I never spend more than $100 or so on a phone. I've found that the "cheap" phones hold up much better then the pretty but fragile "flagship" models (with their massive amounts of unprotected glass and internal batteries), and at that price they are essentially disposable so if it does get damaged it is no big deal to replace it. The only time I've broken a screen on one of these "cheap" plastic screen phones is when it fell out of my belt clip while I was changing my HVAC filter (the unit is in the garage attic) where it fell at least 10 ft. onto a hard concrete floor below.

[eccerr0r]

Re: New SSD hard drive in laptop computer what a difference in boot time

They also want it cheap, which makes it worse. Anything that will actually last a while is "ugly" and "poor value." The cheap form-over-function junk is "better" until it dies, and then the conspiracies start flying.

Well actually for cell phones, cheap is good. I see lots of people toting around phones with cracked screens - this is not fault of the design... but sh*t happens and easier to replace...

I got to admit that I have deep scratches in my 10 year old phone. Screen's made of plastic so no crack...

Incidentally the solid state storage in the phone is still working. I don't know when it will start failing when it runs out of erase cycles.

"segwaying" (ugh...hate that term) back on topic... the oldest flash main storage media I have is a 32GB (mPCIe-SATA) in my eeePC. I have no idea how many erase cycles it has on it now as its SMART data isn't documented. Wonder when it will fail, but the SMART field is still 100% ...

I also have a 32GB "disk accelerator" SSD in my other laptop which has been disabled and used as swap. It actually has significant wear on it now, surprisingly enough. Still has more than 80% of its life left. I probably should set swap to the laptop's main SSD which I think it still says 100% life left as it hasn't reached 1% of erase cycles.

The oldest 2.5" regular SSD I've ever had has 98% of its life left (128GB)... I gave it away but still have remote access to it. That laptop uses it for swap, too.

[Curious.George]

Re: New SSD hard drive in laptop computer what a difference in boot time

I think a lot of this has been mitigated by better management systems built into firmware (mind you generally not cheaper brands). That does even writes across the logical flash

Yes. But you're still faced with the fact that you're now "evenly" wearing out a medium that has a fixed "durability". You can't hope that the OS (because it isn't being "updated") will be "persistent" and without error.

[Uranium-235]

Re: New SSD hard drive in laptop computer what a difference in boot time

You can work-around the write limitation by overprovisioning (hiding extra capacity that isn't normally visible to the user). But, this adds cost -- which tends to reserve the feature for higher price-points.

But, there is also a "read disturb" aspect of FLASH in that data can become corrupted just by reading it (or, worse -- reading "neighboring" data). With MLC/TLC/QLC FLASH at ever decreasing geometries, its often the case that you're trying to count JUST "dozens" of electrons to distinguish between data states.

So, even if you use an SSD as your "system disk" and never write to it (move paging file to another volume or disable paging entirely), the SSD will still need to "refresh" data that you assumed was "read only". So, it must WRITE to other "spare" sectors to restore the integrity of the degrading data.

At the same time, data sectors that see very little use are having their rewritability "wasted". So, the controller can opt to deliberately move their contents to someplace else so the sectors can be put to use on data that needs to be "refreshed" (written or rewritten).

This leaves you exposed to the possibility that the data that you thought was read-only and "immutable" might not be available when you need it (slow read) or, perhaps, may not be rewritten, successfully.

This behavior doesn't seem to be present in spinning rust -- at least not in the same frequency as the medium wears.

Finally, SSD controller software has been notoriously buggy, over the years, as the algorithms used have to be tuned for the types of FLASH that they will control.

I think a lot of this has been mitigated by better management systems built into firmware (mind you generally not cheaper brands). That does even writes across the logical flash

[Curious.George]

Re: New SSD hard drive in laptop computer what a difference in boot time

I wouldn't say that yet! SSDs, especially for ones that are less than $60-ish, you're at a higher risk of silent OS corruption. Check the event log for what look like drive-related errors, if you use Windows.
Check for new corruption errors that suddenly appear out of nowhere! And most SSDs have a notable limitation of the number of writes, especially for SSDs less than 240 GB.

You can work-around the write limitation by overprovisioning (hiding extra capacity that isn't normally visible to the user). But, this adds cost -- which tends to reserve the feature for higher price-points.

But, there is also a "read disturb" aspect of FLASH in that data can become corrupted just by reading it (or, worse -- reading "neighboring" data). With MLC/TLC/QLC FLASH at ever decreasing geometries, its often the case that you're trying to count JUST "dozens" of electrons to distinguish between data states.

So, even if you use an SSD as your "system disk" and never write to it (move paging file to another volume or disable paging entirely), the SSD will still need to "refresh" data that you assumed was "read only". So, it must WRITE to other "spare" sectors to restore the integrity of the degrading data.

At the same time, data sectors that see very little use are having their rewritability "wasted". So, the controller can opt to deliberately move their contents to someplace else so the sectors can be put to use on data that needs to be "refreshed" (written or rewritten).

This leaves you exposed to the possibility that the data that you thought was read-only and "immutable" might not be available when you need it (slow read) or, perhaps, may not be rewritten, successfully.

This behavior doesn't seem to be present in spinning rust -- at least not in the same frequency as the medium wears.

Finally, SSD controller software has been notoriously buggy, over the years, as the algorithms used have to be tuned for the types of FLASH that they will control.

[lti]

Re: New SSD hard drive in laptop computer what a difference in boot time

The fun is that the consumer *wants* the flimsiness so two birds killed in one stone.

They also want it cheap, which makes it worse. Anything that will actually last a while is "ugly" and "poor value." The cheap form-over-function junk is "better" until it dies, and then the conspiracies start flying.

I'm still using a Samsung Galaxy S7, and I haven't had to replace anything (even the battery). Since the replacement batteries available are cheap knockoffs that will probably be worse than the old one, I will probably replace the phone completely once the battery dies.

Back on topic, the first SSD I ever had was a Samsung 970 Evo. That was a nice upgrade from the cheapest hard drive available in 2012. I'm waiting on an Adata SU650 for a computer I don't care much about. It's a really cheap SSD, but it's surely better than a hard drive from 2008 with a few hundred bad sectors. It should saturate the drive interface (and probably cause stability problems, considering the "quality" of the motherboard).

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: New SSD hard drive in laptop computer what a difference in boot time

I had an ADATA Su850 that i bought for 20$. the best 20$ i'v ever spent. Blazing fast and never had issues with booting or whatever. HDD era is gone

I wouldn't say that yet! SSDs, especially for ones that are less than $60-ish, you're at a higher risk of silent OS corruption. Check the event log for what look like drive-related errors, if you use Windows.
Check for new corruption errors that suddenly appear out of nowhere! And most SSDs have a notable limitation of the number of writes, especially for SSDs less than 240 GB.

[clearchris]

Re: New SSD hard drive in laptop computer what a difference in boot time

Yep, the flimsy machines is indeed designed obsolescence in of itself. The fun is that the consumer *wants* the flimsiness so two birds killed in one stone.

I still use a 10 year old pre-android/apple smartphone.

Impressive. I used my Samsung Galaxy S3 for I think 6 years. Replaced a whole bunch of stuff on it, and my daughter uses it now. Getting ready to do a screen and home button replace. Oven should come in handy for that. My wife's phone is awaiting parts for repair, so I swapped her my oneplus 6 and I borrowed the S3 back, and it's still pretty good for an ancient phone. Helps that I installed lineage though.

If you do upgrade, just make sure to get a phone with an unlocked bootloader. You can install whatever you want on it then. Smartphones are pretty incredible, my oneplus actually has as much RAM as my laptop.

[eccerr0r]

Re: New SSD hard drive in laptop computer what a difference in boot time

Personally, with computers, which are mostly mobile these days, they don't have to design obsolescence in, they break from physcial shock. That said, I don't know who prefers their phone 1mm slimmer (except for phone reviewers, omg a 2mm bezel, that's so 2016!) instead of having a more physically sturdy device.

Though an argument could be made that these super slim phones are planned obsolescence.

Yep, the flimsy machines is indeed designed obsolescence in of itself. The fun is that the consumer *wants* the flimsiness so two birds killed in one stone.

I still use a 10 year old pre-android/apple smartphone. It too is affected by designed obsolescence. Whole bunch of stuff is broken on it, alas I keep on using it, no, I refuse to go to phones that do what the companies want them to do...

(BTW, one of the many problems of my phone is that its GPS is broken...so at best they could triangulate by cell towers, if there's enough of them in range...if...)

[Uranium-235]

Re: New SSD hard drive in laptop computer what a difference in boot time

I can't find mention of the 850 anywhere, only the 800