My subjective experience with SSD

Back in 2009, in October, after opening and re-examining (after a long disregard for this topic because of its then instability) many and many articles about then_ boldly released to the mainstream SSD technology, I decided to buy myself such a disk in home computer. Very much to the place at the time to Russia just arrived drive Intel SSD X-25M second generation (G2), announced only in July of that year. As it turned out in all respects, these drives were deprived of many of the shortcomings of the first generation, I don’t even remember what they are.
Two days to search and voila, in some company that apparently purchases components in small batches and carries almost a gray one across the border (iron is something new and unusual for 2009), the required disk was found on the outskirts of Moscow, I remember now: 10,000 rubles for 80 gigabytes, but I could be wrong. The disc was checked by labeling on the fact that it was the 2nd generation purchased. Then inserted into the computer.
What came of it - under the cut.

What came of it

Any serious business requires a strategic approach and planning. In the same way, I also treated the work with the new technology, knowing from the articles all its strengths (speed) and weaknesses (wear, instability). In this connection, the strategy for working with the disc was developed:

- OS is on SSD
- All programs are on the SSD
- swap file on SSD (not a very good solution, but I wanted speed)
- user profile and all program settings (Application Settings) on SSD
- The desktop remained on the SSD, but I changed the approach to working with the desktop, if earlier it was for me really “desktop” I kept everything on it and even downloading files from the browser went to the desktop, now I only kept there a couple of important documents.

- Movies, music, games, all sorts of archives and collections, disk images, documents - everything falls on the second big HDD screw left after the agrade. In fact, everything that is opened by any program like File-> Open - everything must lie on the HDD. Including source codes of programs on which I work and user documents. All temporary folders of torrents, jumps from browsers - everything falls on the HDD in the directories selected for this.
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Someone who says that he is bleeding from the nose is important so that the film can be read from the disk at least at a speed of 100 megabytes per second, or to record the swing torrent at least at a speed of 70 megabytes per second - let the first one throw a stone at me. HDD speeds with head enough for movies and torrents. The system was thus perfectly balanced at the speed of everything. The download just skyrocketed. Work with the system turned on also became an order of magnitude more pleasant - the programs opened instantly. The fact that these programs for work, after several clicks, opened an hour and a half film or a 100 page document per hour of reading in 0.5 seconds, although this time could be reduced to 0.1, I didn’t care at all.

Then there was a new firmware for the disk, which brought TRIM functionality, were new utilities from Intel, there was an article right there on Habré “SSD optimization for Windows” ( http://habrahabr.ru/blogs/microsoft/64773/ ) from which I took something, something not ... There were upgrades and experiments.

The computer worked 24 hours, 7 days a week, without going to sleep and hibernate (well, I like working with computers so as not to turn on for a long time), only the monitor went to DPMS-sleep.

The system, after installing all the programs, took about 40 gigabytes (out of 80) over time and never even grew to 50.

In the middle of 2010, I bought myself a MacBook Pro, and I sold a desktop computer (without an SSD drive). So the circumstances. And of course, the first thing I did was spin my new MacBook Pro and replace the native screw with my SSD, and put the removed screw into the USB box and implemented the same scheme - OS, programs, settings on SSD; data on the HDD.
On the laptop, by the way, I first installed Windows 7, well, I got used to it.
After that, I also worked 24 to 7 with a laptop. During the day I worked, I charged at night without turning it off. Those. The laptop also never turned off and did not go to sleep.
After some time I climbed on Mac OS X, it really didn’t really change anything in the style of my work (all the same 24 on 7 included).

Magically, Mac OS X with all programs also occupies 38 gigabytes, and will probably swell up to 40 - 50 in six months and will stabilize on it.

Conclusion, subjective conclusions

What can I say in conclusion? .. I am still writing from this laptop, from this SSD screw that went through two computers, three OS (Windows XP, Windows 7, Mac OS X) which in October will be two years from the beginning of use (t It is now about a year and nine months of uninterrupted work) and the last time I booted into Windows (about a month ago, there are no Intel utilities on Mac OS X) the Toolbox showed screw health at 98%, like the entire last year.

Thanks to the inventors of this brilliant technology, thanks to the Intel company that made such a reliable product, everything works just fine!
Now I am absolutely sure that I will buy a new generation of Intel SSD (generation 320, also for 80 gigabytes) into my new computer after selling my current macbook.

Additional materials

I attach a short report from some SMART data reader under Mac OS X:

location: /dev/disk0
partition count: 1
partitions: MacOSX,
SMART Support: Supported
Last SMART Error: *not set*
Model Family: Intel X18-M/X25-M/X25-V G2 SSDs
Model: INTEL SSDSA2M080G2GC
Serial Number: CVPO929300JR080BGN
Firmware Version: 2CV102M3
Capacity: 80.03 GB
ATA Version: 7
ATA Standard: ATA/ATAPI-7 T13 1532D revision 1
Health: Passed
Overall Health: PASSED
Offline Data Status: 0
Self Test Status: 0
Offline Data Collection Time: 1
Data Collection Capabilities: 71
SMART Capabilities: 3
Error Logging Capabilities: 1
Short Self Test Time: 1
Long Self Test Time: 1
Conveyance Self Test Time: 1
Attribute Log Revision: 5
Attribute Count: 13
Attributes:
ID# ATTRIBUTE NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED FAILED RAW VALUE
3 Spin Up Time 0x0020 100 100 000 Old age Offline Never 0
4 Start/Stop Count 0x0030 100 100 000 Old age Offline Never 0
5 Reallocated Sector Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old age Always Never 0
9 Power On Hours 0x0032 100 100 000 Old age Always Never 13874
12 Power Cycle Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old age Always Never 126
192 Unsafe_Shutdown_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old age Always Never 42
225 Host_Writes_32MiB 0x0030 100 100 000 Old age Offline Never 55694
226 Workld_Media_Wear_Indic 0x0032 100 100 000 Old age Always Never 8565790
227 Workld_Host_Reads_Perc 0x0032 100 100 000 Old age Always Never 1
228 Workload_Minutes 0x0032 100 100 000 Old age Always Never 3426779174
232 Available_Reservd_Space 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always Never 0
233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0032 100 100 000 Old age Always Never 0
184 End-to-End_Error 0x0033 100 100 090 Pre-fail Always Never 0
Error Log Version: 1
Error Count: 0