SSD + ITM (New use?)

Hey I was wondering if anyone knew a way to convert Intel's turbo memory into a usable disk drive. It would be very beneficial to use turbo memory as a place to put your pagefile. Any input would be appreciated!

 

keeping your ssd safe? from what?

 

SSDs unlike standard drives have a lifespan. The more the drive is used, the slower and less stable it becomes. Using pagefile for instance is always in use hence it'll diminish the lifespan of the drive.

 

Wondering if theres a way I can put my turbo memory to good use without lugging around and extra drive for my pagefile.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5496996#post5496996

 

absolute utter bull. sorry. the write cycles of an ssd allow it to work for much longer than the rest of your laptop. jus tdon't care about it. stupid paranoya.

 

Better to be safe than sorry. Thanks for the link vostro.

 

no, this is not about "safe or sorry", this is about understanding that something is simply completely useless.

this is about not being stupid paranoid.

an asteroid could hit your head and kill you. now better don't ever leave your house anymore!! it COULD HAPPEN!!

drama pure.

you just CAN NOT WRITE THAT MUCH ON YOUR SSD THAT IT WILL DIE. YOU CAN'T.

 

Um okay then. Ill do it out of curiosity then..

 

out of curiousity, take your calc out, and compute how much you have to write onto your ssd to "kill it".

hint: 10000 x 256gb. then measure, how much gb/day you write onto your page file (hint, not even close to 1gb).

to help you: you have to write around 2.5 Petabytes of data.

i don't know about your ssd exactly, but at a write speed of 200MB/s, that's 150 days of full speed writing onto the disk. now how much do you write to your disk all day long? even while asleep?

 

Well if it is really 10000x256gb your right it isnt a concern. Then this thread is useless, thanks.

 

yes it is like that

each cell can be rewritten 10000 times for MLC (more or less).

and that means your whole ssd can get rewritten 10000 times.

a bit less, as it is not perfect at wear leveling (a.k.a. balancing the writes towards all the cells). but it's close enough.

 

Close is fine I'll probably have updated to whatever new technology is out by the time the first cell wears out. These retarded sites made SSDs sound like they would die after 2 years.

 

yes. because drama results in more readers. any news and reports anywhere in tv, magazines, etc, is based around the same.

since all the ears, each pc magazine has on it's title page "tweaks to get windows finally fast the way you want it" in one or another way..

marketing, simple marketing. they want you to read the story. if it's more dramatic, it's more read-worthy.

that's why i like math. it works, it's simple. and you can't "dramatize it".

 

the calculation might not be that simple, with TRIM or GC, when you delete a piece of data, the certain cells have to get a write operation soon or later even without further write operation. that means each computer "write" instruction actually result in two "write" for the cell. so the life span for a cell is already half for write:5000. apart from that, when you write 100 byte of data, the whole allocation unit (4096 bytes) might have to get write operation, this results in further decrease of life span... so we can't actually translate the amount of write data into SSD life span, it must be much shorter than the theoretical (HD capacity)x10000/daily writing data...

 

omg, you're right. DRAMA ALERT!!!

you still can't even get close to killing your ssd, even by changing the amount of time by a factor 2, or 4, or 10.

 

oh, and trim doesn't change a thing here, btw, too. trim changes WHEN deletion occurs. but not "if". without trim, it happens at the latest possible moment: at the overwrite. with trim, it happens before. the amount of cell-rewrites doesn't change. it can't.

 

if the factor is 100...

 

it isn't. no matter how much drama-factorisation you do, it never is. on an intel ssd, the factor is documented to be 1.1, others vary.

 

1.1 is simply senseless, can't trust this number for sure.

 

read up how that stuff works and it's NOT senseless.

but crying around instead, stating "has to be a lie", that is.

 

Would just like to point out to the OP that Intel rates it's 80GB G2 X25-M for up to 20GB writes per day constantly for five years. That is impressive, but, like the OP stated, by that time he would probably have moved to something better anyway.

What has not been pointed out in this thread, though I agree that cell life is not the (huge) issue it seems at first blush, is that the 20GB writes Intel claims is not for only what we write to the drive, but also what the O/S itself generates too.

This is a very important distinction to keep in mind. And all of a sudden those 20GB per day can be very small for specific workflows.

For most 'normal' users though - it is a non issue.

 

if you refer to this kind of factor on the following site, then we were talking different things.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631&p=2

 

well, no clue what you want to talk about, then.. a cell can be rewritten 10000 times. to rewrite 256gb worth of cells, you have to write 2.56 petabytes of data.

obviously, there's a difference between the actual data written on an ssd, and what you "think, gets written". the os writes more than you. when you save a file, you care about the data of the file. but the os updates the file system, too, writes the new file name and it's attributes, too, etc.

so there is os-overhead (tiller stated that, too). but all that stuff is not much, actually. discs are mostly idle nearly the whole day.

so please enlighten me, what else do you mean.

 

one example, when using HP expresscard to watch (not record) digital TV on my laptop, although i didn't instruct any write operation, the hard drive keeps writing all the time (with traditional mechanical hard drive, this kind of constant writing operation raised HD temperature from 35C to 43C). how can you calculate the factor of this kind of writing? maybe it writes 200G per day or even more when i actually write nothing on my side. we can never estimate how OS write in a factor vs what we intend to write.

 

it most likely writes to buffer/timeshift. and then, it writes @ the typical streaming bandwidths. talking maybe 2Mbits/s, or 10Mbits/s depending on the video material (rather blind guesses right now, i'm tired), this might result in 100GB a day, if on 24/7. indeed, amazing much. that means that disk would be dead after 70 years.

with your 200GB a day, we'd talk about 35 years.

add a random factor 10 (so we talk about 2TB each day?!??), and we still would have 3.5 years. in 3.5 years, anybody laughts at that ssd, and the OP could just buy a similar one for 10$ in the next store.

 

actually, yes, you do, by running that app, and it sure is documented how that app accesses the disk (if not, it's easily measurable).

it is something you intend to write. and even if not, it's not something the OS writes. it's something some strange app writes. the os itself does NOT write much. often, but never much.

 

for 160G intel G2, 20GB per day, intel only guarantees 5 years, then for 200G per day, only guarantees half year?

 

In fact, ALL drive have a "life span." Thus far, there is no data to support the level of diminished use to be any greater than that of tradition HD drives.

 

intel officially only guarantees that. but they documented that their ssd should last much much longer. but it's hard to guarantee 100 years for tech-hw. this got discussed earlier (and the why, too).

yes, they won't guarant your way of abusing the disk. doesn't change the math that there SHOULD NOT BE AN ISSUE AT ALL.

the intel disk, at 20gb per day, should last for around 80000 days, or 220 years. they just don't guarantee it. imagine doing so, and then get sued in 200 years as some stupid data got lost as the ssd now died.


btw, no chip vendor ever supports their chips for more than 5 years or so, as there is a quite high chance that the chips die after 10 years due to aging. something tiny in there could just break, killing the whole thing. most of the time, it doesn't happen. but guarantees are about 100% of the time.

so intel would be stupid to make longer guarantees than what they learned about hw. and this would even be true while you don't even touch the ssd during those 5 years, ever.

 

we have seen many memory module producers offer life time warranty, if the reality could be this simple as this simple math goes, they can easily offer 10 years warranty rather than 5 years...

 

in fact, intel only offers 3 years warranty....

 

but they don't have to. but paranoya is not the reason. don't know if intel has other guarantees actually in other situations.

but afaik, it was that some standartisation defined that an ssd should last 5 years with 20gb each day written to it. and intel followed that. i don't have sources, but it was resently discussed in the main ssd thread. intel by itself said we easily surpass those requirements, but as those are what's "needed", sort of, we guarantee that.

that's like i guarantee you that i reply to your post in, at latest, one week. i know that most likely, i will reply in some minutes. but if one week is needed, then i will guarantee that.

 

you're messing up different guarantees...

 

just do a reverse calculation for the factor, with 20G per day, 10k cycles life span, 160G capacity, 5 years, what will be the factor? 43.8...

 

for 80G capacity, factor will be 87...

 

dream on with your funky factors.. they are just random guarantees. mostly arbitary set up. they don't have to match with the numbers. but you just don't want to understand that.. sad.

 

that's the reality. it's not randomly chosen for how long warranty should go. it's calculated with more reality factors which affect life span of SSD.

 

While I completely agree technically with davepermen, I also think that "early adoption" is not for everyone's psyche SSDs are still at the early adoption stage, until they actually start coming stock with your computer at a reasonable premium. No offense to anyone's beliefs, but let's face it, there are probably a majority of the world's population who don't believe/"trust" science or math -- and that's just the way it is.

There is not doubt, SSDs are certainly the wave of mobile computing, but like I said, there would be those who would rationalize things to any extent against "early adoption", because there's a "perceived" risk that they are not willing to accept.

 

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=48918

 

no. and that's what you don't WANT to get. they even EXPLICITELY stated they support much more than what they put into the guarantee.

so state what ever you want..

 

yeah, because science or math is always so mythical and not something everyone can control that it's just stupid brain logic that works ALWAYS. better follow hype, and magic stories, and rumours and such..

i hate it, but yes, most don't want to think when considering statements. logic is heavily underrated in the todays world. which is irritating, espencially on a notebookforum. notebooks are logic-based devices, now, not?

which is just stupid. believing other stuff works just because it worked for a lot before doesn't make much sense. random failures are always existing, and just that: random. it can happen to anyone. but chance is low.

and btw, ssd early adopters are now around 2 years old. i wasn't even one of the early adopters. so people should get over it. the early days are long gone.

 

oh, and, people know it cost money, but it would do them good. but costing money is bad, so they find everything they can point at that supports their belief of not being worth paying for. even crap false statements, just to make them feel good not having spent the money on this device. nobody wants to feel bad to have made the wrong choise.

people love to believe anything to get support that they have not made the wrong step.

 

science and math are only part of whole factors, engineering quality and other factors such as controller algorithm play also role in this game. there are still lots of work to be done in this field and that's the reality of "early adoption".

 

blabla

all excuses.

ssds are nothing NEW in terms of fabrication. flash is an old hat. sata is an old hat. the only thing that is new is the actual controller chip. and it's firmware.

 

Some strong words by Dave, but he's right.

Intel OFFICIALLY guarantees 20GB writes/day for 5 years. They UNOFFICIALLY state it can do 100GB/day for 5 years. I doubt any consumer even writes 100GB/day though.

I had my Intel X25-M Gen 1 80GB drive 2 months after official release. Since then, I reinstalled on XP 3 times, and on 7, twice.

Intel SSD Toolbox says Host Writes = 1.73TB

With the conservative 20GB writes/day, after 5 years, that's 36TB. For me I'll never be able to reach the limit.

20GB writes/day is A LOT. If you do things like watch videos, it mostly needs to do reading.

-Video = Mostly reading
-Internet Surfing = Each sites take maybe few MB
-Games = Most writes are done for updating your profiles/settings, any MAJOR writes are probably used up by the RAM/VRAM anyway

That leaves things like if you are a professional photographer or records movies, or even downloads frequently.

Even then, how many users REALLY write 20GB worth of data in average, EVERY, SINGLE, DAY? After a day of work, you take a break, go eat, sleep, or just surf the net, go on holidays and your average will go down.

About platter hard drive reliability: Within the last 3 months I changed my stance towards regular hard drives completely. They are unreliable, slow piece of crap. When they "fail", most really just slow down. Complain about lack of TRIM or SSD slowdowns when those dying platter HDD based systems start to take 5 mins to boot and programs load up too slow it times out.

 

hm the toolbox shows that for gen1 ssds, too? cool. have to look at it

 

http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-708741.html

 

omg, random devices fail!! news at 11!

this is just normal, now?.. anything can fail, that's why we have a backup system.. or should have, at least.



awesome quote from over there:

this shows internet panic hype at it's best

 

That's a compatibility problem. The problem exists far more on Nvidia chipsets and for some reason, Apple devices(one reason not to get one ), probably because they use proprietary hardware and a different OS. Somehow the controller gets confused and stops working.

Yes it does. I don't get TRIM but all the other options work. Oh, and when people say its Toolbox's fault that G2's had a bricking problem, they are wrong. The Toolbox itself isn't faulty, the firmware was faulty and probably using the TRIM makes it worse.

I use the first release Toolbox.