VOGONS


First post, by bobsmith

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So I understand that modern SSDs don't really need TRIM, but I have this Samsung SSD, manufactured 2016 and I'm debating putting it in my PIII machine with a StarTech IDE to SATA adapter for better disk speeds than the Seagate HDD that's already in there. Does anyone have anything to say on whether the lack of TRIM would be an issue, and would rloew's TRIM tool help any?

PIII : ASUS CUSL2-C, Pentium III @ 733MHz (Coppermine), Voodoo3 3000 AGP, 384 MB SDR, Audigy 2 ZS,
C2D : ASUS P5Q, Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3GHz (Wolfdale), Radeon HD 5750, 4GB DDR2-1066, 256GB SSD

Reply 1 of 4, by smtkr

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I don't know the answer to your question, but I'll respond with this question: Are you using this thing all the time? I've been using a 2013 vintage SSD in my retro PC for almost 2 years now and it is working fine (and I used the hell out of it in my Windows 10 laptop before moving it to a retro PC). I'm not hammering it as a daily driver browsing the internet and doing productivity stuff. I play vintage windows games on it, and then it just sits there. Will the SSD wear out? Yes. How long is the real question. How fast will casual gaming on a retro machine burn down an SSD? I don't know. Windows 9x does all sorts of superfluous writing while a machine is on. Is it enough to kill your SSD during your life? I guess it depends on how you use it.

Reply 2 of 4, by kepstin

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The main trick to do to extend the life of an SSD on systems that don't support TRIM is to leave some space on the drive unused so the controller has more space to use for wear-levelling and background garbage collection.

I recommend starting with the drive plugged into a modern system: secure erase the SSD (this resets the drive so it knows that none of the space has ever been written to), then pre-create the partitions that you want to use with modern tools so they're properly aligned. Leave some space unpartitioned at the end of the drive. I'd probably leave 16-32GB on most drives, but extra won't hurt - I sometimes leave up to half the drive unused. You can always add more partitions later if you find that you need the space.

Reply 3 of 4, by swaaye

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There is a utility to issue TRIM on FAT32 from DOS, written by the late Rudolph Loew.
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=1814

Overprovisioning works too.

Really, the amount of data that a 98 machine will write is miniscule compared to a modern OS and software.