In regards to TRIM, I want to add that as someone that maintains racks of servers with SSDs, we don't have TRIM enabled on any of them. Pretty sure the RAID controller can't even pass through TRIM. Now consider that these servers are reading and writing data constantly 24/7 and we've have had orders of magnitude less failures than HDDs and I think retro systems will be absolutely fine.

I'm not saying that one shouldn't enable TRIM if it's available since it will allow more free pages to be ready should they be needed, but all SSDs these days should be over provisioned such that one shouldn't really see much of a perf difference regardless of TRIM or not. Modern drives are constantly remapping pages for wear leveling and performance. In the days when SSDs were 32GB I don't know how much if at all they over provisioned, since I do know that it is part of the reason SSDs generally stopped being exact powers of two.

I would recommend a real SSD over CF/SD cards since the latter is usually made out of the cheapest flash and probably doesn't have the aforementioned over provisioning. That said it really does depend on the use case for the machine. If the machine is used infrequently, which I would assume is the case for most retro systems, or can take advantage of being able to easily swap cards/images then they're a fine option.

dr_st wrote:

mcfly wrote:

PS. Microsoft experts should update this document which was updated in 2017 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2160 … ment-in-windows

"Users frequently ask "how big should I make the pagefile?" There is no single answer to this question because it depends on the amount of installed RAM and on how much virtual memory that workload requires. If there is no other information available, the typical recommendation of 1.5 times the installed RAM is a good starting point. On server systems, you typically want to have sufficient RAM so that there is never a shortage and so that the pagefile is basically not used. On these systems, it may serve no useful purpose to maintain a really large pagefile. On the other hand, if disk space is plentiful, maintaining a large pagefile (for example, 1.5 times the installed RAM) does not cause a problem, and this also eliminates the need to worry over how large to make it."

Yes, perhaps they should. Even though the article was "updated" in 2017, it only contains information up to 2010. In any case, I submitted feedback on it. 😀

😀 They should link our discussion in their article 😎 😈

To All:

Thank you for your insightful and detailed replies. Your wisdom was exactly what I was hoping for and I got it.

About 8 years ago I started stockpiling spare IDE/PATA hard drives to keep my old Win9x and WinXP systems going. I now have enough spares to keep them running well past the end of my life. I don't regret the decision, but I do like the performance boost an SSD can provide. It's good to know that I won't kill one prematurely if I decide to use it in one of my legacy systems.

I'm not a Linux expert. It's good to know that TRIM commands can be issued by using a live CD or bootable flash drive or something. Can anybody elaborate on exactly what that command is?

Thanks again

If you would stick with ext4 filesystem, life would have been easier. With ntfs it's a different story. From what I know ntfs-3g Linux tool for few years did not have support for TRIM, which was added in 2015 as a patch. Basically you mount ntfs partition in RW mode (don't blindly copy& paste - this is just an example)

1ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /mnt/windows

or

1mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /mnt/windows

then

1fstrim -v /mnt/windows

To list available disk partitions on a drive use:

1fdisk -l /dev/sda 

Unmount when done, exit mounted directory first:

1umount /mnt/windows

I would stick with SystemRescueCD, as from my experience I always got the best luck with it. Unfortunately for old, retro systems you have to stick with 32bit kernel (option 'Alternative i386' may be your best bet) and you got 90% chance that kernel will panic on an old system 😀. Usually a bunch of kernel arguments help:

1noapic noacpi acpi=off

This is an old workaround to avoid APIC controller and problems with too old/incompatible ACPI on your motherboard. Unfortunately our life may be more difficult with dropping 32bit 686 architecture in few years, but I am hoping for alternative projects.

Just keep in mind as with every other Linux tools that mangles with ntfs filesystem in read/write fashion, you should proceed with caution.

it will take forever to wear out my 32gb transcend pata ssd on windows xp, this retro rig is only powered up once a week ~

i don't would mind wear in such a case, also trim is overrated.
there are plenty of ssd's out who will compress whole data written to it and manage themself very well, even some newer devices don't use trim at all.
I use also some older Intel 30Gb SSD's without trim and can't find any problems at all.. (OSX Leopard 10.5)

if you don't have TRIM go for X25M from Intel and run it with SATA2IDE Converter.
It has no performance degration wether trim is enabled or not.
The Controller of this disc is superb.
And its Cheap.