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SSD, Windows 98, Worth it?

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Reply 20 of 81, by InjecTioN

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We'll just have to test it then. 😀 I mean, it's definitely worth it if it in fact works. If it's just a placebo effect we're talking about, it's quite useless. I haven't read into TRIM enough to know exactly how it works though, so I'll start with that to get some actual results.

Reply 21 of 81, by The Serpent Rider

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Rudolf had utility to run TRIM in pure DOS, but it has some limitations.

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Reply 22 of 81, by bjwil1991

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How much limitations were there for that? It's interesting that software can do something like that. I need to TRIM my 2GB CF card in my Toshiba Satellite Pro 410CDT laptop. Heck, I could install a 120GB SSD in my Tualatin Celeron 1.4GHz computer with my SATA PCI card and see how it performs. Might use Norton Ghost to clone the HDD to the SSD and use the IDE drives as backup units in case the SSD fails so that it'll still have the OS on the 60GB HDD.

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Reply 23 of 81, by texterted

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What I do is, create an image of my SSD with Macrium Reflect (free) then restore the created image, it "trims" the drive on restore.

Or given the peanuts price of those 120GB SSD's you could just think "who cares"!

Cheers

Ted

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Reply 24 of 81, by The Serpent Rider

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How much limitations were there for that?

RTFM.

I need to TRIM my 2GB CF card

CF cards can't do TRIM. At least not 10-15 years old junk.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 25 of 81, by bjwil1991

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My CF card is about 7 years old.

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Reply 26 of 81, by Fujoshi-hime

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texterted wrote on 2020-01-15, 17:47:

What I do is, create an image of my SSD with Macrium Reflect (free) then restore the created image, it "trims" the drive on restore.

Or given the peanuts price of those 120GB SSD's you could just think "who cares"!

This. My WinME machine is running a 120GB Kingston A300. First, considering it's a 'retro PC gaming machine' it writes data a lot more than it deletes. It's not a daily driver desktop, I have an Ryzen 3900X for that. Secondly, that drive cost me CAD$25 on Black Friday. In fact I have multiples, still in their packaging, cause it can just be handy to have a spare 120GB to put an OS on while testing a system. Third, even if I some how burn out the drive in the span of 2-3 years, it's fast as hell. Basically maxes out the ATA133 bus and has a 3ms response time. This is how fast I WISH Win9X ran in 1999. 😜

Reply 27 of 81, by maxtherabbit

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The Serpent Rider wrote on 2020-01-15, 18:09:
RTFM. […]
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How much limitations were there for that?

RTFM.

I need to TRIM my 2GB CF card

CF cards can't do TRIM. At least not 10-15 years old junk.

Even if the CF cards can't use TRIM isn't there some manual way of forcing a block erase?

Reply 28 of 81, by douglar

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maxtherabbit wrote on 2020-01-15, 19:01:

Even if the CF cards can't use TRIM isn't there some manual way of forcing a block erase?

A low level format should force block erase pretty nicely.

Do CF cards do wear leveling?

My legacy systems run with a relatively small data foot print. I have an old 64GB drive that does wear leveling, but I only made a 32GB partition which works well for win98. I'm having a hard time thinking of a contrived work load that would get "wear leveling" to paint itself into a corner.

But for < win98 OS drives, I decided to go the SD route. The price is better, the small file performance is better, and I don't those old systems with a high write load, so I'm not worried about the flash write limits.

Reply 30 of 81, by InjecTioN

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InjecTioN wrote on 2020-01-15, 17:10:

We'll just have to test it then. 😀 I mean, it's definitely worth it if it in fact works. If it's just a placebo effect we're talking about, it's quite useless. I haven't read into TRIM enough to know exactly how it works though, so I'll start with that to get some actual results.

I have done some benchmarks with some tools that are available on https://www.philscomputerlab.com/hdd-benchmarks.html

Test results are in!

Disk full, no trim:

full.jpg
Filename
full.jpg
File size
484.96 KiB
Views
2647 views
File license
Public domain

Disk empty, pre trim:

empty pre trim.jpg
Filename
empty pre trim.jpg
File size
484.41 KiB
Views
2647 views
File license
Public domain

Disk empty, post trim:

empty post trim.jpg
Filename
empty post trim.jpg
File size
562.93 KiB
Views
2647 views
File license
Public domain

Facts!

Reply 31 of 81, by kolderman

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TRIM has nothing to do with performance, it's about wear leveling and disk life. If the disk doesn't know blocks have been deleted, it's can't use them in the wear leveling algorithm, meaning it has to shuffle an increasingly smaller number of free blocks for write balancing. Otherwise the only way it knows a block can be reused is when the OS itself overwrites a block the OS knows has been deleted (OS by default will not first seek to overwrite deleted blocks to allow for data recovery). Modern SSD have more intelligent leveling algorithms, but an SSD that thinks it is 95% full when it is really only 40% full is going to be struggling to level wear properly. The only positive is that modern SSDs can handle extreme levels of wear compared to early ones, and Win98 has fairly low write load, meaning the chances you are going to kill an modern SSD by occasionally playing Win98 games on it is unlikely in the extreme. It's not like using a XP box on SSD every day for intense video editing work. And even if you did...go out and buy another? Not the end of the world.

Reply 32 of 81, by Fujoshi-hime

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InjecTioN wrote on 2020-01-16, 00:58:
I have done some benchmarks with some tools that are available on https://www.philscomputerlab.com/hdd-benchmarks.html […]
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I have done some benchmarks with some tools that are available on https://www.philscomputerlab.com/hdd-benchmarks.html

Test results are in!

Disk full, no trim:
full.jpg

Disk empty, pre trim:
empty pre trim.jpg

Disk empty, post trim:
empty post trim.jpg

Facts!

That performance is terrible in general. Do you have DMA enabled? 😮

Reply 33 of 81, by douglar

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maxtherabbit wrote on 2020-01-15, 21:08:

How would one perform a low level format on a CF card?

You could try a tool from the vendor or you could try a utility like this:

https://www.techspot.com/downloads/5265-low-l … ormat-tool.html

Reply 35 of 81, by InjecTioN

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Fujoshi-hime wrote on 2020-01-16, 01:28:
InjecTioN wrote on 2020-01-16, 00:58:
I have done some benchmarks with some tools that are available on https://www.philscomputerlab.com/hdd-benchmarks.html […]
Show full quote

I have done some benchmarks with some tools that are available on https://www.philscomputerlab.com/hdd-benchmarks.html

Test results are in!

Disk full, no trim:
full.jpg

Disk empty, pre trim:
empty pre trim.jpg

Disk empty, post trim:
empty post trim.jpg

Facts!

That performance is terrible in general. Do you have DMA enabled? 😮

🤦 you are correct. I have just checked and it was in fact turned off... How could I miss that!? Must have been the time.

I'll post some new screenshots tonight.

Reply 36 of 81, by konc

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InjecTioN wrote on 2020-01-15, 17:10:

We'll just have to test it then. 😀 I mean, it's definitely worth it if it in fact works. If it's just a placebo effect we're talking about, it's quite useless. I haven't read into TRIM enough to know exactly how it works though, so I'll start with that to get some actual results.

Yeah no, I was just being polite. A program that clearly says 1. It doesn't have trim code 2. Only tries to trigger win7 to do it 3. "It assumes that your windows 7 trim is fully working" won't trim anything on an OS that doesn't have trim.

Reply 37 of 81, by InjecTioN

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konc wrote on 2020-01-16, 07:03:
InjecTioN wrote on 2020-01-15, 17:10:

We'll just have to test it then. 😀 I mean, it's definitely worth it if it in fact works. If it's just a placebo effect we're talking about, it's quite useless. I haven't read into TRIM enough to know exactly how it works though, so I'll start with that to get some actual results.

Yeah no, I was just being polite. A program that clearly says 1. It doesn't have trim code 2. Only tries to trigger win7 to do it 3. "It assumes that your windows 7 trim is fully working" won't trim anything on an OS that doesn't have trim.

So the only thing the application does is that it just rapidly fils up the filesystem, on which the lack of free disk space triggers the trim command if supported by the OS and SSD. After the trim command has been triggered, it obviously removes the data again.

So it actually should be a placebo then. Would the filling up of the filesystem perhaps free up cells too, though? Or would this just be a helping to slow things down, as full drives (both SSD's and HDD's) will in fact slow things down.

I've been reading this yesterday, which is quite a clear explanation on how it's supposed to work when supported by OS and storage device.

As a sidestep: My tests, even though DMA was disabled, show that a full SSD could in fact impact the performance of the drive. I'm expecting enabling DMA on the SSD will show even clearer results. I'll just check that tonight to have definitive results and to at least have something useful to document here. 😆

Last edited by InjecTioN on 2020-01-16, 10:19. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 38 of 81, by konc

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InjecTioN wrote on 2020-01-16, 09:22:

So the only thing the application does is that it just rapidly fils up the filesystem, on which the lack of free disk space triggers the trim command if supported by the OS and SSD. After the trim command has been triggered, it obviously removes the data again.

Almost, I believe you're a bit confused about what trim does (it doesn't run when the disk is full). From what I understood it allocates (not fill) all the free space and then releases it. The latter triggers the OS to trim. It's the equivalent of manually filling the disk with files and then deleting them, but this program doesn't actually write files -this would wear down the disk- it only allocates and frees the space. This is why it doesn't do anything on an OS that doesn't have trim anyway, nothing will be triggered to run after the space release. I'm not sure if it's really needed though and how "lazy" win7 trim is in reality, like the program claims.

Reply 39 of 81, by The Serpent Rider

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How does garbage collection/TRIM work on SLC SSDs (like Intel X25-E) ?

It just works (c) Tod Howard.
But TRIM is not supported and not required.

Are they better than MLCs for Win98 ?

Depends how hard you use it. Typical workload for a Pentium-like system won't make a dent on MLC drive performance.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.