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The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ

 by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 18, 2009 12:00 AM EST
250 Comments | Add A Comment
250 Comments

The Blind SSD

Modern OSes talk to hard drives using logical block addressing. While hard drives are rotational media, logical block addressing organizes sectors on a hard drive linearly. When you go to save a file, Windows simply issues a write command for your file at a specific logical block address, say LBA 15 for example.

Your OS knows what LBAs are available and which ones are occupied. When you delete a file, the LBAs that point to that file on your hard disk are listed as available. The data you’ve deleted hasn’t actually been removed and it doesn’t get wiped until those sectors on the drive are actually overwritten.

Believe it or not, SSDs actually work the same way.

The flash translation layer in a SSD controller maps LBAs to pages on the drive. The table below explains what happens to the data on the SSD depending on the action in the OS:

Action in the OS Reaction on a HDD Reaction on an SSD
File Create Write to a Sector Write to a Page
File Overwrite Write new data to the same Sector Write to a Different Page if possible, else Erase Block and Write to the Same Page
File Delete Nothing Nothing

 

When you delete a file in your OS, there is no reaction from either a hard drive or SSD. It isn’t until you overwrite the sector (on a hard drive) or page (on a SSD) that you actually lose the data. File recovery programs use this property to their advantage and that’s how they help you recover deleted files.

The key distinction between HDDs and SSDs however is what happens when you overwrite a file. While a HDD can simply write the new data to the same sector, a SSD will allocate a new (or previously used) page for the overwritten data. The page that contains the now invalid data will simply be marked as invalid and at some point it’ll get erased.

Strength in Numbers, What makes SSDs Fast Understanding the SSD Performance Degradation Problem
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  • coil222 - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 - link

    Yes I run a pair of MTRON 7500s in a raid 0 stripe for my OS and Gaming (wow). I don't recall numbers off the top of my head but tests were better on the raid 0 than a single drive configuration.

    Watch this:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs&fea...">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs&fea...

  • sawyeriii - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 - link

    I just wanted to state how much I loved the combination of technical and real world information in this article.

    What is the possibility of having different page sizes built into a drive? I.e. you could have a drive with many 1k page packages on one die, 2k on another, and most others 4k. Could that theoretically help? Could the controllers work with that (or would you need to combine multiple 1k's into a 4k transfer size)?

    PS One note on page 3, the VelociRaptor and Intel in the first chart (responce time) are switched, however the text is correct.

  • StormyParis - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 - link

    the ugly truth is that an SSD won't let you do anything that you couldn't do without it, and due to its cost and small capacity, it's not a replacement drive, it's an extra drive: not less power consumption but more, not less noise but just the same. You just gain a bit of time when booting up and lauching apps... which I do about 1/week and 1/day, respectively. Assuming your system has enough RAM (and if it doesn't, buy RAM before buying an SSD !), you won't feel much difference once the apps are launched.

    For the same cost, I'd rather buy a bigger screen.

    It's urgent to wait for prices to come down. But I'm all for lots of people buying them now and help get the price down for us wiser buyers.

  • Rasterman - Thursday, March 19, 2009 - link

    I've already decided my next system in a few months will have one, after you go through 5 hard drive failures (over several years) lets see how much your willing to pay to not have to put up with it anymore. If you use your PC for anything useful (work) then an SSD is a no brainer even at $1000/64GB IMO if the data security is there, speed is secondary for me.

    When you already have the best screen, video card, memory, why not have the best drive? And your argument is pretty dumb, almost any upgrade won't let you do anything that you couldn't do without it, not just SSDs.

  • Calin - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 - link

    You get lower power due to the lower power use of the SSD and the fact that the other drive is not stressed with difficult access patterns (small random reads/writes). Remember that idle power of a SSD drive is very low

  • 7Enigma - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 - link

    No, his comment was accurate for most users. Due to the small capacities and high cost these will be used as boot drives primarily with maybe a single heavily used program (say the current game or program you are playing/using), the rest will be on an additional drive. So while the power consumption of the SSD would be less than the old drive, the aggregate power usage of both (even when the larger storage drive is primarily at idle) will be higher than the single HD.

    And I believe you meant to say traditional HD for idle power?

  • strikeback03 - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 - link

    If all you were going to throw on the drive is the OS and a game, a 32GB drive should be plenty. The reason the 80GB and up range is important is so general consumers can load all their programs on it.

    But yes, in consumer usage other than a laptop, some people who were previously using one drive for both boot and storage would likely need a mechanical HDD is addition to the SSD. OTOH, those who were using a Velociraptor (or RAID array) for boot and another drive for storage will see their power consumption decrease.

  • sawyeriii - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 - link

    Have you used a SSD? (If so which)

    I would state that it is not a luxary product, it is a premium product. The price difference you pay WILL translate to faster performance (if you choose correctly). More RAM only helps upto a point.

    Remember performance is based on a system of parts...
    CPU
    RAM
    NORTHBRIDGE
    GPU
    SOUTHBRIDGE
    I/O INTERFACE
    HDD/SDD

    Microsoft's Windows Experience Index has specific flaws, but the concept is sound... The system can only go a fast as the slowest component in the system (relative to the amount of time used by that component).

  • Testtest - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 - link

    ... there's also Supertalent's Ultradrive ME (MLC) and LE (SLC) and Photofast's G-Monster v3

    At least the Supertalent drives are quite a bit cheaper with the same drive layout/controller than the Vertex drives and only differ in the firmware (which isn't bad either).

    It's however possible at least with the Ultradrive ME currently to provoke a kinda timeout error after they've been fully filled once and then still beeing written on. I don't own a Vertex so I can't test that there but if it was a controller issue, it should pop up there sooner or later as well (if you take a look in their suppport forum some error reports seem very similar).

    Intels have their 80% bug, Indilinx drives have their issues too it seems - let's hope that firmware can cure it!

    Great article btw!

  • iwod - Thursday, March 19, 2009 - link

    Both SuperTalent and OCZ 30 / 32 GB drive cost exactly the same on NewEgg
    $129
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