New OCZ Vertex v1.4 Firmware

PeterStoba · #1 14-10-09, 04:19 PM

A new firmware version for the Vertex range of solid state drives from OCZ.

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Rastalovich · #2 14-10-09, 04:23 PM

Fragmentation on SSDs still confuzes me tbh. I always thought u had a file, it's sector locations were like memory addresses, there's no head movement like with regular drives - so where's the beef ?

Think I need to read up on how the SSD electronics work.

deathwish · #3 14-10-09, 04:29 PM

the firmware allows windows 7 to clear the sections of the disk that data has been marked for deletion so that when it comes to write to the sector it doesn’t first have to erase the data and then write. it speeds up writing to the drives as i understand

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM_(SSD_command)

Rastalovich · #4 14-10-09, 04:31 PM

Interesting - why does it need to clear it ? Why not just erase the memory address pointer.

Without the pointer I don't think the contents of the location mean anything.

Pyr0 · #5 14-10-09, 06:44 PM

lol @ Peter, fragmentation is NOT the reason the drives slow down

PeterStoba · #6 14-10-09, 06:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by name='Pyr0'

lol @ Peter, fragmentation is NOT the reason the drives slow down

What does slow them down then?

Pyr0 · #7 14-10-09, 07:46 PM

it's just as deathwish pointed out

as data is deleted, the cells aren't actually erased. the next time the drive wants to write data to those same cells/blocks they have to be erased first before being written to again, causing extra write latency.

TRIM improves this by running after the delete command, queries the volume bitmap, sees data marked for discard and discards it.

PeterStoba · #8 14-10-09, 07:50 PM

My bad, updated the article

Thanks for that.

Ducky Spud · #9 14-10-09, 10:10 PM

Just bought a Vertex earlier today, only a 30GB one but will be alright for now until I can buy another for RAID0. Have it just for OS for now, but this firmware is perfectly timed for Windows 7 next week

Rastalovich · #10 15-10-09, 11:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by name='Ducky Spud'

Just bought a Vertex earlier today, only a 30GB one but will be alright for now until I can buy another for RAID0. Have it just for OS for now, but this firmware is perfectly timed for Windows 7 next week

Let's hope it fits !! (joke refering to another thread)

Quote:

Originally Posted by name='Pyr0'

it's just as deathwish pointed out

as data is deleted, the cells aren't actually erased. the next time the drive wants to write data to those same cells/blocks they have to be erased first before being written to again, causing extra write latency.

TRIM improves this by running after the delete command, queries the volume bitmap, sees data marked for discard and discards it.

That sounds pretty inefficient.

Is that something to do with the intergrity check of the controller or something ?

The matter that the data in a location was $009e0f50, then needs to be made $4c4f4c21, in theory, shouldn't require zero filling b4 hand.

Can u turn the discard thing off to speed things up ?

Quote:

The root cause of the issue is that SSD drives do not know which blocks are truly in use and which are free. While the file system on the SSD will maintain an in-use list, SSDs don't understand file systems, and cannot access this list. This causes trouble in two places:

SSDs can write 4KB blocks at a time, but only delete 512KB blocks. Since the drive does not know which 4k blocks are still in use if they have been written to previously, each write requires a 512KB read-erase-modify-write cycle

That is crazy.