Photofast G-Monster V4 ZIF SSD User Review

[BASpro]

Originally Posted by nando4

... power savings mode...could disable then enable the IDE port...

I adjusted power saving modes and setting XP mode to 'Always On' gave me about a 1MB/s increase in speeds. I'll try the IDE bit setting later.

How long would it take to execute the manual garbage collection on about 110G of free space? I've been watching the clean run (it's been about 5 hours now and still going); and, I've noticed that the sum of junk.bin and junk2.bin would be at a certain value, and when I check the value again later, the sum of the two are less than what it was the last time. It seems like the procedure repeats itself. Is the manual GC causing excessive writes to the disk?

All the best, Mass

[nando4]

Originally Posted by BASpro

How long would it take to execute the manual garbage collection on about 110G of free space? I've been watching the clean run (it's been about 5 hours now and still going); and, I've noticed that the sum of junk.bin and junk2.bin would be at a certain value, and when I check the value again later, the sum of the two are less than what it was the last time. It seems like the procedure repeats itself. Is the manual GC causing excessive writes to the disk?

Yes - you are quite right. DOS would delete the previous file during the binary copy. Not good for write wear.

I've updated the cleaner.bat to instead incrementally create a new file, each occurrence double the size of the previous. In effect it keeps "appending" nulls to the remainder of the free space on you SSD. Please try it instead. Thank you for beta testing the previous version I've confirmed this one does what it sets out to do.

[BASpro]

Originally Posted by nando4

...I've updated the cleaner.bat...

So how many write operations would have occurred to a given cell over the past 5.5 hours by using the previous version - any idea?

All the best, Mass

[nando4]

Originally Posted by BASpro

So how many write operations would have occurred to a given cell over the past 5.5 hours by using the previous version - any idea?

Not sure, but please don't delete the existing directory/files already created with the older cleaner.bat. Just create a new directory for the new cleaner.bat to continue from. Your 30MB/s writes imply 1.8GB/min, so 110GB should be cleaned in under 1hr, assuming the read doesn't add overhead and DOS does writes at seq speed.

[BASpro]

So how many write operations would have occurred ...

Previously, I was concerned about the number of erase/write cycles that would occur over a disk cell as the cleaner created a new file that replaced the old file in order to fill the disk partition (110G in my case).

So, I calculated through use of a spreadsheet the number of times the program would cycle in order to fill the disk. I executed the cleaner program on my workstation which completed the whole process in 60 seconds. The process was completed in 13 cycles for just under 104G; my laptop disk would have become full at the start of the 14th cycle. That means there would have been only 14 erase/re-write cycles maximum; assuming there are no other write tasks occurring - I'm not a disk expert. The observation I made previously about file sizes getting smaller was simply due to the computer generating a new file that began small as it generated its way to it's new larger size.

Here are the passes and the file sizes generated in the previous cleaner program:

Pass#---junk2.bin (bytes)---junk.bin (bytes)
1-------------------------------1,024
1-------2,048-------------------4,096
2-------8,192-------------------16,384
3-------32,768------------------65,536
4-------131,072-----------------262,144
5-------524,288-----------------1,048,576
6-------2,097,152---------------4,194,304
7-------8,388,608---------------16,777,216
8-------33,554,432--------------67,108,864
9-------134,217,728-------------268,435,456
10------536,870,912-------------1,073,741,824
11------2,147,483,648-----------4,294,967,296
12------8,589,934,592-----------17,179,869,184
13------34,359,738,368----------68,719,476,736

So, I have confidence in saying that running the previous cleaner would not have been significant in generating wear on the disk.

All the best, Mass

[BASpro]

Hello Nando4:

Could you do an hdparm -I /dev/sda on your Photofast; I'm interested in the settings of the features at the bottom of the report.

Here are mine:

Commands/features:
Enabled Supported:
* SMART feature set
Security Mode feature set
* Power Management feature set
* Write cache
* Look-ahead
* Host Protected Area feature set
* WRITE_BUFFER command
* READ_BUFFER command
* NOP cmd
* DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
SET_MAX security extension
* 48-bit Address feature set
* Mandatory FLUSH_CACHE
* FLUSH_CACHE_EXT

Thanks. All the best, Mass

[Trabireiter]

i wrote with him today as i had a question on the photofast as well and he does not have the photofast at the moment as a friend wanted to test whether his machine is compatible with the photofast.

[laser21]

Hi, I have a 64gb version, which has lower stated transfer speeds 120/60 and Im getting the following:
--------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 2.2 (C) 2007-2008 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
--------------------------------------------------

Sequential Read : 87.919 MB/s
Sequential Write : 51.565 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 82.234 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 11.558 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 14.636 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 1.778 MB/s

Test Size : 100 MB
Date : 2010/01/29 22:02:20

Just posting if someone wants it as reference.

[BASpro]

Originally Posted by laser21

... I have a 64gb version ...

Hi Laser21: your sequential write score is pretty close to the rated speed of the drive - I would be pleased with that; and, this drive is performing quicker in your system than compared to the 128G model installed in my X1.

Is your drive running at UDMA5 or 6?

I'm beginning to think my problem is related to cache; or my X1.

I'll be testing my 128G model on my workstation in a few days and I'll find out what speeds I can get from the drive at UDMA5 and 6.

Thanks for the post. All the best, Mass

[BASpro]

Originally Posted by laser21

... I have a 64gb version ...

Hi Laser21: I would like to compare drive settings; could you post the following information for your drive?

hdparm -I /dev/hda

Commands/features:
Enabled Supported:
* SMART feature set
Security Mode feature set
* Power Management feature set
* Write cache
Look-ahead
* Host Protected Area feature set
* WRITE_BUFFER command
* READ_BUFFER command
* NOP cmd
* DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
SET_MAX security extension
* 48-bit Address feature set
* Mandatory FLUSH_CACHE
* FLUSH_CACHE_EXT

hdparm -i /dev/hda

BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=0kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=off
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5 udma6
AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled

Thanks. All the best, Mass