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SSD Optimisation


alt3rn1ty

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Hi all, I recently tried out something

I was reading an article on SSD Lifespan https://www.compuram.de/blog/en/the-life-span-of-a-ssd-how-long-does-it-last-and-what-can-be-done-to-take-care/

EDIT:

Dont trust SSDFresh, Windows Defender now blocks it, see second post below

 

It pointed out a few things I didn't know about which made sense

I don't think you need the SSDFresh software (and I would advise not to use it - see second post below), pretty sure most of these can be set via Windows itself if you do enough digging ..

.. It did have some good tips in explaining what it would do with each button selection, and quite a few of them windows 10 does not adhere to by default :

 

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Wear Levelling these days is done automatically I believe?

But do SSDs also all carry out Over Provisioning?

And for anyone else reading does anyone have more tips / tools (preferably open source) for the care of SSD longevity?

 

I don't need to right now but will be looking at upgrading my system drive M.2 NVME to something like a Samsung Pro Evo 1tb for plenty of extra space to help with longevity, which I believe comes with its own decent SSD Management software. My second internal SSD is used for Documents, plenty of empty space there and it will only ever be mostly read from instead of written to.

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Guys dont trust SSDFresh Installer, there is something dodgy about it. I am pretty sure its not malware, windows defender blocks it for giving deceptive messages, so at least it is just unwanted behaviour ..

 

XoSBXmt.png

 

.. But then again these things installers can have other payloads, so I may just have been lucky.

Find other ways to change those windows settings shown in the first post, because Abelssoft SSDFresh Installer obviously cant be trusted.

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Interesting- wonder what the VirusTotal score would be for it.

Did you perform any optimzations with it? A good program should provide an undo for any such changes.

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Virustotal is here https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/4f7eff634a7c2d3c0c80ddc58569ef65df81107ebaa1550fc8dd63e7082bfe32/detection

10 hits, pups.

I know Abelssoft used to be trustworthy, but seems they have had the bean counters in and now push installers with a hidden agenda, probably pushy advertising methods if you dont pay for the full product. They are off my Christmas card list anyway, I was considering donating a few notes if I had not found this.

I did use it, I believe the program itself is ok because all it does is change registry settings for windows features. Its just the installer which comes up as suspect.

I have done a full system scan with Win Defender, plus MRT in admin mode, plus a clean boot scan with Malwarebytes and the system is not showing anything unusual in its behaviour so I am pretty sure I am clean. Might do a Clean windows install just to be sure.

Sucks because I am quite proud of keeping myself and family clean of any kind of adware / malware for about twelve years running now, then fall foul to not doing a few more checks on the file before trying it :facepalm:

Anyway, nothing serious it seems, but you never know with these things, could be a different story for someone else in a different region etc using the same installer, or maybe getting served a different variety of the installer to download.

They dont go for anything blatantly obvious like changing your browsers home page anymore :)

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Yeah, they have a bit of "legwork" to get that VT score down, although most of those seem to be of low threat. Lodi is identified by heuristic methods as some kind of menace- to obtain the criteria MS use for such detection would be a thing, too. Majorgeeks host it, and are happy with the general response- notwithstanding some of the user comments in their vid at youtube:

What? Me worry? Heck, as far as this rig is concerned, there's no SSD on board- yet. :P

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  • 1 month later...

Just upgraded my machine to a new SSD as the system drive Samsung 970 Evo Plus M.2 NVME 500gb (replacing the old Dell provided 256gb SK Hinyx)

Turned out to be a bit of an adventure :) the following was all necessary :

Did a bit of research first because I was sure there was something about changing BIOS System SATA mode from RAID to AHCI (without doing this you cant control SSD Over Provisioning), and possible problems for the OS - In Win 10 just changing to AHCI mode can cause the next reboot of the OS to either blue screen or just stop loading windows

Decided to play it safe, downloaded the most recent Dell Drivers for my machine, made a backup of documents etcetera to an external USB drive, then created a UEFI USB recovery drive on a 64gb memory stick first to do a complete re-install of the OS.

Then replaced the SSD with the new one.

Then accessed the BIOS to switch to AHCI mode.

Then rebooted with the UEFI USB Recovery drive inserted, and immediately accessed the Boot options of this machine to ensure the USB recovery kicked in.

OS was re-installed (preserving my Win 10 digital certification), and then came the multiple reboots after installing drivers (Win 10 provided the Samsung 970 driver automatically), followed by more multiple reboots as Win 10 caught up to current 20H2 feature update.

I then installed Samsung Magician software which seems to be very good. I like its Diagnostics which will mark bad any problems it finds (though being a new drive its all good at the moment). And I used its ability to Over Provision the drive. Didn't like the fact that Magician wants to run all the time in the background, so switched that off (though if you start it manually, then exit Magician, it does not fully close, you have to right click the System Tray Magician to fully close it).

 

So Magician has a few good features - But it turns out that Over Provisioning is basicly just making Unallocated drive space, which the drives firmware will then use automatically.

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That 102.47gb Unallocated is the space allocated by Magician for Over Provisioning, but really there is nothing special about it, you could achieve the same without Magician by Shrinking your main partition by the same amount you require.

The drive had already been set up by the OS install to have a bit of unallocated space at the end of the partitions created (I am guessing this is the default Provisioning circa 7% drive space for SSD) and any extra you add is then Over Provisioning to help extend the life expectancy.

I probably overdid the Over Provisioning a little, but decided I am never going to use more than 200gb of the drive with a few games installed, leaving more than 25% of the main drive partition free at all times, that meant I could use circa 100gb for the over Provisioning safely. If I ever need any of that space back, I can just decrease the unallocated over provisioning space.

Also disabled Windows Hibernation - Command Prompt (Admin) Type in "powercfg.exe /h off"

Also disabled Indexing - Click Start, type in services.msc and press return, find Windows Search service, right click it and choose Properties, and then in the general tab where it says Start type use the drop down menu to select Disabled and click Apply.

For disabling Indexing I think just disabling the service is enough, but I also unchecked "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties", which is accessed by opening My Computer (This PC), right click a drive and choose properties, then uncheck the option and click apply ..

EQXVq6C.png

 

Also made sure Trim is working .. it was. To do this open a Command prompt (run as admin) and type ..

fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify

If you see DisableDeleteNotify = 0 , TRIM is enabled.

If you see DisableDeleteNotify = 1 , TRIM is disabled. Set it with ..

fsutil behavior set DisableDeleteNotify 0

 

The drive is like nothing else I have experienced before, speed is amazing, and hopefully it will have a loooong lifetime <fingers crossed>, at least it should do going by the information and calculations provided in this article https://www.compuram.de/blog/en/the-life-span-of-a-ssd-how-long-does-it-last-and-what-can-be-done-to-take-care/

 

Quote

Particularly interesting is the Magician feature “Over Provisioning”. With this function, it is possible to maximise the life span of your SSD. During this procedure, a certain storage area is not made available to the user. This area is only for the SSD controller. It uses the storage to efficiently swap and administer temporary data. By doing so, Over Provisioning also supports the introduced procedures Wear Leveling and Bad-Block-Management.

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Just treated my second internal SSD (D:\ drive) to the same ..

But this time used Windows Disk Management to shrink the drive to free up 100gb (well 97.66) for Over Provisioning

 

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Also found some powershell commands for SSDs ..

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/storage/optimize-volume?view=win10-ps

I tried the following in an elevated powershell (run as admin)

Optimize-Volume -DriveLetter C -Analyze -Verbose

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I dont know enough to dabble with the rest yet, but looks interesting :)

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