How good is this SSD for running a whole system off of?

Akkara

I was thinking of getting a Kingson 64GB "ssdnow" V-Series SSD-drive (which is currently on sale for $110 at Fry's), and would like to know what people think of it.

I understand for this price it probably isn't going to be the fastest SSD out there. I'm mostly interested in something that's faster and lower power consuming than my current 1TB Seagate barracuda from a few years ago. I'd like to run the entire existing system off of it (Gentoo Linux as the only OS), and spin down the 1TB except when needed to access the larger files and archives stored on it.

My Big Question in regards to these: I've heard that write performance often decreases over time. Is this still a big issue - in general - and this Kingston in particular? How big of a problem is it?

Then there's a number of related sub-questions:

1) How's trim support coming along? Which filesystems support it and how good is the support? Does it help with write-slowdown over time?

1a) If trim support is still poor, which non-trimming filesystem is best for use with SSDs?

2) Is it possible to trim an entire partition? For example, supposing I have two identical partitions. Make a filesystem on one and use it for a while. Then copy it all to the second partition and trim the first. And so on, switching back and forth between partitions as needed to keep write performance up.

3) Although my machine has 8GB of RAM, I sometimes need more than this. How well does a partition of an SSD work as swap? Does swap support trim? (Like, when I quit the app, all its swapped pages conceivably could be trimmed. Does the kernel know to do this?)

3a) Is it possible or advisable to adjust the page size to better support swapping to SSD? How would one adjust page sizes?

dman777 · Veteran Joined: 10 Jan 2007 Posts: 1004

I have a OCZ Vertrex 120 gig and I love it. I could never go back to a normal drive now for the boot drive. It changes how the whole pc feels in general. After my window xp install(ya, I have to have it so I can use netflix, fox, stuff like that) I am doing my linux. However, that being said I am having a horrible time getting the kernel to recognize my root file system.

Dairinin · n00b Joined: 03 Feb 2008 Posts: 64 Location: MSK, RF

V should be based on JMicron 602B controller, which is far from top. In fact, all first-generation SSD's where based on this controller, so you can judge it's performance from reviews from 1-1.5 years ago. For ex, this. It is in russian, but all the plots are easy to understand.

Instead of SSD, look at WD raptor. It's cheaper (price per GB) and in general offers better overall performance than old SSD's.

dman777 · Veteran Joined: 10 Jan 2007 Posts: 1004

Dairinin · n00b Joined: 03 Feb 2008 Posts: 64 Location: MSK, RF

Uhm, sorry... That was V series with jmicron. V+ uses samsung S3C29RBB01-YK40, which is not so bad. But I doubt there are V+ for 100$...

dman777, it IS the first gen, that is why it is SO cheap for SSD

Akkara · Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 8:56 am Post subject:

Thanks for the replies so far!

I wasn't aware that there's a "V" and a "V+". The sale one appears to be the non-plus version with j-micron controller: (Fry's website: V and V+) (The sale isn't listed on that page; it is currently ~$110 for the non + version.)

So it looks like I will not be getting this drive.

I'm still interested in any other feedback there may be on the questions I had posted, because sooner or later I hope to get some kind of SSD.

Regarding trim support and swap, I have received this link over some IRC chats, which is of interest: http://osdir.com/ml/linux-kernel/2009-08/msg04550.html