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Good SSD for improving load times?


dlf
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I might wait to get a new SSD to put some games (Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind (does that really need to be on a SSD?), among others (?) to improve load times, but I'd think some suggestions could be helpful.

 

My current specs:

As I know I'm going to get asked:

 

- Why have a 2 & 3 TB?

- Why have two DVD drives?

 

My response:

  • The 3 TB is primarily for my games (steam, origin, gog, uplay, retail, or misc ((G)Zdoom, pinball, Diablo 1 "HD" (fan-made), etc)). You can probably guess what my 2 TB is for (downloads, picture, music, small partition or two for Linux)
  • DVD players so I can still install (and install quicker) some retail games (Diablo 2, The Sims 1/2
  • I may at some point get a second SSD for (far) faster load times. I wouldn't want to use the "OS" SSD as that would probably wipe out any games and mods on that drive (if I have to format)
Edited by dlf
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My experience is a good set of SSDs is a lot better that mechanical drives now, but I expect them to be dramatically better in the future.  My Mach V has two Crucial M550 512GB SSDs.  I've gotten used to it (aka spoiled) so when I go to another computer to do almost anything, I initially think something is wrong, before I realize it's just slower.  As fast as a good SSD is today, they still need to be compatible with the serial ATA (SATA) spec or similar that were initially designed for mechanical drives.  I believe as SSDs become more popular and their prices continue to fall, there will be one or more dedicated protocols for SSD's, with mechanical drives used only for longer term storage.  Falcon Northwest choose the drives, I didn't.  Based on my experience, I'd never go back and I found a SSD review that shows the M550 512GB on top (see below).

 

Since I have four systems connected to a KVM switch, I did an experiment.  I timed how long it takes to load up Inkscape with my custom default settings.  For my old XP system, it took about 50 seconds.  For my Win 7 government laptop it took 17 seconds.  For my Samsung Series 9, Win 7 laptop, with a 256GB Samsung SSD, it took about 7 seconds.  For the new Mach V it took about 3 seconds.  So both systems with SSDs were more than twice as fast as the relatively new government system with a mechanical drive.

 

EDIT: It seems that I'm behind the times.  The PCIe NVM Express dedicated SSD protocol is already here!  Damn, my "new" system is only 9 months old and it's already out of date.  So it goes.  :dry:

 

Note in the comparison below that there are a half dozen SSDs within 20% or so of the top Crucial.  Like I said, I can't imaging going back to mechanical disks, except for long term storage, kind of what we used to use tape for.

 

 

SSDs_Compared_zpszv0ru0cn.png

Edited by Vince
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I just bought one:  Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-7TE250BW) from Amazon.com (New) for less than it'd probably cost otherwise. I think I need a SATA and molex cable, I'd presume newegg should be fine for that?

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Even though I have a microcenter within driving distance I'm quite sure that the cables I'd most likely need would be far more expensive then if I got them from like Monoprice or newegg or Amazon.

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  • 2 years later...

when you like to improve SSD speed make the following things:

1. of all trimm your ssd one times per months

2. boost your local RAM up to 16GB or better 32GB

3 if you do that you can shut down the pagefiles.sys over the the system setting by manage the virtuals by yourself.

4. that will you get max 2-3 sec. Bootup Time on win and very fast access.

5. control time by time if there no pagefile.sys on c drive.

6. MS is that stu... to turn on your virtualdrive function by some updates..

 

If you run into any problems feel free to ask me. I´ll run since begining from the SSD Drive such drives. Most into NAS and RAIDS and i got real good perfomance

 

Greetings Neutrogen

 

by that way it was a good idea to buy Samsung, i also use them and Intenso too.

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Turning off page file completely can sometimes Really annoy windows..... :) Just setting it to a fixed size is what most folks recommend.

Also, for SSD drives, go into your advanced power settings, and make sure it is set to NEVER turn off the SSD. SSDs like to use the 'down time' to do their own maintenance.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 17/01/2018 at 9:38 AM, donnato said:

I can`t seem to find an option for advanced power settings..?  

Control Panel/Power Options/Change Plan Settings/Change Advanced Power Settings/Hard Disk. :)

"Never" is not a choice, you'll have to write it. I wonder if Windows actually recognise when we write things like that.

 

On 01/01/2018 at 4:00 PM, HeyYou said:

Just setting it to a fixed size is what most folks recommend.

What size would you recommend?

Edited by ladyonthemoon
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14 minutes ago, ladyonthemoon said:

Control Panel/Power Options/Change Plan Settings/Change Advanced Power Settings/Hard Disk. :)

"Never" is not a choice, you'll have to write it. I wonder if Windows actually recognise when we write things like that.

 

What size would you recommend?

For power settings, if you set it to 1, and then hit the down arrow, it becomes 'never'. :)

 

For page file, it used to be 1.5 times the amount of ram you have. But, that was back when system ram was measured in megabytes, not gigabytes..... Today, if you have more than 4 gig of ram, I would just set it equal to ram...... if you have less than 4gb, then 1.5X would be good.

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35 minutes ago, HeyYou said:

For page file, it used to be 1.5 times the amount of ram you have. But, that was back when system ram was measured in megabytes, not gigabytes..... Today, if you have more than 4 gig of ram, I would just set it equal to ram...... if you have less than 4gb, then 1.5X would be good.

This is strange, I just noticed that the settings for both my SSDs are set to "no page file". I don't remember making that choice but I might have since there is apparently a controversy about SSDs and page files: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ssd+and+page+file+controversy&t=ffsb&ia=web

So, SSD, page file or no page file? :)

In the meantime, I'm going to leave it to the system appreciation and see how things go. ;)

Edited by ladyonthemoon
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Windows really WANTS a page file, and can become unstable if it doesn't have one. Even if it never actually needs it........... :D There is some stuff that Windows just likes to run out to the page file, even if you have plenty of free ram...... (and especially if you are running seriously ram intensive games, like most any beth game. :D )

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6 hours ago, HeyYou said:

Windows really WANTS a page file, and can become unstable if it doesn't have one. Even if it never actually needs it........... :D There is some stuff that Windows just likes to run out to the page file, even if you have plenty of free ram...... (and especially if you are running seriously ram intensive games, like most any beth game. :D )

Okay. I've left it to the system and it set a total pagefile of 16 gB (16,195 mB), although I have "only" 8 gB of ram.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I run two SSD's, one for the O/S, and various installed programs, (office, and such like) and another, larger drive, that games are installed to. My machine runs great. No problems at all. Its amazingly stable. (more so than one would expect from windows, at any rate..... :) )

Maybe you have something else going on?

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7 hours ago, Leonardo said:

Since my last post here, I've changed my mind about using a SSD due for experiencing strange things happen in-game in both SLE and SSE.

So now I'm serious thinking about not using a SSD as a bootdrive for Windows at all and only use a SSD as a download partition.

What are these strange you were experiencing in game?

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2 hours ago, ladyonthemoon said:

What are these strange you were experiencing in game?

When I play either SLE or SSE and reload my game after I did something, anything it doesn't matter other than I was running, then I decided to re-load my game I can't run with my PC anymore in-game.  Sometimes I can re-load my game 1-2 times before I can't run and this only happen in Skyrim.

I suspect, now this is my theory, that a SSD handles data information differently in comparison to a SATA and there is one thing, from I understand, a SSD might not have is a cache memory while a SATA has a cache memory.

So when I re-load my game in Skyrim the data from the Skyrim.ini and/or SkyrimPrefs.ini isn't properly saved on a SSD while it is properly saved on a SATA.

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SATA is merely the communications standard between the system, and the drive. SSDs comply with all such standards, so, theoretically, there should be zero difference between an SSD, and a mechanical drive, so far as the system is concerned.

I *think* there is a console command to refresh the ini from the in-game console though. Might try that, and see if it changes anything.

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6 hours ago, Leonardo said:

When I play either SLE or SSE and reload my game after I did something, anything it doesn't matter other than I was running, then I decided to re-load my game I can't run with my PC anymore in-game.  Sometimes I can re-load my game 1-2 times before I can't run and this only happen in Skyrim.

Strange indeed. I've been playing Skyrim and Skyrim SE from the day I bought this computer. Both games are installed on SSDs, Skyrim on an external one and Skyrim SE on the built-in one, on which Windows 7 is installed and I've never had such problems as the ones you describe. The only thing that happens is that Skyrim SE quits unexpectedly on start and crashes on quit. The problems with Skyrim SE crashing on launch or on quit is always related to ntdll.dll being defective. I've never managed fixing that. :(

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6 hours ago, ladyonthemoon said:

Strange indeed. I've been playing Skyrim and Skyrim SE from the day I bought this computer. Both games are installed on SSDs, Skyrim on an external one and Skyrim SE on the built-in one, on which Windows 7 is installed and I've never had such problems as the ones you describe. The only thing that happens is that Skyrim SE quits unexpectedly on start and crashes on quit. The problems with Skyrim SE crashing on launch or on quit is always related to ntdll.dll being defective. I've never managed fixing that. :(

Very interesting, indeed, it is because I've both SLE and SSE installed on a SATA instead of a SSD due for being too small I guess.

My SSD is a Kingston 120 Gb which isn't large these days.

As for fixing your file issue, have you tried to verify game cache in Steam or reinstalled your video driver, even use an older video driver version, or doing both?

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7 hours ago, Leonardo said:

As for fixing your file issue, have you tried to verify game cache in Steam or reinstalled your video driver, even use an older video driver version, or doing both?

I've done that countless times... Yesterday, I deinstalled Skyrim SE from the SSD, reinstalled it on the SATA internal drive and tried it. The game ctding on start issue seems to be fixed but the problem with the ntdll.dll is still there... (sigh) It has been there forever, whatever the version of the graphics drivers I'm using.

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