SSD

Solid State Drive (SSD)

Are you using a Solid State Drive (SSD)? SSD drives do not work the same way that hard drives work. When you delete a file, that space is not automatically used by a newer file. When you increase the size of a file, the additional space needed may be in a non-contiguous location, and that could slow things down. On an SSD, collecting unused space and optimizing files is called garbage collection. Older SSD drives might not have come with a garbage collection routine (Crucial SSD’s do). The older Mac versions needed to use a separate TRIM utility to do garbage collection. Again, with macOS X High Sierra and the new APFS file system, there is no need to be concerned about performing garbage collection on an SSD because as long as the computer is on and not busy, SSD garbage collection is done in the background, and it works even with older SSD drives but ONLY if the SSD has been reformatted as APFS. If you upgraded to High Sierra or purchased a new mac with High Sierra, the reformatting of the internal drive is done for you (except for some third party SSD’s). So you just need to be aware that any external drives may not be formatted as APFS, and you have to do that yourself. There are many additional features of APFS that work in the background for you, and it’s worth knowing something about those features - even if you don’t care to know.

John R Carter Sr

How a Solid State Drive Works

Should you have an interest, here is an article that gives a good explanation of how an SSD (Solid State Drive) works. One aspect of an SSD is that it has a finite number of times it can be written to -- which, realistically, isn't going to be a concern to most of us. Having said that, though, one thing I hadn't considered is that every time one uses the 'hibernate' function on a computer, this is a write function and reduces somewhat the life cycle of the SSD.

I've been doing this on my PC running Windows 10, but the hibernate function isn't available on my Mac laptop, running macOS Sierra. Both units have an SSD, but the hibernate function isn't supported natively on the Mac -- perhaps for the consideration of not adding extra write cycles to the SSD.

If you're going to be purchasing a new computer -- and especially a laptop, which is subject to movement and jarring --  I highly recommend getting an SSD. Yes, more expensive, but worth it, in my opinion.

Jim Hamm

SSDs Last Far Longer Than Rated

      "If you were worried about the life of the SSD in your computer, worry no more.  Just

like the famous bunny rabbit, they take a lickin' and keep on tickin'  -- or something like that...(grin)…" Jim Hamm informs us.  
        SSD, you’ll remember, is solid-state drive, not an actual disk, nor a drive motor to spin a disk.  You could read the whole description and history of SSDs at Wikipedia. 

How Long Will SSD Drives Last?

        "Here's an interesting article speculating on a 'bleak' future for SSD drives. The article assumes that SSD cells will continue to shrink in size, from the present 25nm to perhaps 6.5nm in 2024, with an inherent increase in errors.  There's some interesting comments following the article you might also take a look at."  
        After pointing us to this article, Jim Hamm goes on to give some personal information and opinion.  "I've got two laptops with SSD drives (a MacBook Air and a ThinkPad), and I certainly like them -- not necessarily because they're faster than a spinning drive -- but because I don't have to worry about 'jiggling' the computers when moving them around, and SSDs make for good traveling computers.
        "I've never had a problem with a spinning drive on any of the computers I've owned, and I think they're fine. In fact, I recently bought a nine-year-old iMac G4, which has seen a lot of use, and still works well, albeit slower, with a spinning drive.  Why did I do this? I like the looks of the iMac G4, and compare the idea to someone buying a '57 Chevy. May not make practical sense, but conceptually/emotionally satisfying."

It's Coming! It's Coming!

          You can tell John Carter is excited.  See all the exclamation points!  (Thanks, John.)
        "The ReRAM is coming!"   (Yep! The British have announced it.)
        "As early as 2013 you should be seeing a new type of non-volatile (retains data without power) random access memory called ReRAM (Resistance Random Access Memory). Initially developed by HP in 2008 as a Memristor (Memory Resistor), it has now been perfected by the Japanese as the ReRAM (with speeds comparable to DRAM). This device is going to replace every hard drive, flash drive, and solid state drive. The beauty of the ReRAM is that it will serve as both the memory of a computer and the hard drive of the computer — and this means only one device instead of two and no more transferring bits from a hard drive to memory. That boils down to a much faster computer, even faster than having an SSD installed in your computer!"

Cloning a Hard Drive

        Jim Hamm reports on his latest experience.  "After 4 - 1/2 years of using a Mac I finally decided to clone the SSD drive on my new MacBook Air. I've used Time Machine faithfully, but never a clone. After reading about cloning and talking to various people, I decided to purchase SuperDuper   which costs $28.
        "For the drive I purchased LaCie's Rugged Mini 500GB external 7200rpm hard drive. Cheaper drives can be found, but I wanted one that would withstand the rigors of travel.
        "The clone of my storage drive took 25 minutes with Super Duper (SD). When I first got the LaCie drive I formatted it to OS X (journaled) but found out I didn't need to do that. SD erases the drive first, before starting the clone. A day or so after the clone I had installed some other programs on my Mac and wanted to do an update to be sure I didn't lose them in case of a drive failure. SD provides a full set of operating instructions, and after reading what to do, I started SD to do a 'Smart Update,' which recognizes all the changes one has made and clones them. The 'Smart Update' took 4 minutes.
        "Well, will SD work when I need it? I hope so, and hope never to find out. One of the bloggers that I read frequently, John Gruber of Daring Fireball fame, recently lost his hard drive. He said that SD got him back in business very quickly. He has had occasion to use SD more than once. As the speaker at the PMUG meeting said yesterday, a hard drive will fail eventually. It's nice to know one's programs, pictures, research, etc., are safely cloned and ready for resurrection when needed.
        "My next step will be to do a clone of Zee's MacBook Pro, as she has lots of pictures and genealogy research she wouldn't want to lose."

Making Your Computer Run Faster

        Responding to a question about a "slow" computer, John Carter gives ideas on what to check and what to do.
        "A faster computer doesn’t actually improve computer performance that you would notice.
        "Most people who say their computer is too slow are really suffering from a slow Internet access and not a slow computer. To confirm this, do a speed test. If your Internet download speed is around 1 MB/s, you need to increase your Internet speed, and I recommend nothing less than 5 MB/s if browsing the Internet is a priority for you.
        "Another way to test your computer performance is to determine how long it takes just to launch an application that does NOT access the Internet. Every Mac comes with Pages. It takes about 12 seconds for Pages to come up on my brand new laptop (2.8 GHz, 8MB memory). Some people would say that is slow. Once you have launched an application and then exit, the next time you launch that same application during that same login session, it will come up in about 2 seconds. The thing to know is that it is always slow to launch any application the first time during a session on any computer.
        "If you want to do something to improve your computer performance, then you need to do some maintenance on your computer. There are several applications that can do this. Just do a Google search on 'mac maintenance' and take your pick. Some are free. One of the things to read is “Five Mac maintenance myths.”
        "If you have a large hard drive (say, 250GB) and it is almost full (say, less than 50GB free space), that can also slow your computer down. It’s important to clean out the old logs, the temporary files, and other stuff. Any one of the maintenance applications mentioned about will do that.
        "Another way to really boost the performance of your computer is to replace the internal hard drive with a SSD (Solid State Drive). It’s about $500 for a 240GB drive (prices are expected to drop soon). What this does is boot up almost instantly, launch all your applications almost instantly, and make all your applications run super fast, but it won’t access the Internet any faster (except for those web pages that are cached locally). If you have a lot of personal data files (movies, photos), then you’ll also need to turn your old internal hard drive into an external hard drive so all your personal files can be moved there, instead of taking up room in the internal hard drive.
        Here John closes with a personal opinion, "And to be honest with you, I thought my new laptop would be really fast. Compared to my three year-old iMac, it’s only a tiny bit faster. So, unless you think you really need to be able to upgrade beyond your current OS of 10.5, you can stay with your current computer for at least another four years. After that, you should really consider getting the latest model."
        Tagging on to John's recommendations take a look at finding out what files are taking up all that space; see this Macworld article.

Solid State Drives (SSD) Discussed

"Here is a good, understandable guide to solid state drives (SSD)," begins Jim Hamm. And now John Carter adds to the information.First, from Jim, "The article clarifies the importance of using a program like TRIM with an SSD. As I understand it, the new Mac laptops with Thunderbolt do support TRIM, and OS X 10.7 (Lion), when it comes out this summer, also supports TRIM.  Whenever I purchase my next Mac laptop, it will be with SSD. I think this is the storage technology for the future, although, as the article states, spinning hard drives will be around for years."  This article has a link to download or read online a 21 page "Hard Drive of the Future" booklet. John writes, "There’s no reason to wait until LION comes out to upgrade to an SDD with any OS. TRIM is not hardware dependent. You can use the Mac Disk Utility as explained here to fake a TRIM operation. In the MakeUseOf article, they identify several SSD vendors that provide standalone TRIM utilities, but probably not any that work with the Mac. "Be aware that you need to know which SATA interface to specify for the SSD. My iMac and MacBook Pro have the SATA I interface. The much faster and more expensive SSD drives are SATA II (3GB/s vs 1.5GB/s), and then the newest SATA III is 6GB/s. Please do NOT purchase a SATA II device to plug into a SATA I connector -- you do NOT get the speed advantage of the SATA II device." And John recommends we read this article.

Solid State Drive in Your Future?

        "I think it's the technology of the future," comments Jim Hamm about SSD, as he sends us this article from Small Dog Tech Tails.  Scroll down to "Just a TRIM."  It explains why a Solid State Drive (SSD) needs a TRIM (or a similar function) to prevent the degradation, over time, of the write function. (TRIM, while capitalized, is not an acronym for anything; its purpose is to trim old data from the SSD.)
        I asked Jim about replacing an existing drive in a Mac with a SSD.  He says it's not commonplace, but several new Macs, including the new MacBook Pros with SSD come with Thunderbolt and do support TRIM.  He thinks SSDs are available to be used as an exterior drive of Time Machine, and suggests this info from NewEgg