SSD & Anti Virus software

[athiker]

Are there special considerations about anti-virus software and using a
SSD? I am thinking about how many write actions a program performs on
the SSD.

Any anti-virus programs that should not be used with a SSD?

Thanks.

 

[telsar]

Are there special considerations about anti-virus software and using a
SSD? I am thinking about how many write actions a program performs on
the SSD.

Any anti-virus programs that should not be used with a SSD?

Thanks.

I don't see how it would matter, but who really knows. I have read
experts whom say you need to baby your SSD's and avoid as much routine
writes as possible. I have read other experts whom say there is no need
at all to baby them as their overall design will last as long as a
standard drive including their use as a linux swap drive/windows page
file. In the end it comes to folks experience and anecdotes as far as
whats real about it all. One can imagine based upon the technical
details of its operation and then there is what they really do.

So it beats me.

PS: Don't bother defragging as its not a real disk whose heads move and
besides who knows where anything is on it anyway.

 

[Metspitzer]

I don't see how it would matter, but who really knows. I have read
experts whom say you need to baby your SSD's and avoid as much routine
writes as possible. I have read other experts whom say there is no need
at all to baby them as their overall design will last as long as a
standard drive including their use as a linux swap drive/windows page
file. In the end it comes to folks experience and anecdotes as far as
whats real about it all. One can imagine based upon the technical
details of its operation and then there is what they really do.

The first two I had failed within a year.
Both replaced under warranty.

 

[Dave-UK]

Are there special considerations about anti-virus software and using a
SSD? I am thinking about how many write actions a program performs on
the SSD.

Any anti-virus programs that should not be used with a SSD?

Thanks.

Just treat an SSD like you would a clockwork disk and stop worrying.

 

[Ken Blake]

Just treat an SSD like you would a clockwork disk and stop worrying.

Ditto! If I couldn't do that, I would not want to have an SSD.

 

[Scott]

Just treat an SSD like you would a clockwork disk and stop worrying.

You sure about this? I thought mine recommended turning off
defragmentation on the basis that (a) fragmentation is not an issue
with a SSD and (b) the drive has a finite life so best practice is to
avoid unnecessary read/write cycles. Is incorrect?

 

[Dave-UK]

You sure about this? I thought mine recommended turning off
defragmentation on the basis that (a) fragmentation is not an issue
with a SSD and (b) the drive has a finite life so best practice is to
avoid unnecessary read/write cycles. Is incorrect?

If your disk manufacturer says that then follow their advice.
I've used Intel, OCZ and SanDisk and none of them have given any
special instructions or recommendations specifically for an SSD device.

 

[Scott]

If your disk manufacturer says that then follow their advice.
I've used Intel, OCZ and SanDisk and none of them have given any
special instructions or recommendations specifically for an SSD device.

Was there no setup software that 'optimised' these settings
automatically?

 

[Gil]

You sure about this? I thought mine recommended turning off
defragmentation on the basis that (a) fragmentation is not an issue
with a SSD and (b) the drive has a finite life so best practice is to
avoid unnecessary read/write cycles. Is incorrect?

What the hell has defragmenting got to do with anti-virus which is the
OP's concern.

 

[Scott]

What the hell has defragmenting got to do with anti-virus which is the
OP's concern.

AIUI the concern is that solid state drives are believed to have a
limited lifespan and best practice is to limit unnecessary read/write
cycles. I cannot see how an antivirus programme would have any effect
on a SSD unless it was reading and writing to that drive.

Dave-UK said this:

"Just treat an SSD like you would a clockwork disk and stop worrying."

My interpretation of this remark was that additional usage/wear was a
factor affecting solid state drives. This interpretation could be
wrong.

My understanding is that the issue is read/write cycles and I was
postulating that defragmentation and antivirus programs may be
relevant.

I cannot see how your posting addresses the concerns of OP in any way.

 

[s|b]

If your disk manufacturer says that then follow their advice.
I've used Intel, OCZ and SanDisk and none of them have given any
special instructions or recommendations specifically for an SSD device.

Not true. I've got an Intel SSD and they do advise you to *not* run the
defragmenter. This is a screenshot from Intel SSD Toolbox:
<http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/1791/ssdintel.png>

They also advise you to disable SuperFetch, Prefetch and ReadyBoost.

What I've also done is move my Temp directories to my SATA hdd.

 

[s|b]

What the hell has defragmenting got to do with anti-virus which is the
OP's concern.

It's clear the OP wants to know more about an SSD. Not defragmenting an
SSD is related to that. Your posting on the other hand has nothing to do
with SSD's or antivirus...

 

[Paul]

Was there no setup software that 'optimised' these settings
automatically?

Windows 7 has some level of awareness of SSD requirements.
Including power_of_two alignment for partitions, not running
defrag on the SSD, and so on. So some level of optimization
for wear life is already present. And the emission of TRIM
commands, helps make the spare space effectively larger,
for background garbage collection.

If you just connected your SSD to WinXP, then there is some
amount of tuning you can do if you feel like it. The SSD will *work*
without any help at all, but tuning can improve the benchmarks
on it slightly. Since an SSD is fast, compared to the original
hard drive, many people are quite content with just leaving it
in the out-of-the-box state.

As for an AV program, I would hope all it is doing, is redundant
reads, when you load executable programs. It's supposed to scan
stuff as you execute it. Reading an SSD doesn't hurt it. Whereas
writing requires block erasure of previous blocks, to be able to
write new data, and that eventually damages the flash cell (so-called
write life).

Windows file systems keep track of the last time a file was accessed,
and the info is written back to the disk. At least on WinXP, this
is something a new SSD owner would likely turn off. I don't know
if Windows 7 has any special provision for this (like batch updating
the necessary info, rather than one file at a time) or not.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?43460-Making-XP-pro-SSD-friendly

"fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 1"

A person should at least be curious enough, to read the background
material on the topic, even if they never intend to do all the
actual grunt-work. (I.e. You should understand what the tradeoffs
are, by not doing anything special for your new SSD.)

Paul

 

[Hacker]

Are there special considerations about anti-virus software and using a
SSD? I am thinking about how many write actions a program performs on
the SSD.

Any anti-virus programs that should not be used with a SSD?

Thanks.

You don't need any anti-virus programs with SSD because Hackers don't target SSD drives; They are too expensive deal with.

All Anti-virus programs should be avoided - aka should not be used with SSD drives.

Hope this helps.

 

[Ashton Crusher]

Are there special considerations about anti-virus software and using a
SSD? I am thinking about how many write actions a program performs on
the SSD.

Any anti-virus programs that should not be used with a SSD?

Thanks.

I can't see why an antivirus program would need to write to the SSD in
order to check it for problems. It would just be reading from it. I
thought writing to them eventually wore them out but reading from them
doesn't wear them out does it?

 

[Paul]

I can't see why an antivirus program would need to write to the SSD in
order to check it for problems. It would just be reading from it. I
thought writing to them eventually wore them out but reading from them
doesn't wear them out does it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAND_flash#Read_disturb

"Read disturb

The method used to read NAND flash memory can cause nearby cells to change
over time if the surrounding cells of the block are not rewritten.

This is generally in the hundreds of thousands of reads without a rewrite
of those cells. The error does not appear when reading the original cell,
but shows up when finally reading one of the surrounding cells.

If the flash controller does not track the total number of reads across
the whole storage device and rewrite the surrounding data periodically
as a precaution, a read disturb error will likely occur, with data loss
as a result."

I only see that effect discussed in academic papers. So no idea
how it's dealt with in real devices. Actually counting read cycles,
sounds like a hair-brained solution. They're more likely to fix it,
when it starts throwing errors (since each block is protected by
ECC, and some number of ECC errors are guaranteed to be
correctable). And as each generation of flash comes out,
the Hamming distance on the ECC has been going up (heavy duty ECC).
That's to compensate for the flaky flash (geometry shrinking
with each generation).

Paul

 

[Dave-UK]

Not true. I've got an Intel SSD and they do advise you to *not* run the
defragmenter. This is a screenshot from Intel SSD Toolbox:
<http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/1791/ssdintel.png>

They also advise you to disable SuperFetch, Prefetch and ReadyBoost.

What I've also done is move my Temp directories to my SATA hdd.

It was some time ago that I used an Intel SSD and as I recall there was nothing
packaged with the drive. Is there a cd or something included now ?

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

You don't need any anti-virus programs with SSD because Hackers don't target SSD drives; They are too expensive deal with.

All Anti-virus programs should be avoided - aka should not be used with SSD drives.

Hope this helps.

Let's hope the OP is smart enough to ignore your April Fool's joke
(which you posted two days late).

 

[s|b]

It was some time ago that I used an Intel SSD and as I recall there was nothing
packaged with the drive. Is there a cd or something included now ?

No that I know of, but somehow I stumbled on their website and found
Intel SSD Toolbox:
<https://downloadcenter.intel.com/De...(120GB,+2.5in+SATA+6Gb/s,+25nm,+MLC)&lang=eng>

<http://tinyurl.com/bpus4un>

It has a menu 'Intel SSD Optimizer' and they advise you to run it once a
week:

<quote

Optimizes Intel SSDs using Trim functionality. The latest firmware must
be installed for this tool to function. Click Firmware Update to check
for the latest firmware. Intel recommends running the Intel SSD
Optimizer once a week.

</quote>

As you can guess, updating firmware is also an option.

 

[s|b]

You don't need any anti-virus programs with SSD because Hackers don't target SSD drives; They are too expensive deal with.
Source?

All Anti-virus programs should be avoided - aka should not be used with SSD drives.

BS