H140 - do SSD drives slow down over time?

[sl33py]

Hi all,

Researching my options in terms of hard drive replacement. A lot of the info that was once out there is now lost in the void (misticriver). I've narrowed my choices to either buying a direct swap PATA drive, or using mSATA with the appropriate adaptors. I've updated my bootloader to 7pre4.

I've heard it mentioned a few times that SSDs slow down over time as the drive is filled up, and every time data is deleted.

My typical usage would be to fill the drive nearly completely, listen to that music for a few few months, then delete either half the music, or all of it, refill it, then repeat.

Will an SSD suit me, or should I choose one of the larger 1.8 inch ZIF/PATA drives with actual platters?

Thanks for any advice in advance,
Ben

[saratoga]

Write performance will decrease over time but write performance doesn't matter for an mp3 player.

[sl33py]

Hmm. I've read a couple of accounts now where the drive slows down during playback, making the music stutter.

But also, my typical use is load the player with music and listen for a couple of months. Wipe half (or maybe more) of the music and reload with different music (in fact I wrote a java app to randomise the selection each time). Then repeat.

I have enough music that even with a 120GB drive and all my music @ 320kbps MP3, I'll still reload now and then because it won't all fit.

I wonder how one can 'reset' the drive? I've read that a reformat won't do the job (not sure why though).

[saratoga]

Your player buffers several songs ahead of the one currently playing. Disk performance is irrelevant.

[polluxx2006]

I had a similar experience with my 128 GB SSD (Kingspec) in the irver H120 - maybe not with mp3 files, but with flac...
from what I read, SSD storage has some sort of mappers that indicate the "positions" of data in the memory cells.

The more you CHANGE the content, the longer it takes to access data that is stored in that overwritten cells.
Maybe this is comparable with fragmentation we had to deal with on specific OS years ago..
Well, modern OS obviously can deal with this or "remap" - please don't ask me how...

Anyway, our "little" RB-firmware cannot do this, so the only way to speed up the SSD is refreshing the cells.
(like setting it to factory defaults)
I think a low level format could be the solution. For example, there is a certain disk tool for Linux (it is included in the Parted Magic distro, so I tried it with that one),
but ONLY if you connect it via IDE natively, NOT USB... then I bought myself an IDE adapter, but haven't taken my SSD out of the iriver yet.

Stilll I HOPE that there is another way to do it... or all the above is non-sense (oh and please don't pick on me in that case )
I wish it were but the behaviour of my SSD tells a different story

My conclusion: use an HDD for changing content (80GB is quite cheap on e**y) and
use the SSD only with "growing content" that won't hardly be changed.

I hope that other users here will share their experience with this phenomenon.

[sl33py]

Hey polluxx thanks for posting here. The function that modern OS's use to improve SSD speeds is called TRIM. It cleans up the old content properly when deleted, while (from the reports of slow-downs) it seems RB doesn't.

How many changes/flushes of content on that 128GB drive did you do before you started experiencing the stutters etc? I bet it's less than the billions, or even thousands, that ppl say are required. Please tell us if you try the reformat and it works!

Seeing as my entire FLAC (converted to 320kbps) + MP3 collection wouldn't even fit on a 1TB drive, I definitely fall in the "changing content" category, as I have to cycle. I would have thought more people experience this, especially as there are so many SSD based players out there now. I wonder if there are differences between actual SSD drives and things like Compact Flash (I suspect not).

[saratoga]

TRIM improves write speed, not read speed.  Write speed will be marginally worse without it, but you do not care about write speed on an MP3 player. 

You guys are worrying about nothing.

[polluxx2006]

...but we're experiencing something - and that is, in fact, increasing access times the more
you overwrite data on an SSD. For example, flac should play flawlessly on an iriver H1xx.
I once copied one flac album over and have stuttering problems while buffering. It's not the
READ SPEED, it is the time it takes to access the data, and that differs from file to file...

@sl33py: oh, yes, I remember now - TRIM.

Anyway, guess we're searching for a solution, while I personally think that there ain't one,
except trying to avoid changing content on an SSD

[saratoga]

Lack of trim does not increase access times.

Acess times won't matter in rockbox unless they're measured in minutes.

What you are describing sounds like an ssd that isn't compatible with rockbox.

[wodz]

My experience is that SSDs/CFs/SDs with adapter have problems after entering sleep mode. The wakeup of the drive can take a lot of time. It has nothing to do with access time, TRIM, throughput or anything readily available in datasheet of the drive. Considering that modern OSes can handle this I think the culprit is the ATA driver from the era of spinning disks.

[polluxx2006]

I now set "Spindown" to 254 seconds - btw, there ain't an option to turn it off completely!?

Anyway, it seems to work now. What is strange though, is the fact that my prior setting (10 sec) worked before,
w/ all the other files. I now see that it might not be the access time, but still, delete and overwrite seems to have
an effect on the SSD - or is it the amount of data (in %)?