topic accessing SSD while running optimizer in Solid State Drives (NAND)

accessing SSD while running optimizer

PGall3 — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 17:08:45 GMT

Hello,

I have been using 320 series SSD in an embedded system running XPembedded. Each time our system starts up we run the optimizer. With ver 1.X of the utility and a 320 series SSD the Optimization routine takes less than 10 seconds.

We recently started using a 3700 series (800GB) SSD. This required upgrading the utility to version 3.x. With this combination the optimization routine takes up to 1 minute. The status gets to 85% pretty quickly but then stops there for the majority of the time. It eventually completes.

During this period the rest of our system is starting up and we write to a log file on the SSD. About 1 in 5 times our has a "memory access violation" error. When we disable writing to the log file we do not have a problem. We need the log file access during this startup period so I am trying to understand what the optimizer is doing and how it might affect access to the disk while it is running.

Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks!

u_p

Re: accessing SSD while running optimizer

KenF_Intel — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:21:18 GMT

Hi u_p,

I'm looking into this.

Re: accessing SSD while running optimizer

KenF_Intel — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 19:06:22 GMT

Hi U_P,

I don't have anything specific to report. Our internal tests on Win 7 shows the optimizer completing in about 40 seconds so I think your 1 minute completion time is not out of the ordinary.

My work system has a 120 GB 320 SSD and optimization completes in about the same 10 seconds.

I think the difference is the drive size and the over-provisioning on the DC S3700.

Is there any possibility that you could run the optimization after the rest of your start-up routine and logging?

Re: accessing SSD while running optimizer

PGall3 — Fri, 31 May 2013 18:22:56 GMT

Hi Ken,

Thanks for looking into this. We ultimately had to change our software so that we wait before accessing the SSD until after the Optimizer utility is completed.

We had two issues

1) When trying to write to a file we got a "memory access violation" when creating and writing to a file on the SSD being trimmed.

2) We lost data that was written to a new file while the Optimizer routine was being run.

We found a work around for both of these but I believe there are issues when creating and writing to files while the optimizer is running that you will need to address.

Paul (formerly u_p)