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As we know, solid state drives (SSDs) have extremely high disk performance compared to traditional hard disk drives (HDD), especially newly manufactured hard drives. However, over time, the performance of SSD will degrade sharply. And this is especially true when the data stored on it reaches about 70% of the total capacity.

SSD testing tools play an important role in monitoring the health and performance of solid state drives, and using these tools can help you do a lot of countermeasures to minimize performance degradation. The most effective such software is usually the free tools provided by SSD manufacturers themselves, such as Samsung, Intel and Toshiba's OCZ, which provide effective tools for their SSD products.

In addition, there are other SSD testing tools that can be used with any manufacturer's SSD. This article will introduce 9 kinds of efficient software for these two types.

Photo Source: SSYER by: interesting Soul

Type of SSD Health check tool

Not every SSD health check software includes all of the following features. Before purchasing, please read the software description carefully to see if it contains any or all of the following tools. (note, however, that different vendors may have slightly different names for these tools.)

SSD performance Optimization tool

The SSD tool enables users to make changes while the SSD controller performs garbage collection and other parameters to avoid a significant impact on the performance of the drive.

Many tools allow users to optimize or adjust their SSD according to different requirements, for example, they can improve performance while reducing some storage capacity, or maximize storage capacity at the cost of performance and reliability.

SSD Health tool

During garbage collection, data is often moved to new areas of SSD to ensure that each NAND unit is used as evenly as possible. This is called "wear equalization" and is implemented to prevent certain units from being used so frequently that they wear out and cannot be used in the early stages of SSD.

The SSD Health tool can monitor the amount of wear of the NAND unit and the amount of error correction that needs to be applied, monitor the overall health of the SSD, and predict when it will lose its life.

SSD overconfiguration tool

Because the data stored on the SSD is often moved for wear balancing and garbage collection, the SSD itself is "overconfigured", which means that the actual available storage space exceeds the storage space explicitly indicated by SSD.

This extra space is used as a temporary area so that the process of moving data can be performed more quickly and efficiently.

The amount of overconfiguration in SSD is usually set at the factory, but the SSD overconfiguration tool allows changes. "by reducing the overconfiguration of settings, you can increase available storage capacity but degrade performance, and vice versa."

SSD secure erase tool

If the SSD contains sensitive information and needs to be processed or the SSD needs to be reused, it is wise to erase the data on it first.

The problem is that many HDD software tools that delete data by overwriting drives multiple times cannot access all storage areas on the SSD, such as blocks that have been marked as damaged, or blocks that are overconfigured and worn out.

The SSD secure erase tool provides access to hardware-based secure erase routines, during which time SSD's controller ensures that all storage-including areas that are usually not directly accessible-can be erased.

9 Best SSD Health and performance Monitoring tools

Many data storage professionals have their favorite tools that have been in use for many years. To be sure, SSD health checks-- really knowing the state of SSD-- can avoid a lot of hassle. Here are some of the best top SSD health tools.

1. Samsung Magician (Magician)-this tool can be used with Samsung 950850840830 and 470 series SSD to access many SSD internal features. It provides:

Firmware update notification and installation

Performance benchmark

Drive health and total bytes written

Use "fast mode", which provides a 2x increase in speed through intelligent DRAM data caching for read acceleration and write optimization

Over configuration control

Safe erase

two。 Intel SSD toolkit-Intel's SSD tools provide monitoring or tuning for the vast majority of Intel SSD, including Intel Optane SSD, as well as data centers, enthusiasts and consumer products, such as:

Model, capacity, and firmware version

Drive Health

Estimated remaining life of the drive

Smart attributes (can also be used for hard drives and non-Intel SSD)

Identify device information (can also be used for hard drives and non-Intel SSD)

Optimize performance

Optimize performance in RAID 0

Update firmware on supported SSD

Run a fast, complete diagnostic scan to test the read and write function

Check and optimize system settings for optimal performance, effectiveness and durability

Turn off drive password protection

Safe erase

3.OCZ SSD Utility-Utility can work with many OCZ SSD, although some features are not applicable to all products. Its functions include:

SSD tuning, there are three modes: reliability, performance, or capacity

Operating system tuner

Control the activity LED of the device

Namespace Management of NVMe products

Health monitoring

Firmware update

Over configuration control

4. Crucial Storage Executive-this software tool can be used to monitor and manage Crucial's MX series, BX series, M550 and M500 SSD. It provides the following features:

Update SSD to the latest firmware

Monitoring and using

Monitor the working temperature and overall health status of solid state drives

Reset the encrypted password of the drive

Erase all data stored on the drive

5. Kingston SSD Manager-this software can be used in any Kingston SSD and provides the following features:

Check the health, status, and disk usage of the drive

View drive identification data, including model name, serial number, firmware version, etc.

View and export detailed drive health and status reports

Update drive firmware

Safe erase

Excessive supply control of HPA (Host Protected Area, main reserve) (for DC400 series only)

6. SSD Life and SSDReady-these two tools can be used for SSD produced by most manufacturers, detect SSD read and write modes, and analyze error rates and other parameters. They then use these data to predict when the SSD may reach its wear limit and prompt for replacement.

This is especially useful if you are installing a used SSD on a machine and need to make sure that it is not in a period of failure.

SSD Life

SSD Ready

7. Tweak-SSD-this is a free version of a commercial SSD tool that works with most SSD. The software can:

Optimize and tune Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10 to provide better performance for your SSD drive.

Optimize SSD to improve performance and reduce read and write access through caching.

Optimize TRIM performance (TRIM is an OS function that tells us which chunks of SSD are no longer in use and can be deleted to improve performance).

8. CrystalDiskMark-this tool is a very popular benchmark tool that records the performance of SSD under different conditions, which is very useful for monitoring the performance of SSD. It can also help you decide when to perform some form of optimization to restore performance to previous levels.

9. CrystalDiskInfo-this tool monitors the health of SSD, notifies you when firmware updates are available, and provides a prediction of hard disk failure time.

Functions of the SSD tool

The basic functions that most SSD utilities provide:

Performance testing and benchmarking so you can see how performance changes over time

Update the SSD firmware to ensure that the SSD controller works as efficiently as possible

Drive health check to provide imminent failure warning

Performance tuning or optimization for different usage scenarios

Control the overconfiguration level (see explanation below)

Secure erase function, which removes all data from the SSD so that it can be safely processed

The importance of testing and testing SSD health

To understand the requirements of SSD analysis tools, it is necessary to understand the potential differences between SSD and HDD. Because HDD stores data on rotating disks, the speed at which they read and write data depends on the speed at which the read-write head of the drive moves to the desired position and the speed at which the data is transferred under the read-write head. In turn, this speed depends on the rotation speed of the disc.

For SSD, these variables are not applicable. Instead, the data is read and written to NAND cells, and any cell can be accessed at the same time as other cells. But the read and write speed of SSD is asymmetric: data reads are very fast, while SSD writes are slightly slower.

This is because SSD storage consists of a single NAND unit, which can store one (or several) bits of data, and groups of units are organized into pages, and page groups are organized into blocks.

Data cannot be written to a cell unless the data is deleted in advance and any existing information is deleted. Although data can be written one page at a time, it can only be erased in the entire block at a time. This means that when a single bit of data is written to a cell, all pages in the block, including the unit, are copied into a waiting area, the entire block is erased, and then all pages and new data are written back to the erased block.

Finally, you need to mark the waiting area as Free because the data it holds is no longer needed, a process called garbage collection.

Original author: Paul Rubens Source: Enterprise Storage

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