slow SSD or other reasons

[banko]

Thanks both Mark and chemicalfan,
a good link, enjoyed having a look at it, but as my son used to repair and update laptops, doing a fair few netbooks, I'll let him do it,

I think I bought my aa1 in 2008 (I'll have to check) and all the talk then was the 2 different SSD cards, one quicker than the other, luckily mine was the quicker samsung one, up until about a year ago it was still very quick, but it gradually become slower and at times now is almost unusable,
I've used mine everyday for a couple of hours or so,(if not more) so it hasn't done bad,

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

If you're going to replace the SSD (or anything else that requires stripping down the AA1), can I suggest you take this opportunity to install a 1gig RAM upgrade (so you have 1.5gig) .. that makes a HUGE difference to the speed of the AA1, and how smoothly it runs.

See here:
http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/listparts.aspx?model=Aspire%20One%20%28A110%29&Cat=RAM

[banko]

Mine already has 1 gig of memory,

in your opinion would it be worth adding another 500 (if I can add that amount) as I've never had a problem with memory (I think)
I can't believe how cheap memory is now days.

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

Your call .. you need to see if you ever end up using the swap file .. if you do, more memory is best.

running:

Code: [Select]

free -m

when your system is under load (ie wtha few web browser tabs open, and mamybe a flash video running in one of them) should tell you.

[chemicalfan]

The motherboard will take 2G (I think!) - you can never have too much RAM when you've got under 4G. These modern web browsers & HTML5 just eat it up, and it's only going to get worse with time.

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

Nope .. motherboard of an AA1 has 512mb soldered to the board, and a single slot that can take a 1gb SODIMM (no larger) .. so 1.5gb is your maximum.

Then I use adblock plus and flashblock .. so I only play flash that I want to play.

With that, 1.5gb is enough .. and I regularly have about 20 tabs open in firefox, though I try not to

--

[Gavmack]

Sorry for the big-ish bump but relevant folks.

I'd lost the bookmark for the forum for this terrific AAO resource but good old google with the keywords about this issue I knew would have to be here has saved the day, hooray.

Came here for Peppermint 3 help after Ubuntu went unity-insane and Mark came to the rescue. AAO ZG5 with 32 Gb Supertalent IDE ZIF SSD, been working like a champ ever since with 1.5Gb even though flash bogs it down now.  But the SSD has started to slow down and I think it's got a garbage problem.

Trim needs AHCI support and not IDE like this drive is. I am tech by trade, SSD is often so it's straight to the point.  Has anyone (cough) found a method to trim the drive by the OS live or intact even - or is it backup, zero the SSD wiping the refuse away via hiren boot USB then restore the only way to clean up the rubbish? I'm thinking it is but need confirmation from (ah-hem)

And also if there's a better long term distro for the ZG5 since my last visit I would be interested; it might get a second refit with 3rd antenna + N card from eBay and an exotic heatsink polish/tint to make it still the go to little computer when any iPads, even plus keyboards just wont do. 

I still have to pinch myself that Acer, of all manufacturers can make a computer that I'm as fond of as any of my Macs and PC's I've had in over 25 years 

Thanks in advance!

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

AA1 SSD's simply don't support TRIM

You can test this with:

Code: [Select]

sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep -i TRIM

and you'll get no output.

So I'm afraid wiping the drive is the only option 

Couldn't agree more with this though:-

I still have to pinch myself that Acer, of all manufacturers can make a computer that I'm as fond of as any of my Macs and PC's I've had in over 25 years

I've rebuilt mine a ton of times because I'm simply not happy without it .. which still surprises me.

I'm currently trying to source a replacement SSD for a second AA1 as a backup unit .. which considering the price of AA1 SSD's should tell you something

I have a couple of other netbooks with HDD's .. it would be chaeper to replace their SATA HDD's with "proper" SSD's but for some reason I can't quite put my finger on, I still prefer my AA1 .. weird innit ?

[FrancBryan]

Are there any free or paid devices which can repair SSD bad sectors or, some way or another, read the data in these bad sectors during a clone/image/recovery process?

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

Whilst there is Windows software out there that claims to be able to (sometimes) read data from failed/failing NAND/NOR (flash memory), I'd be seriously sceptical of those claims .. it's not like the data on a HDD where thought the data is stored in digital format it's actually read in an analogue fashion (so the magnetic signature may be there but weak), so reading it multiple times *may* result in a signal.
AFAIK anything stored on a chip is stored and read in true digital format (logic gate) .. so it's either readable or it isn't, which is why modern SSD controllers tend to move stuff around the SSD to level the wear on any given logic gate
(the bad news .. the AA1's SSD doesn't support TRIM or AFAIK wear levelling)

I can only assume the software I mentioned earlier is either a plain lie, or that it's going to "best guess" any unreadable logic gate based on the data around it .. more like a data recovery program, but probably WAY less effective than the same thing on an HDD.

Be aware, I'm NOT a NAND/NOR data recovery "expert" (if there is such a thing) .. so you may want to get advice from elsewhere

[chemicalfan]

If the SSD doesn't support wear levelling, one could put a filesystem on it that did it from the kernel? I'm sure they exist and I'm not crazy!

[Mad Penguin]

Yup, JFFS2 effectively supports wear levelling, you'll find it was used by "FlashLinux" to run a live distro "on" a USB key ..
[note however it doesn't behave like a 'normal' filesystem, and you don't want to put it on a 'large' volume, the startup time and memory usage will be prohibitive]

Just bought a bunch of SanDisk X110's (120G) which look quite promising for 32 quid .. they're definitely getting cheaper ..