SSD Testing, Benchmarking, Preconditioning
Micron’s Best Practices for SSD Performance Measurement covers a lot of the basics with IOMeter.
SNIA’s Solid State Storage (SSD) Performance Test Specification (PTS) is a more in-depth specification for testing that covers all of the basics and terminology required for serious SSD testing.
Resources to learn about SSDs
Solid State Drives 101: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know is a full series from Cactus Technologies created in 2016. Cactus Technologies is a company in the flash storage device market. Their 101 covers flash cells, architecture, and functions.
Flash 101 gives an introduction to the NAND flash interface.
Inside Solid State Drives is a valuable textbook describing all the basics of SSDs.
The Branch Education YouTube Channel has multiple in-depth videos on SSDs and their structure, including how the flash is organized and operated.
LDPC-in-SSD offers an introduction to error correcting code (ECC) for SSDs, which has become critical for 3-bit (TLC) and up flash and modern SSDs.
Specifications
The NVMe Base Specification is the Non-Volatile Media Express base specification that’s regularly updated to improve development and deployment of flash. It also applies to HDDs and consumer SSDs and can be useful for reference with tools like nvme-cli.
The SATA Specification (3.5) is the Serial ATA specification which, although older, still applies to many SSDs and HDDs.
The ONFi Specification (5.1) lays out a reference model for flash.
UASP or the USB Attached SCSI Protocol improves over the original bulk-only transport (BOT) protocol for USB and communicates SCSI through USB. An example would be the SCSI UNMAP command being sent to an external USB SSD to be received as TRIM.
The JEDEC NAND Flash Interface Interoperability Standard, or JESD230D (as a revision to JESD230C) describes the standard of NAND flash interface interoperability. Flash today uses the ONFi or Toggle implementations.
The PCI Express Base Specification (4.0 v0.3) helps describe PCIe device behavior which applies to PCIe SSDs. This is part of power management for NVMe drives.
Booting
Older boards and OS may not be able to use NVMe drives without special drivers. Booting is more complicated. One option is to manually modify the BIOS/UEFI to add the NVMe module for boot support. Another option is to use an EFI bootloader like Clover or the rEFInd Boot Manager.
Apple
The Ultimate Guide to Apple’s Proprietary SSDs helps navigate SSD upgrading and issues with older Apple machines.
Surface Pro, Laptops, Steam Deck, XBox Series X, and More
This blog covers SSDs upgrades and issues with various non-PC or PC-like devices.