Exactly man! The sequential read/write speed is bullshit, it's not how OS is using disk. The thing to look at is IOPS with 4kB random read/write. For me the sweet spot was with 160GB Intel 320.
The controller is the part of SSD that concerns me. For example, Apple OSX works with only one - or maybe only a limited number - of controllers - and what the heck are the better controllers - or does it make absolutely no difference for the most part?
Your direction to check out sequential vs non-sequential reads was handy - but I do wonder at your buying a 40gig SSD HD. What could you even fit on so small an HD?
@AppA 3Gb/s is possible on SSD with sequential reads - see OCZ Vertex 3 - although I woudl not recommend this disk as I have bad experiences with OCZ SSD disk and have read plenty of bad reviews and dirty marketing/etc. tricks ("lies") about them.
So it is just an example to prove that SATA II is not enough nowadays.
@Hax0rPr0n Lose sectors? Did I miss a meeting? What flash memories have is limited number of writes. On my OCZ Vertex2 drive, that's around 10 000 per cell. With built-in algorithms estimated dist life is somewhere over 10 years. For speeds I get, I'll gladly buy another one in 4-5 years.
One thing most people don't think about is the fact that HDD drives will heavily fragment once they reach roughly 80% capacity, which will resort in performance issues, and it applies to almost every OS! In a way, you could say that while you might have a 100gb HDD, you really have 80gb of decent performance. Since SSD uses RAM like access, the seek time is negligible in SSD. Basically fragmentation is only a big deal with disk based drives.
The bigger the SSD the faster overall. Take a look at a Vertex 3 120GB vs 240GB or M4 for example.
There is a point where they even out but the price performance argument at least makes no sense since it is just
controller cost + flash + manufacturing
Obviously this means the bigger the better price per GB 99/100 times seeing as how regular SSDs only use 1 controller. The exception to this rule being very high capacity SSDs that only sell a few units.
Shawn.... nice to see you again and glean knowledge from the brain of Shawn. It's been way too long.
I have a question... I installed Kubuntu 11.04 on a PC that's dual booting Windows XP on separate drives. But some loon changed GRUB from the simple little config file into a nightmare. Changing the start menu screen so it displays longer than the default 5.2 microseconds had become rocket science.
@penguinistas Nowadays there is a KCM module (entry in systemsettings) for configuring grub. IDK if Kubuntu ships with it by default. If you want to do it by hand, edit/create /etc/default/grub and put something like that in there:
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=false
GRUB_TIMEOUT="3"
Self-explanatory.
And do
sudo update-grub
for the changes to take effect. Grub has indeed become rocket science.
help. ubuntu. com /community/Grub2
wiki. ubuntuusers. de /grub_2 (in the rocket science language)
I want my Linux system to use the SSD as some kind of cache, that means it should be filled automatically with those files that are accessed the most often, without me having to decide and doing a lot of bind mounts.
A large SSD on which you could put / and /boot and whatnot is for sure quite fine, but also expensive. Putting the whole / tree there is very wasteful, not to mention other files in /home that are loaded frequently (like a game in wine). This is why the best method would be to implement some kind of automatic heuristic that uses the SSD as some kind of cache for frequently used files (copying them from the main HD).
@SeltsamerAttraktor Or you can get a hybrid solution like Seagate Momentu that is big and fast. It has heuristics that put frequenlty used data in the flash part and the rest on magnetic plates. Also such disks often use the faster memory - SLC instead of the common MLC.
Got myself a force gt 120gb and its fast fast fast. I don't think I could ever go back to traditional hard drives. But warning its insatiable as all I can think of is what it will be like once i have another one to run in raid0 as from the reviews ive seen i can expect 380MB/s 4K speed and 1.1GB/s max sequential.
@prankmypants If you want mental masturbation check OCZ RevoDrive 3. PCI-Express card with 4 "drives" on super fast RAID controller. They pull something like 1.5GB/s read/write (that's Byte not bit) and on random read/write they get around 230000 IOPS on 4k blocks. Damn fast if you ask me. Funny thing is, WIn7 still takes around 16+ seconds to load on this drive which is funny considering speeds that drive has.
@TheMeanEYE Yep I looked at those also but way out of price range. Saying that tho once I get a 4 way sata6 raid controller i can have 4x 120gb forcegt for 2.2GB/s sequential and 760MB/s 4K. Now if IOPS are additional in raid (correct me if wrong, i did try googling quick) then id have 340,000 IOPS :P
Are you talking to a 5 year old or adults?
carnivorx 1 week ago
Exactly man! The sequential read/write speed is bullshit, it's not how OS is using disk. The thing to look at is IOPS with 4kB random read/write. For me the sweet spot was with 160GB Intel 320.
CantSeemToThink 1 week ago
The controller is the part of SSD that concerns me. For example, Apple OSX works with only one - or maybe only a limited number - of controllers - and what the heck are the better controllers - or does it make absolutely no difference for the most part?
Your direction to check out sequential vs non-sequential reads was handy - but I do wonder at your buying a 40gig SSD HD. What could you even fit on so small an HD?
Alistairville 2 weeks ago
Have you been smoking crack.
neephius 2 months ago
@Hax0rPr0n How can you get 3gb/s on a disk based drive. AFAIK it's not even possible with SSD's.
These are insane speeds which are currently only there for marketing purposes.
AppA 3 months ago
@AppA 3Gb/s is possible on SSD with sequential reads - see OCZ Vertex 3 - although I woudl not recommend this disk as I have bad experiences with OCZ SSD disk and have read plenty of bad reviews and dirty marketing/etc. tricks ("lies") about them.
So it is just an example to prove that SATA II is not enough nowadays.
CantSeemToThink 1 week ago
@Hax0rPr0n Lose sectors? Did I miss a meeting? What flash memories have is limited number of writes. On my OCZ Vertex2 drive, that's around 10 000 per cell. With built-in algorithms estimated dist life is somewhere over 10 years. For speeds I get, I'll gladly buy another one in 4-5 years.
TheMeanEYE 4 months ago
I don't see any problem on using a Sata II HDD for now.
Not in Windows, imagine on linux that is faster? lol
Maybe on the next years depending on how things will going to be...
MrPauloScarface 4 months ago
SSD's are getting cheaper nowadays. I say, if you got the means .. GO BIG!
mpalen19 4 months ago
Welcome Back!
One thing most people don't think about is the fact that HDD drives will heavily fragment once they reach roughly 80% capacity, which will resort in performance issues, and it applies to almost every OS! In a way, you could say that while you might have a 100gb HDD, you really have 80gb of decent performance. Since SSD uses RAM like access, the seek time is negligible in SSD. Basically fragmentation is only a big deal with disk based drives.
Just another thing to consider.
FloppyFormatFrenzy 4 months ago
All well and true, but I'll be sticking to traditional HDDs for now.
growingneeds 4 months ago
The bigger the SSD the faster overall. Take a look at a Vertex 3 120GB vs 240GB or M4 for example.
There is a point where they even out but the price performance argument at least makes no sense since it is just
controller cost + flash + manufacturing
Obviously this means the bigger the better price per GB 99/100 times seeing as how regular SSDs only use 1 controller. The exception to this rule being very high capacity SSDs that only sell a few units.
roflschofel 4 months ago
Shawn.... nice to see you again and glean knowledge from the brain of Shawn. It's been way too long.
I have a question... I installed Kubuntu 11.04 on a PC that's dual booting Windows XP on separate drives. But some loon changed GRUB from the simple little config file into a nightmare. Changing the start menu screen so it displays longer than the default 5.2 microseconds had become rocket science.
Any suggestions?
penguinistas 4 months ago
@penguinistas Nowadays there is a KCM module (entry in systemsettings) for configuring grub. IDK if Kubuntu ships with it by default. If you want to do it by hand, edit/create /etc/default/grub and put something like that in there:
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=false
GRUB_TIMEOUT="3"
Self-explanatory.
And do
sudo update-grub
for the changes to take effect. Grub has indeed become rocket science.
help. ubuntu. com /community/Grub2
wiki. ubuntuusers. de /grub_2 (in the rocket science language)
SeltsamerAttraktor 4 months ago
I want my Linux system to use the SSD as some kind of cache, that means it should be filled automatically with those files that are accessed the most often, without me having to decide and doing a lot of bind mounts.
SeltsamerAttraktor 4 months ago
@SeltsamerAttraktor Have you tried setting the drive up as a swap partition?
AppA 3 months ago
@AppA That would have no effect at all since Ram is cheap this day at the swap seldom used. And it's not what I want.
SeltsamerAttraktor 3 months ago
@SeltsamerAttraktor Ah, didn't know you had enough RAM :)
What you also can look into is making the SSD a boot partition, this way your system will boot faster.
It also helps reduce a single point(s) of failure: When your /boot partition gets corrupted is some way, you'll still have your other partitions.
AppA 3 months ago
@AppA You didn't understand.
A large SSD on which you could put / and /boot and whatnot is for sure quite fine, but also expensive. Putting the whole / tree there is very wasteful, not to mention other files in /home that are loaded frequently (like a game in wine). This is why the best method would be to implement some kind of automatic heuristic that uses the SSD as some kind of cache for frequently used files (copying them from the main HD).
This needs to be done at kernel level.
SeltsamerAttraktor 3 months ago
@SeltsamerAttraktor AFAIK linux kernel already incorporates this type of system but in RAM (that is, if its plenty)
AppA 3 months ago
@AppA Yeah, the file system cache. Similar, maybe, but different.
SeltsamerAttraktor 3 months ago
@SeltsamerAttraktor Aren't we all ;)
AppA 3 months ago
@SeltsamerAttraktor Or you can get a hybrid solution like Seagate Momentu that is big and fast. It has heuristics that put frequenlty used data in the flash part and the rest on magnetic plates. Also such disks often use the faster memory - SLC instead of the common MLC.
CantSeemToThink 1 week ago
@CantSeemToThink That actually sounds like a good idea.
SeltsamerAttraktor 1 week ago
Got myself a force gt 120gb and its fast fast fast. I don't think I could ever go back to traditional hard drives. But warning its insatiable as all I can think of is what it will be like once i have another one to run in raid0 as from the reviews ive seen i can expect 380MB/s 4K speed and 1.1GB/s max sequential.
prankmypants 4 months ago
@prankmypants If you want mental masturbation check OCZ RevoDrive 3. PCI-Express card with 4 "drives" on super fast RAID controller. They pull something like 1.5GB/s read/write (that's Byte not bit) and on random read/write they get around 230000 IOPS on 4k blocks. Damn fast if you ask me. Funny thing is, WIn7 still takes around 16+ seconds to load on this drive which is funny considering speeds that drive has.
TheMeanEYE 4 months ago
@TheMeanEYE Yep I looked at those also but way out of price range. Saying that tho once I get a 4 way sata6 raid controller i can have 4x 120gb forcegt for 2.2GB/s sequential and 760MB/s 4K. Now if IOPS are additional in raid (correct me if wrong, i did try googling quick) then id have 340,000 IOPS :P
prankmypants 4 months ago
yes
xwicked7 4 months ago
Answer: YES
6Diego1Diego9 4 months ago