SSD and einstein@home
19 Jun 2012 20:21:59 UTC
Topic 196407
(moderation:
Hello,
I did buy an INTEL SSD 520 Series SATA 3 120Gb.
I have already installed a WD 320 GB HDD disk SATA 2.
I will install on my SSD Windows 7 Home Premium SP 1 and my applications.
I wonder if I should install the following directories on my SSD:
C: \ Program files \ BOINC and C: \ ProgramData \ BOINC ( fragmentation issues )
Thank you in advance for your answers !
Good day !
Jeanguy
SSD and einstein@home
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Like any memory drive, there is a limited amount of reads and writes (it is huge, but there is a limit) and installing the data part on that drive will increase the read/write usage a lot and cause it to be used up faster than with it not.
Hi Pooh Bear! :-) Long
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Hi Pooh Bear! :-)
Long time, no see ...
I agree, certainly don't put anything on an SSD you couldn't do without. It's blazingly fast, but one day it will fall over with not alot of warning. Do they use SMART I wonder ?
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
When they fail, they just
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When they fail, they just can't write anymore. You can, usually, still read-only. Don't put anything you wouldn't want to lose though. Been running one for over a year on different projects and so far so good.
Hallo jeanguy! If you look
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Hallo jeanguy!
If you look into the Task-Manager/Power/Ressourcemonitor/Datadrives, you can check the amount of datadrive accesses. I learned from this, that there is nearly no reading and a nearly constant flow of data written to the disk. Presumably these are the crunched results. Our programms aren´t so big, so they can be halted in the RAM. These almost continues data stream to be written on the SSD will erode it by time. On the other hand the stream is so small, it can be easily handeld by the buffer of the disk. And if you have a SATA6 disk, it is as fast as a SSD. For our purposes.
So I wouldn´t expect a mearurable benefit for our project from a SSD. The PC will off course start much quicker.
That´s my idea. It would be interesting to get a comments about this from the software developers.
Kind regards and happy crunching
Martin
PS: The reading isn´t the problem for a SSD, but writing on to!
From the specifications of the SSD and the stream of data you can learn from the Task-Manager you can calculate how long the SSD will last, about. But I didn´t carry out this calculation. It would be intersting to see this here.
I've used one quite well for
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I've used one quite well for data/scratch-pad/virtual-memory space as part of a deliberately over-endowed speedy box that serves an intra-business LAN of around 15 stations. BUT we do hourly hot backups on the database plus other measures if it falls over.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
You can cut down on the
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You can cut down on the amount of writes to the SSD by going into the BOINC preferences > disk and memory usage tab and change the default write time from at most every 60 seconds to whatever you like. I use 500 seconds. Been working fine on my SSDs for over a year. Another thing I would recommend is to do backups at least once a month. If not the whole drive at least the BOINC data directory, especially if you have custom app_info or cc_config files.
The SSD will last longer than
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The SSD will last longer than you think. I have one host running 24/7 for several years. 2.5 years ago I installed a 80GB intel SSD as a main drive with the swap file on it. Still running fine with no indication of failure. Typical usage is 6TByte writes per year.
Over at xtremesystems, same guys have running endurance tests on the SSDs and they lasted several 100TByte. However when the disk fails, the data was not readable in most cases. You should be good as long the wearout level is above 0 (smart attribute).
Essential is to let BOINC not write to often to the disk. I have chosen 900s.
RE: Hello, I did buy an
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I have 3 machines with these, same drive as you. Drive C: (SSD) used for Windows and Program Files, drive D: (HDD) used as data drive (ProgramData folder).
Don't setup a swap file on the D: drive as its a waste of time, besides you want it on the fastest available device. I only have a swap file on C: (SSD).
I manually changed the defrag scheduled task to only do the HDD, so it can stay running regularly. I already disable the indexing service. If you've run the optimiser software it would disable both, but you still need to defrag the HDD.
BOINC blog
hallo nanoprobe
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hallo nanoprobe !
It´s not the question how often you write to the SSD, but the total number of bytes. But never the less. If you look to the specs of the new 25nm Intel SSD330 Tabel 7, line 3 you find: "The SSD will have a minimum of three years of useful life under typical client work load of 20GB of host writes per day." This level will not reach even a absolute top PC equipped with i7-3960X and 3 x GTX690 and PCIe 3.0.
But the question is: Will it give any better performance in crunching times??? I think no, even for a so absolute top PC described above, as long as you write suffciently often to the disk and the disk has a cache of 32 or better 64MB. One can easily calculate this from the amount of data we have to shuffle back to the server. The only advantage of SSD for our purpose is the lower power consumption and higher reliability - no mechanically moving parts -. But in a high pervormance PC this is more marginal.
Hallo Mike!
Did you mention any increase in crunching performance by the SSD? Did you measure this? I think, this would be of much interest here, but requires some effort.
I agree, it´s nice to test new technologies and to be at the top.
Kind regards and happy crunching
Martin
I use WD raid disks, no one
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I use WD raid disks, no one failed so far!
But they more expensive compared to that other crap.