SSD drives

[Raw shooter]

On SSD, you simply have to use one to know.  The experience is beyond words.  The boot time, the application launch times are unbelievable.
The article is great, but it just doesn't do this experience justice.  Anyone who uses Photoshop, Bridge, or other heavy apps will just feel that finally something makes a difference so large, that another era has begun with computers.

I was using 7200 rpm drives in my Dell XPS laptop (2.8 GHz, 4 GB RAM).  Changed to a 90/MB sec read and write SSD (about a year ago).  I can't go back.  Even the tiny capacity just doesn't matter.  All my data comes across the network anyway (1 GB lan, switch).

I would recommend all my LL buddies just try a SSD.  You will remember the moment as a paradigm shift.  I do look forward to upgrading to the Intel X25 SSD.

BTW, the SSDs come in 2 technologies.  Single Level Cells (fast) and Multi Level Cells (slow).  The large capacities are always the slower Muli Level Cells - so don't bite on those.  The Intel Extremes are the fast Single Level cells - and the speed that will thrill.

[John.Murray]

However, there is a very bad error in the article:

When you delete a file in your OS, there is no reaction from either a hard drive or SSD

This is a ridiculous statement (from a reviewer). The consequence is, that an SSD drive is principally not suitable as work disk with constant creation and erasure of files.

I think your selective quote is a bit unfair.   From page 7 of the article:

When you delete a file in your OS, there is no reaction from either a hard drive or SSD. It isn’t until you overwrite the sector (on a hard drive) or page (on a SSD) that you actually lose the data. File recovery programs use this property to their advantage and that’s how they help you recover deleted files.

I also disagree with your conclusion - I've also ordered 2 30GB Vertex drives to use for O/S and PS-Swap.  I'm interested in exploring system pagefile issues.  For those running Vista, you'll want to disable scheduled defragmentation:

http://vistasupport.mvps.org/disable_disk_...er_schedule.htm

In the case of the PS-Swap disk - a  Secure Erase (described on Page 11), from time to time ought to do the trick....

[woof75]

On SSD, you simply have to use one to know.  The experience is beyond words.  The boot time, the application launch times are unbelievable.
The article is great, but it just doesn't do this experience justice.  Anyone who uses Photoshop, Bridge, or other heavy apps will just feel that finally something makes a difference so large, that another era has begun with computers.

I was using 7200 rpm drives in my Dell XPS laptop (2.8 GHz, 4 GB RAM).  Changed to a 90/MB sec read and write SSD (about a year ago).  I can't go back.  Even the tiny capacity just doesn't matter.  All my data comes across the network anyway (1 GB lan, switch).

I would recommend all my LL buddies just try a SSD.  You will remember the moment as a paradigm shift.  I do look forward to upgrading to the Intel X25 SSD.

BTW, the SSDs come in 2 technologies.  Single Level Cells (fast) and Multi Level Cells (slow).  The large capacities are always the slower Muli Level Cells - so don't bite on those.  The Intel Extremes are the fast Single Level cells - and the speed that will thrill.

Which type of SSD do you think comes with the Macbook pros, single level or multi level?

[DarkPenguin]

I also disagree with your conclusion - I've also ordered 2 30GB Vertex drives to use for O/S and PS-Swap.  I'm interested in exploring system pagefile issues.

Please report back.

[Panopeeper]

I think your selective quote is a bit unfair.   From page 7 of the article:

When you delete a file in your OS, there is no reaction from either a hard drive or SSD. It isn’t until you overwrite the sector (on a hard drive) or page (on a SSD) that you actually lose the data. File recovery programs use this property to their advantage and that’s how they help you recover deleted files.

The issue is, that all the above is incorrect.

When you delete a file, this fact is recorded in the directory. As such, the directory becomes a very often rewritten part of the storage; it is rewritten by each file allocation, extention or shortening of the file, rename and delete.

In fact, even accessing a file is recorded. If you don't see the "Data accessed" column in Explorer, right-click on one of the column headings, click "More" and select "Data Accessed". Now you can see, when the file has been opened last time (but only date, no time[/i]). Do this with the directory of your PS installation; you can see, that lots of files has been accessed the day you started PS.

All that means re-writing the directory.

I also disagree with your conclusion - I've also ordered 2 30GB Vertex drives to use for O/S and PS-Swap.  I'm interested in exploring system pagefile issues

I wonder how long you will disagree with my conclusion. The paper mentions 10,000 rewriting, IIRC. This may be higher in practice, but still, the limit can be reached easily. Work files, like paging, swapping for PS are the worse under such circumstances. Have not you noticed that the writer repeatedly mentioned fast program loading as the main advantage? That's because he was using the drive as program storage; logical, as that does not change often.

[DarkPenguin]

Update to the original article...

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3535

[John.Murray]

I wonder how long you will disagree with my conclusion. The paper mentions 10,000 rewriting, IIRC. This may be higher in practice, but still, the limit can be reached easily. Work files, like paging, swapping for PS are the worse under such circumstances. Have not you noticed that the writer repeatedly mentioned fast program loading as the main advantage? That's because he was using the drive as program storage; logical, as that does not change often.

I expect it will be quite a long time.  You apperently failed to read my comment regarding paging.  In addition you seem to miss that fact that the erase/rewrite cycle, which is *expected* to be as low as 10,000 (note that Samsung's enterpise class SSD's have a 1 million cycle estimate and a 10 year warranty), only occurs when an entire block becomes dirty - not every read/write operation.  In regard to directory operations, at least NTFS, directory updates are journaled across a number of physical files and indexes within the MFT, allowing transactional integrity while a write operation is in progress.  NTFS can even recover from a RAID 5 write hole (when a spindle fails during a stripe operation).  In addition the space reserved for the MFT directory can easilly be increased from the 12.5% standard

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc781134.aspx

Also factor in that VSS (volume shadow copy) is on by default on Vista:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa819772(VS.85).aspx  Although some consider VSS an annoyance, it *does* ensure that susequent files are written *without* overwriting the original data.

Of course all things fail - I'm just not so sure this 10,000 block cycle estimate is really all that important in comparision to physical head/rotating magnetic media issues.  One test that I will perform is running an iometer test series on a very small partition (5mb) which should quickly approach and surpass this mark - I'll let everyone know!

[AgencyDigital_NYC]

My feeling is that we should all just sit tight a little while longer until ssd drives aren't so $$$.  They are fast, & do test faster than most.  But the expense seems unequal to the gains. In the case of lap tops the cost is more understandable.

[nemophoto]

I've had a Patriot 128GB model installed for about three months now, used primarily as the scratch disk for PS. With an HDD benchmark utility, the drive is quite fast. In the real world, a little faster than my SATA II drive I had installed. Not unlike hard drives, SSD drives are by far fastest while READING. Writing can often be another matter, especially deending upon cluster size and the size of the file being written. I do notice final files saved from Photoshop are saved much quicker, in general, because it's reading the data from the SSD.

Nemo

[Plekto]

If you have the money, though, nothing beats an actual RAM-based solid-state drive.

ACard makes the best one for a reasonable price.  It has battery and CF card backup and works amazingly, perfectly, stupefyingly fast.  But pricey, but nothing works better for a swap or temp file drive.  Note - the ANS-9010B only has 6 slots, but is $100 cheaper.  The 9010 (non  can do RAID as well, though, but that's silly as the 6 slot model almost saturates the SATA2 bus as it is.  RAID seems to give a small increase, to be sure, but only a server environment would likely notice it.

[JeffVo]

If you have the money, though, nothing beats an actual RAM-based solid-state drive.

ACard makes the best one for a reasonable price.  It has battery and CF card backup and works amazingly, perfectly, stupefyingly fast.  But pricey, but nothing works better for a swap or temp file drive.  Note - the ANS-9010B only has 6 slots, but is $100 cheaper.  The 9010 (non  can do RAID as well, though, but that's silly as the 6 slot model almost saturates the SATA2 bus as it is.  RAID seems to give a small increase, to be sure, but only a server environment would likely notice it.

Plekto, Do you have experience with these as a scratch drive or otherwise? What kind of performance are you seeing?  Any issues?

[Plekto]

Plekto, Do you have experience with these as a scratch drive or otherwise? What kind of performance are you seeing?  Any issues?

With this one, not yet - though soon.  Previously I have run ramdisks as swap areas for programs like Photoshop and it's a massive increase in speed.  Memory alone runs over 1000 times faster than a hard drive.  Now, the real limitation of course is the memory bus/drive interface, which is much slower.  But when you see Windows booting in 6-8 seconds, yes, it's that fast.  Generally a Ramdisk will increase speeds about 10x-20x for data heavy tasks.

Issues on ones I've run in the past are zero other than volatility.  You used to requires a good UPS if you wanted to run one, and couldn't risk a crash or reboot.  That's been solved, which is why I'm going to buy one.   The reviews are all favorable, you'll note - just yes, it is pricey.  

Now, if you are running a 64 bit OS and have 8+gigs, you can do this via software(which is how I've used it so far).   But extra ram is often the largest part of the expense and it has to be initialized every time.  A Ramdisk or SSD would solve this at least.  Just, SSDs are really not designed to work as a swap space...  The optimal use for a ram disk is as swap and temp file space.  SSDs for longer term storage.  SSDs are in fact, optimal for archival as they never fail on reading data that's already written correctly.  Perfect for storing client images and so on for a decade or more.

Note:
If you have a dual core(or more) processor, just putting the swap file on a drive other than the apps/os drive makes for a huge increase in speed.  While you exit your program or move to your next task, the file cleanup and thrashing continues on the other drive without hanging your system(needs to be able to do two things in actual multitasking, hence the 2+ core need).  This is an easy thing to do immediately to get some extra speed.

http://www.wideopenwest.com/~dcason6634/
Here's a small review a guy did with proper hardware/controller card instead of the built-in.  This is a big increase in performance.   The limitation of these things(including SSDs) is clearly the SATA controller.

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.as...hreadid=2244895
This is a currently ongoing discussion about exactly this sort of use - and the comments on the 2nd page about Excel and Outlook opening faster than he could lift his finger off the mouse button or blink are exactly what happens if the entire OS, Apps, and swap are in ram.  Obviously this is overkill, but the speed difference is no joke.

[dchew]

Plekto, Do you have experience with these as a scratch drive or otherwise? What kind of performance are you seeing?  Any issues?

Here's a new post today from Joseph Holmes:

http://www.josephholmes.com/news-fastphotoshop.html


Dave Chew