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Coronita.
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August 21, 2012 at 8:52 AM #750603August 21, 2012 at 9:07 AM #750604
bearishgurl
Participant[quote=no_such_reality] . . . Why bother with SSD? Get big fat ‘slow’ (7800RPM) SATAs and store away. . . [/quote]
That’s what I do. When I “store them away,” they are locked up in a 350-lb file cabinet. And I can easily mount them back in the computer when I go back to work (it has side access to 4 SATA/eSATA HD bays). I also have a USB “enclosure” to store one of them in to attach to the computer externally. Of course, I can take it with me when I travel, if I wish.
When I’m gone, my computers only have operating systems and software in them … nothing else…not even e-mail msgs.
August 21, 2012 at 9:14 AM #750605sdsubie
ParticipantCouple thoughts on SSD’s.
On the personal computing front, my opinion is getting your OS and applications on an SSD is probably the biggest upgrade you can do to your laptop/desktop in regards to performance. If you purchase an SSD big enough to house your user data and VM’s as well, all the better. In the end, time is money, I know my time is worth something. Having to wait a couple minutes for a system to boot adds up. Sitting there watching my application icon bounce half a dozen times in the dock (in OS X) before it launches, compared to not even 1 full bounce when my OS is on an SSD is a big difference. Those times add up, and my overall experience is much better with SSD’s installed on my personal systems. I also run multiple VM’s on my laptops, so having the SSD helps. If you DO have newish MacBook Pro, a popular option is to install a mid-size SSD (like 256GB), and then replace the optical drive with a larger spinning drive (this option exists for many PC laptops as well). This gives you cheap data storage plus the performance of an SSD.
August 21, 2012 at 9:20 AM #750606Hatfield
Participant[quote=no_such_reality]Frankly, buying SSD is like buying a Ferrari for your morning rush hour commute on the I5.[/quote]
I’m guessing you haven’t spent many hours working on a machine that has an SSD, or perhaps you have the patience of a Zen monk. Also, the Ferrari analogy is not a good one. The vast majority of the waiting-for-things-to-happen on a computer is caused by disk latency and throughput issues. The one piece of hardware that most limits the speed of a PC is its hard drive. Modern SSDs have essentially zero latency and deliver data run fast enough to saturate the SATA bus. The disk is no longer the bottleneck.
I switch tasks a lot, need to compile code, and do lots of other disk and CPU intensive tasks, and I find that removing disk latency from the equation is a huge productivity boost. Need to open an image file for that web design issue? Kablam! there it is. Need to open some hog of an application to fix that document? Boom, done. Those 15-seconds there, 30-seconds there pauses that punctuate the work day add up, and you really notice it when they’re gone. And you REALLY notice it when you switch back to a spinning platter.
The reliability issue requires that you stick to a watertight backup strategy, but i’ve never seen a single-bulled productivity boost like the one an SSD provides.
August 21, 2012 at 10:10 AM #750609CoronitaParticipantmy purpose it to use to to compile the android o/s including linux kernel.
On a quad core mac mini with normal 7500 2.5″ striped drives, it’s take 1.5 hrs to compile Jellybean per platform (galaxy nexus, nexus 7, nexus s) from start to finish.
On a dual core laptop with SSD stripe raid, it’s takes about 45 minutes per target from start to finish. But that doesn’t involve copying the targets from SSD to a normal HD afterwards, since the capacity of the SSD’s I have is so low, I can’t fit more than 1 target on both SDDs.
It kinda wasn’t an issue before because there was only 2 targets I use to care about (nexus s and galaxy nexus). Now there’s at least 4, and probably more in the future.
So for me it’s a total loss of productivity (why do you think sometimes I post so much on piggington?)
So I’m thinking if I pop in two SSD’s into the mac mini running stripe raid, it should speed things up…significantly. I’m already maximum out my memory at 16gb..Not sure if it really makes any difference, but I have the entire stripped linux host system running in a ram disk
August 21, 2012 at 10:18 AM #750610no_such_reality
ParticipantAnd you’re not doing any of those from a network attached storage pool.
An SSD in your PC is a different story. A bank of SSDs in SAN fabric attached storage is a different story.
An SSD stuffed in an el cheapo NAS hanging a CIFS share out to a homegroup, is a waste.
[quote=Hatfield][quote=no_such_reality]Frankly, buying SSD is like buying a Ferrari for your morning rush hour commute on the I5.[/quote]
I’m guessing you haven’t spent many hours working on a machine that has an SSD, or perhaps you have the patience of a Zen monk. Also, the Ferrari analogy is not a good one. The vast majority of the waiting-for-things-to-happen on a computer is caused by disk latency and throughput issues. The one piece of hardware that most limits the speed of a PC is its hard drive. Modern SSDs have essentially zero latency and deliver data run fast enough to saturate the SATA bus. The disk is no longer the bottleneck.
I switch tasks a lot, need to compile code, and do lots of other disk and CPU intensive tasks, and I find that removing disk latency from the equation is a huge productivity boost. Need to open an image file for that web design issue? Kablam! there it is. Need to open some hog of an application to fix that document? Boom, done. Those 15-seconds there, 30-seconds there pauses that punctuate the work day add up, and you really notice it when they’re gone. And you REALLY notice it when you switch back to a spinning platter.
The reliability issue requires that you stick to a watertight backup strategy, but i’ve never seen a single-bulled productivity boost like the one an SSD provides.[/quote]
August 21, 2012 at 10:31 AM #750611CoronitaParticipant[quote=no_such_reality]And you’re not doing any of those from a network attached storage pool.
An SSD in your PC is a different story. A bank of SSDs in SAN fabric attached storage is a different story.
An SSD stuffed in an el cheapo NAS hanging a CIFS share out to a homegroup, is a waste.
[quote=Hatfield][quote=no_such_reality]Frankly, buying SSD is like buying a Ferrari for your morning rush hour commute on the I5.[/quote]
I’m guessing you haven’t spent many hours working on a machine that has an SSD, or perhaps you have the patience of a Zen monk. Also, the Ferrari analogy is not a good one. The vast majority of the waiting-for-things-to-happen on a computer is caused by disk latency and throughput issues. The one piece of hardware that most limits the speed of a PC is its hard drive. Modern SSDs have essentially zero latency and deliver data run fast enough to saturate the SATA bus. The disk is no longer the bottleneck.
I switch tasks a lot, need to compile code, and do lots of other disk and CPU intensive tasks, and I find that removing disk latency from the equation is a huge productivity boost. Need to open an image file for that web design issue? Kablam! there it is. Need to open some hog of an application to fix that document? Boom, done. Those 15-seconds there, 30-seconds there pauses that punctuate the work day add up, and you really notice it when they’re gone. And you REALLY notice it when you switch back to a spinning platter.
The reliability issue requires that you stick to a watertight backup strategy, but i’ve never seen a single-bulled productivity boost like the one an SSD provides.[/quote][/quote]
I would think with a NAS, the transfer rate would be bogged down by the net bandwidth…
August 21, 2012 at 10:33 AM #750613spdrun
ParticipantDon’t be so sure about this. Assuming a 1Gb LAN, the improvement in seek time might make it worthwhile. Not to mention the improvement in reliability.
August 21, 2012 at 12:06 PM #750614CoronitaParticipant[quote=spdrun]Don’t be so sure about this. Assuming a 1Gb LAN, the improvement in seek time might make it worthwhile. Not to mention the improvement in reliability.[/quote]
You have a 1gb lan at home?
August 21, 2012 at 12:33 PM #750615ParticipantAnything wired is on a 1gb switch, yes.
August 21, 2012 at 12:51 PM #750616CoronitaParticipant[quote=spdrun]Anything wired is on a 1gb switch, yes.[/quote]
Yes, but do you actually measure your throughput…I’d be curious to see what is advertised versus what actually is.
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