Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Anyone tried a solid state drive?

2008-11-27 Thread Joerg Schilling
Grant [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 I'm considering buying a solid-state drive to improve I/O performance
 and even reduce noise.  Has anyone tried this?  I was considering
 getting the lowest capacity I can find and putting most of the system
 on it.  There is a roundup on tomshardware.com and it sounds like some
 are very much better than others.  SLC sounds vastly superior compared
 to MLC, but also much more expensive.

I yesterday send  some test results If you use a UFS clone like ext,
you will not get much better speed. You should use ZFS or another COW 
filesystem that tries to write bigger blocks in order to avoid high latencies.

I recommend Intel or OCZ. Other SSDs have been reported as slow

I tested OCZ

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
   [EMAIL PROTECTED](uni)  
   [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily



Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Anyone tried a solid state drive?

2008-11-27 Thread KH
Joerg Schilling schrieb:
 Grant [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

   
 I'm considering buying a solid-state drive to improve I/O performance
 and even reduce noise.  Has anyone tried this?  I was considering
 getting the lowest capacity I can find and putting most of the system
 on it.  There is a roundup on tomshardware.com and it sounds like some
 are very much better than others.  SLC sounds vastly superior compared
 to MLC, but also much more expensive.
 

 I yesterday send  some test results If you use a UFS clone like ext,
 you will not get much better speed. You should use ZFS or another COW 
 filesystem that tries to write bigger blocks in order to avoid high latencies.

 I recommend Intel or OCZ. Other SSDs have been reported as slow

 I tested OCZ

 Jörg

   
Hi

this German article says that AXFS will be available up from kernel
2.6.28. This is a new file system named for its main future: Advanced 
Execute in Place Filesystem. This means the CPU can execute stuff from
the ssd without loading it to ram, first. As far as I understand there
is an upside. It is a read only file system you need to create for every
program. I am not the geek in that but I wanted to mention it. Oh and it
does not work if you connect your ssd by ata or usb.

http://www.pro-linux.de/news/2008/13093.html

kh



Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Anyone tried a solid state drive?

2008-11-27 Thread Stroller


On 27 Nov 2008, at 02:08, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:

On Donnerstag 27 November 2008, Grant wrote:

I'm considering buying a solid-state drive to improve I/O performance
and even reduce noise.  Has anyone tried this?  I was considering
getting the lowest capacity I can find and putting most of the system
on it.  There is a roundup on tomshardware.com and it sounds like  
some
are very much better than others.  SLC sounds vastly superior  
compared

to MLC, but also much more expensive.



http://valhenson.livejournal.com/25228.html

I would rethink that after reading that post.


From TFA:

   Postscript: Yes, this analysis is based on anecdotal evidence and
   personal experience, but I can't afford the time to do real research
   unless someone pays me to. If you know someone who will, send me
   email!

I've read a number of other reports, also based on anecdotal evidence  
and personal experience, from a number of people who have very happily  
been using flash as root volumes for years. Their opinions disagree  
with TFA.


Typically the reports I've read have been from people using CFcards -  
4gig is now unbelievably cheap, and CFcards talk EIDE with only a  
small, cheap physical adaptor - on MythTV frontends  low-overhead  
servers. CFcards look ideal for these purposes because they're quiet -  
you want to minimise noise when playing back video in the living room,  
for instance.


I think the last anecdote I read on this subject was written by Trubox  
(Truebox?) on the Openmoko-community list a month or two ago. They  
sell Aserisk systems to small business (in my area, as it happens) and  
I would imagine that typically the system sits in the corner of an  
office and is untouched for years at a time. I would imagine that have  
plenty of installed systems throughout the UK (otherwise they'd be  
going hungry). They report a very low failure rate, as did someone  
else on the MythTV-users list who also bases a commercial offering on  
flash-based hardware.


Whilst I would probably, myself, install a second flash drive myself   
back-up (to a stage 4?) periodically, and avoid disk-writes when  
logging, I get the strong impression that there's little to be scared  
of using flash memory.


Everything I read that says flash - and particularly its wear- 
levelling - is unsuitable for this purpose makes sense to me, but it  
doesn't jibe with the real-world experiences of those who ARE using  
flash VERY happily.


I've yet to see empirical evidence on the longevity of flash for this  
purpose, but I'd advise anyone considering it - anyone thinking flash  
unsuitable - to search the mailing lists I've mentioned. The Trubox  
post should be easy to find, and the subject comes up on MythTV-users  
every few months.


Stroller.




Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Anyone tried a solid state drive?

2008-11-27 Thread Grant
 I'm considering buying a solid-state drive to improve I/O performance
 and even reduce noise.  Has anyone tried this?  I was considering
 getting the lowest capacity I can find and putting most of the system
 on it.  There is a roundup on tomshardware.com and it sounds like some
 are very much better than others.  SLC sounds vastly superior compared
 to MLC, but also much more expensive.

 Typically the reports I've read have been from people using CFcards - 4gig
 is now unbelievably cheap, and CFcards talk EIDE with only a small, cheap
 physical adaptor - on MythTV frontends  low-overhead servers. CFcards look
 ideal for these purposes because they're quiet - you want to minimise noise
 when playing back video in the living room, for instance.

Great idea.  If I'm only putting the main system on flash, I could use
a CFcard instead of an SSD.  Storing music and videos on flash will be
too expensive for awhile.  How does CFcard performance compare to SSD
or conventional hard disk performance?

- Grant



Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Anyone tried a solid state drive?

2008-11-27 Thread Joshua Murphy
On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 5:26 AM, Stroller
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 On 27 Nov 2008, at 02:08, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:

 On Donnerstag 27 November 2008, Grant wrote:

 I'm considering buying a solid-state drive to improve I/O performance
 and even reduce noise.  Has anyone tried this?  I was considering
 getting the lowest capacity I can find and putting most of the system
 on it.  There is a roundup on tomshardware.com and it sounds like some
 are very much better than others.  SLC sounds vastly superior compared
 to MLC, but also much more expensive.


 http://valhenson.livejournal.com/25228.html

 I would rethink that after reading that post.

 From TFA:

   Postscript: Yes, this analysis is based on anecdotal evidence and
   personal experience, but I can't afford the time to do real research
   unless someone pays me to. If you know someone who will, send me
   email!

 I've read a number of other reports, also based on anecdotal evidence and
 personal experience, from a number of people who have very happily been
 using flash as root volumes for years. Their opinions disagree with TFA.

 Typically the reports I've read have been from people using CFcards - 4gig
 is now unbelievably cheap, and CFcards talk EIDE with only a small, cheap
 physical adaptor - on MythTV frontends  low-overhead servers. CFcards look
 ideal for these purposes because they're quiet - you want to minimise noise
 when playing back video in the living room, for instance.

 I think the last anecdote I read on this subject was written by Trubox
 (Truebox?) on the Openmoko-community list a month or two ago. They sell
 Aserisk systems to small business (in my area, as it happens) and I would
 imagine that typically the system sits in the corner of an office and is
 untouched for years at a time. I would imagine that have plenty of installed
 systems throughout the UK (otherwise they'd be going hungry). They report a
 very low failure rate, as did someone else on the MythTV-users list who also
 bases a commercial offering on flash-based hardware.

 Whilst I would probably, myself, install a second flash drive myself 
 back-up (to a stage 4?) periodically, and avoid disk-writes when logging, I
 get the strong impression that there's little to be scared of using flash
 memory.

 Everything I read that says flash - and particularly its wear-levelling - is
 unsuitable for this purpose makes sense to me, but it doesn't jibe with the
 real-world experiences of those who ARE using flash VERY happily.

 I've yet to see empirical evidence on the longevity of flash for this
 purpose, but I'd advise anyone considering it - anyone thinking flash
 unsuitable - to search the mailing lists I've mentioned. The Trubox post
 should be easy to find, and the subject comes up on MythTV-users every few
 months.

 Stroller.

The catch, though, is that I'd guess commercial offerings of MythTV
boxes like that would be updated infrequently and that the actual
recording storage, and likely logs and other frequent write files, is
done on a normal disk. It doesn't seem logical for the average Gentoo
user that follows the 'update often' mentality, and someone looking to
milk the very top in the way of speed out of their system through disk
throughput is very likely a 'ricer' in other respects. When you start
using it for frequent writes (like your average system with everyday
use and frequent upgrades) you start getting a little closer to the
line on write cycles for small-sized MLC... but SLC is going to, by my
guess, outlast its speed benefits by far (much like the old 800MB
harddrives I have around that have far outlasted their size benefits
from their day). Looking at SLC from a $$/GB standpoint you'll find
they're horrendous, but from a $$/performance... at the very least
Intel's X25-E starts to look a lot more reasonable for its cost (it's
easily enterprise grade and mops the floor with just about anything
else that holds data through a reboot)... which is around $760 for the
32MB model.

On the topic of using CF for the job... just looking at
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007, which
doesn't take CF - SATA adaptors into account, the highest read speed
across the board is about 50MB/s, which is half of what the
Velociraptor averages (and 1/5 of its burst read).

-- 
Poison [BLX]
Joshua M. Murphy



Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Anyone tried a solid state drive?

2008-11-27 Thread Volker Armin Hemmann
On Donnerstag 27 November 2008, Grant wrote:
  I'm considering buying a solid-state drive to improve I/O performance
  and even reduce noise.  Has anyone tried this?  I was considering
  getting the lowest capacity I can find and putting most of the system
  on it.  There is a roundup on tomshardware.com and it sounds like some
  are very much better than others.  SLC sounds vastly superior compared
  to MLC, but also much more expensive.
 
  Typically the reports I've read have been from people using CFcards -
  4gig is now unbelievably cheap, and CFcards talk EIDE with only a small,
  cheap physical adaptor - on MythTV frontends  low-overhead servers.
  CFcards look ideal for these purposes because they're quiet - you want to
  minimise noise when playing back video in the living room, for instance.

 Great idea.  If I'm only putting the main system on flash, I could use
 a CFcard instead of an SSD.  Storing music and videos on flash will be
 too expensive for awhile.  How does CFcard performance compare to SSD
 or conventional hard disk performance?

 - Grant


well, harddisks go up to what, 100mb/sec?
cfdisk - 18mb/sec?



Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Anyone tried a solid state drive?

2008-11-27 Thread Grant
 I'm considering buying a solid-state drive to improve I/O performance
 and even reduce noise.  Has anyone tried this?  I was considering
 getting the lowest capacity I can find and putting most of the system
 on it.  There is a roundup on tomshardware.com and it sounds like some
 are very much better than others.  SLC sounds vastly superior compared
 to MLC, but also much more expensive.

 On the topic of using CF for the job... just looking at
 http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007, which
 doesn't take CF - SATA adaptors into account, the highest read speed
 across the board is about 50MB/s, which is half of what the
 Velociraptor averages (and 1/5 of its burst read).

I think my real reason for posting this is I'm unhappy with my IO
performance.  I've got a 320GB Seagate SATAII drive.  How much better
can I do with conventional hard disks?  Is there a test I can run to
make sure my Seagate is performing as it should?

- Grant



Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Anyone tried a solid state drive?

2008-11-27 Thread James
On Thu, November 27, 2008 11:05 am, Grant wrote:
 I'm considering buying a solid-state drive to improve I/O
 performance and even reduce noise.  Has anyone tried this?  I was
 considering getting the lowest capacity I can find and putting most
 of the system on it.  There is a roundup on tomshardware.com and it
 sounds like some are very much better than others.  SLC sounds
 vastly superior compared to MLC, but also much more expensive.

 Typically the reports I've read have been from people using CFcards -
 4gig
 is now unbelievably cheap, and CFcards talk EIDE with only a small,
 cheap physical adaptor - on MythTV frontends  low-overhead servers.
 CFcards look
 ideal for these purposes because they're quiet - you want to minimise
 noise when playing back video in the living room, for instance.

 Great idea.  If I'm only putting the main system on flash, I could use
 a CFcard instead of an SSD.  Storing music and videos on flash will be too
 expensive for awhile.  How does CFcard performance compare to SSD or
 conventional hard disk performance?

 - Grant
Flash is pretty slow.
There are some expensive but fast SSDs out there.
I would wait a year or two.





Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Anyone tried a solid state drive?

2008-11-27 Thread Jorge Peixoto de Morais Neto
 I think my real reason for posting this is I'm unhappy with my IO
 performance.  I've got a 320GB Seagate SATAII drive.  How much better
 can I do with conventional hard disks?  Is there a test I can run to
 make sure my Seagate is performing as it should?
How about you go to single user mode issue the command hdparm -tT
/dev/yourdisk three times, and post the results here?

Second, here are some basic hints about disk performance.
1) Disk speed is faster in the beginning of the disk (because the
beginning of the disk is stored in the outer border of the disk, which
has greater linear velocity than the inner border). It may be a good
idea to put you swap partition first (and don't exaggerate on its
size, since it is occupying valuable space in the beginning of the
disk), then your main partition, then other partitions.
2) Your filesystem should not be too full; one of the problems this
causes is fragmentation
3) If your filesystem is very old, it is probably fragmented. While
fragmentation in LInux is a much smaller problem than in Windows
(specially Windows 95/98/ME), it happens over time, specially if the
filesystem is too full. I don't know how easily you can defragment in
Linux though. Have other people in this list tried  sys-fs/shake? I am
afraid of it because it is ~x86 and would operate on important areas
of my filesystem.
4) file access is slower if there are too many files in the directory.
Consider cleaning up your system (such as by wiping out software you
never use, and unmerging software you rarely use after creating a
package of it with quickpkg)
5) Use lighter-weight software such as Xfce (yeah, obvious).



Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Anyone tried a solid state drive?

2008-11-27 Thread Joshua Murphy
On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 11:42 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 On Donnerstag 27 November 2008, Grant wrote:
  I'm considering buying a solid-state drive to improve I/O performance
  and even reduce noise.  Has anyone tried this?  I was considering
  getting the lowest capacity I can find and putting most of the system
  on it.  There is a roundup on tomshardware.com and it sounds like some
  are very much better than others.  SLC sounds vastly superior compared
  to MLC, but also much more expensive.
 
  Typically the reports I've read have been from people using CFcards -
  4gig is now unbelievably cheap, and CFcards talk EIDE with only a small,
  cheap physical adaptor - on MythTV frontends  low-overhead servers.
  CFcards look ideal for these purposes because they're quiet - you want to
  minimise noise when playing back video in the living room, for instance.

 Great idea.  If I'm only putting the main system on flash, I could use
 a CFcard instead of an SSD.  Storing music and videos on flash will be
 too expensive for awhile.  How does CFcard performance compare to SSD
 or conventional hard disk performance?

 - Grant


 well, harddisks go up to what, 100mb/sec?
 cfdisk - 18mb/sec?

The Velociraptor is the only one I know of that easily tops 100MB/s
(outside of SAS drives, particularly 15k rpm) but most good drives
easily beat the high end CF speeds of 40-50MB/s. It's also quiet
compared to a lot of drives, uses less power, and runs cooler (of
course, SSD wins here).

On a vaguely related note, though, my system drive rarely spins up
after boot, as I have local.start prefetching all of my major
applications and libraries (makes Firefox startup comprable to IE on
Windows)... only my storage drive does very much reading in a day, and
that's simply because my 4GB of ram can't begin to hold all my music
... though an MLC based SSD would actually do wonders for that side of
things, as I seldom write, but often read from my mass of music and
seek times are actually noticable when I start hopping from one song
to the next (though this could just be buffering delays in mpd).
Testing with hdparm... I come up with uncached read speeds of 72MB/s
on my system drive and 81.5MB/s on my storage drive.

-- 
Poison [BLX]
Joshua M. Murphy



Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Anyone tried a solid state drive?

2008-11-27 Thread Joerg Schilling
Volker Armin Hemmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 well, harddisks go up to what, 100mb/sec?
 cfdisk - 18mb/sec?

You may talk about cheap small USB solutions.

The OCZ SSD I tested last week gives 120 MB/s read and 82 MB/s write speed.

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
   [EMAIL PROTECTED](uni)  
   [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily



Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Anyone tried a solid state drive?

2008-11-27 Thread Stroller


On 27 Nov 2008, at 16:37, Joshua Murphy wrote:

...
I think the last anecdote I read on this subject was written by  
Trubox
(Truebox?) on the Openmoko-community list a month or two ago. They  
sell
Aserisk systems to small business (in my area, as it happens) and I  
would
imagine that typically the system sits in the corner of an office  
and is
untouched for years at a time. I would imagine that have plenty of  
installed
systems throughout the UK (otherwise they'd be going hungry). They  
report a
very low failure rate, as did someone else on the MythTV-users list  
who also

bases a commercial offering on flash-based hardware.
...


The catch, though, is that I'd guess commercial offerings of MythTV
boxes like that would be updated infrequently and that the actual
recording storage, and likely logs and other frequent write files, is
done on a normal disk.


The commercial offering that I recall mentioned on the MythTV-users  
list wasn't MythTV-related. The discussion of flash memory arose and a  
poster mentioned his experiences using flash memory in his day job - I  
think the employer did something like till systems, and I have this  
idea that the poster said the flash cards were put under a reasonable  
workload.


Stroller.




Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Anyone tried a solid state drive?

2008-11-27 Thread Volker Armin Hemmann
On Donnerstag 27 November 2008, Joerg Schilling wrote:
 Volker Armin Hemmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  well, harddisks go up to what, 100mb/sec?
  cfdisk - 18mb/sec?

 You may talk about cheap small USB solutions.

 The OCZ SSD I tested last week gives 120 MB/s read and 82 MB/s write speed.

no, I talk about 'standard' cf-disks. Slow ones are 3mb/sec. Fast ones are up 
to 30mb/sec. Insansely expensive ones are up to ~50mb/sec



Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Anyone tried a solid state drive?

2008-11-27 Thread Joerg Schilling
Volker Armin Hemmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 On Donnerstag 27 November 2008, Joerg Schilling wrote:
  Volker Armin Hemmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
   well, harddisks go up to what, 100mb/sec?
   cfdisk - 18mb/sec?
 
  You may talk about cheap small USB solutions.
 
  The OCZ SSD I tested last week gives 120 MB/s read and 82 MB/s write speed.

 no, I talk about 'standard' cf-disks. Slow ones are 3mb/sec. Fast ones are up 
 to 30mb/sec. Insansely expensive ones are up to ~50mb/sec

What do you understand by cf-disks?

Are you talking about CF cards in a sata or ata adaptor?

I was taking about a 2.5 inch 128 GB SATA SSD at ~ 360 Euro

This is still cheaper than cheap and slow Sandisk CF or SDHC cards.

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
   [EMAIL PROTECTED](uni)  
   [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily



Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Anyone tried a solid state drive?

2008-11-27 Thread Volker Armin Hemmann
On Donnerstag 27 November 2008, Joerg Schilling wrote:
 Volker Armin Hemmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  On Donnerstag 27 November 2008, Joerg Schilling wrote:
   Volker Armin Hemmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
well, harddisks go up to what, 100mb/sec?
cfdisk - 18mb/sec?
  
   You may talk about cheap small USB solutions.
  
   The OCZ SSD I tested last week gives 120 MB/s read and 82 MB/s write
   speed.
 
  no, I talk about 'standard' cf-disks. Slow ones are 3mb/sec. Fast ones
  are up to 30mb/sec. Insansely expensive ones are up to ~50mb/sec

 What do you understand by cf-disks?

 Are you talking about CF cards in a sata or ata adaptor?

excatly, because Grant wrote:


Great idea.  If I'm only putting the main system on flash, I could use
a CFcard instead of an SSD.  Storing music and videos on flash will be
too expensive for awhile.  How does CFcard performance compare to SSD
or conventional hard disk performance?


 I was taking about a 2.5 inch 128 GB SATA SSD at ~ 360 Euro

 This is still cheaper than cheap and slow Sandisk CF or SDHC cards.

and for 360€ you can also buy 3 1TB Sata Harddisks and make a little Raid5.





Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Anyone tried a solid state drive?

2008-11-27 Thread KH


 well, harddisks go up to what, 100mb/sec?
 cfdisk - 18mb/sec?

   
ssd in future might be a lot faster:
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotHardware/~3/BHzT0mM7DRw/article.pl

kh



[gentoo-user] {OT} Anyone tried a solid state drive?

2008-11-26 Thread Grant
I'm considering buying a solid-state drive to improve I/O performance
and even reduce noise.  Has anyone tried this?  I was considering
getting the lowest capacity I can find and putting most of the system
on it.  There is a roundup on tomshardware.com and it sounds like some
are very much better than others.  SLC sounds vastly superior compared
to MLC, but also much more expensive.

- Grant



Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Anyone tried a solid state drive?

2008-11-26 Thread Volker Armin Hemmann
On Donnerstag 27 November 2008, Grant wrote:
 I'm considering buying a solid-state drive to improve I/O performance
 and even reduce noise.  Has anyone tried this?  I was considering
 getting the lowest capacity I can find and putting most of the system
 on it.  There is a roundup on tomshardware.com and it sounds like some
 are very much better than others.  SLC sounds vastly superior compared
 to MLC, but also much more expensive.

 - Grant

http://valhenson.livejournal.com/25228.html

I would rethink that after reading that post.