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Why are you not using a SSD yet?

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Re: Why are you not using a SSD yet?

#61

Post by Andys »

ENOTTY wrote: post #2

Because it costs an outrageous amount of money. I'm waiting for further development of hybrid drives, which are SSDs combined with a traditional hard drive for mass storage, but seen as one drive by the OS. The SSD is basically used a huge read cache. Current models of hybrid drives from Seagate have only 4 GB of SSD cache, which I don't feel is large enough.

The seagate hybrid drive is a scam; it scores worse on some benchmarks than seagate's own normal laptop HDD.

It also only uses the cache for reads, and not writes. Writes is where the magic happens! If I wanted more read cache I'd just get more system RAM.

Re: Why are you not using a SSD yet?

#62

Post by chrisjsmith »

I don't use an SSD simply because the operating system block cache is good enough! More RAM is a better investment if you ask me. And I only reboot my laptop every month or so, so I don't notice the boot speed.

I use Windows 7 x64 with 8Gb of RAM on a cheap Acer laptop.

On a side note, developing software on the "best workstation you can get" is a really bad idea. You never get to see how the software will run on a piece of stink like the ones your client probably owns.

Re: Why are you not using a SSD yet?

#63

Post by chrisjsmith »

keyle wrote: post #31

I'm all SSD now. I've been telling my friends "This is as big as the floppy disk, get one". Corsair SSD are like $250. And don't tell me you need 1.5TB in your desktop! You'd be a lot smarter to have 180gig hdd and all externals. When I jump on someone's machine who has spinning disks and do a build in visual studio, I feel like time stopped. I keep moving the mouse "is it frozen? What's wrong?"

That's a problem with Visual studio. It doesn't do incremental builds. You basically have to create an entire assembly from scratch every time you build.

Re: Why are you not using a SSD yet?

#64

Post by config_yml »

I recently made the choice to put an 80GB SSD into my 2007 MacBook, instead of getting a new machine (and my RAM was already maxed out). It's amazing what this 4 year old machine still does, it feels so much faster, no more beachballs for me.

Re: Why are you not using a SSD yet?

#65

Post by robgough »

config_yml wrote: post #64

I recently made the choice to put an 80GB SSD into my 2007 MacBook, instead of getting a new machine (and my RAM was already maxed out). It's amazing what this 4 year old machine still does, it feels so much faster, no more beachballs for me.

I did the same with my late-2008 MBP. First time I don't feel that I need to upgrade 2 and a half years later. Hell, it's the first time I didn't want to upgrade after that long.

Re: Why are you not using a SSD yet?

#66

Post by robgough »

stewbrew wrote: post #23
acqq wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when it's a "serious" performance increase when "it boots faster"? Or if the first grep after the boot is faster (others must be fast since the file cache kicks in for every next one, unless you have, say, 128 MB RAM). Really not worth to mention.

So we have people who upgraded their hard disk to a ssd and say it resulted in a "serious performance increase" and we have people who still use traditional hard disks (why on earth would somebody want to do something like that?) who say it isn't. Maybe the judgment is based on experience?

I wonder if the non-owners think that it's merely a case of those who did buy one trying to justify their purchase.

Those of us with one know that really isn't the case, but of course it's hard to convince someone to spend that much money on something they don't think will make a difference.

Since I put one in my late-2008 MBP at Christmas, I've not seen a single beach ball. Best upgrade ever.

Re: Why are you not using a SSD yet?

#67

Post by dexen »

slashclee wrote: post #60
dexen wrote: post #43

For a desktop, a 147GB, 15k RPM harddrive, bought second-hand, is the price-performance-reliability sweet spot. For example, a Seagate Cheetah one generation older than the current. Also, because I've been using XFS on it. With journal on another drive, performance is blazing fast -- and yes, including mass deletes of small files. XFS used on the only SSD (cheapest one, admitably) I have was performing terribly -- be…

Some of the first-gen SATA SSDs (based on the JMicron 601 and 602 chipsets) had nasty stuttering problems with lots of concurrent writes, but pretty much every SSD made in the past 12 months is going to blow away any spinning-platter disk when it comes to random writes. SSDs based on Sandforce's 1200-series controller can do 30,000 IOPS, sustaining more than 150MB/s with 4kB random writes. You should probably investi…

Look, as an average individual, I'm not limited by drive interface (PATA, SATA and SCSI u320 are all OK for me), nor disk size (be it 2.5'' or 3.5'' or any other, really), nor capacity (I have a 1.5T drive for bulk storage, and only need about 20G for home & system & some breathing space), nor power usage. The only two real constraints for me are: 1) budget and 2) information on actual (``real-world'') performance of drives. As opposed to cute benchmarks.

> You should probably investigate the current hardware (...) -- that has never been an option to me, and probably won't be for some next 25 years. Budget, ya know.

--

TBH., I'm irritated by folks comparing top-of-the-line SSDs with slowest harddrives on the market (5.4k and 7.2k RPM, especially in 2.5'' form factor) and making a big woo about SSDs being faster. Get yourself a decent 15k harddrive, you'll be pleasantly surprised. Perhaps even short-stroke it if you are a racer.

Re: Why are you not using a SSD yet?

#68

Post by kogir »

Can't agree with this enough. If your workload is IO bound, SSDs will make a world of difference. Measure before making a decision though. You'd be surprised what's bound by CPU (Loopt's iPhone and Android builds) and what's bound by IO (Loopt's server builds).

On Windows use perfmon or Resource Monitor to look for a disk IO queue frequently over 1. On Linux or OS X use iostat and/or Activity Monitor.

If you don't check before taking the plunge, you could be in for an expensive disappointment. On the same machine, Intel X25MG2s made a 2% difference in Loopt's Android build time, but a 50+% difference in Loopt's server build time. Don't spend the money if you don't need it.

Also, it may be worth it to spend the extra money on a reputable brand drive. Loopt has had 20+ drive-years on 15 drives without incident, but they're all Intel. In fact, we run our primary user database on 4 X25-Es striped in a RAID-0 configuration. I've heard horror stories second hand from friends who tried cheaper GSkill and Patriot drives and lost some or all their data.

Loopt server developers all get 80GB X25-M drives + 160GB RAID 1 platters. Totally worth it. Buy SSDs for your employees!

Re: Why are you not using a SSD yet?

#69

Post by acqq »

andreaja wrote: post #36
elliottkember wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who have them are for them. The people who don't are against them. I have yet to see a comment from someone who bought one and regrets it.

I noticed that, I just don't understand why people who don't have them are so negative about them.

Because if you 1) have enough RAM and 2) between two boots you use less files from the HDD than the size of the RAM then you'll observe the speed up from the SSD exactly only once between two boots. Every modern OS uses the RAM cache like that -- once you actually start to work, you work from RAM. On another side, those who buy SDD "for speed" are the same who when asked "but SSDs are significantly smaller" answer "I have everything in the cloud." Absurd, isn't it?

Edit: The title of the topic is "why are you not using a SSD yet," I give my exact arguments and get downvoted. Eh, crowd.

Re: Why are you not using a SSD yet?

#70

Post by masklinn »

robgough wrote: post #66
stewbrew wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we have people who upgraded their hard disk to a ssd and say it resulted in a "serious performance increase" and we have people who still use traditional hard disks (why on earth would somebody want to do something like that?) who say it isn't. Maybe the judgment is based on experience?

I wonder if the non-owners think that it's merely a case of those who did buy one trying to justify their purchase. Those of us with one know that really isn't the case, but of course it's hard to convince someone to spend that much money on something they don't think will make a difference. Since I put one in my late-2008 MBP at Christmas, I've not seen a single beach ball. Best upgrade ever.

> I wonder if the non-owners think that it's merely a case of those who did buy one trying to justify their purchase.

Either that, or a case of blub.

SSDs are one of those pieces of hardware closest to magic you can find, the differences between HDD and (modern) SSD are so big it's hard to understand them until you've experienced them. I know I didn't before I got mine, but Anand's writing on the subject convinced me there was something to it (anand being a person whose opinion I respect greatly, and one of those who dived early into understanding SSDs, he didn't hesitate crucifying early crappy SSD, and his SSD series are fantastic in their breadth and depth)

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