Modern storage is plenty fast, but the APIs are bad
1–10 of 168 posts
Re: Modern storage is plenty fast, but the APIs are bad
#2> ...misconceptions... Yet if you skim through specs of modern NVMe devices you see commodity devices with latencies in the microseconds range and several GB/s of throughput supporting several hundred thousands random IOPS. So where’s the disconnect?
Whoa there... let's not compare devices with 20+ GB/s and latencies in nanosecond ranges which translate to half a dozen giga-ops per second (aka RAM) with any kind of flash-based storage just yet.
Re: Modern storage is plenty fast, but the APIs are bad
#3> ...misconceptions... Yet if you skim through specs of modern NVMe devices you see commodity devices with latencies in the microseconds range and several GB/s of throughput supporting several hundred thousands random IOPS. So where’s the disconnect? Whoa there... let's not compare devices with 20+ GB/s and latencies in nanosecond ranges which translate to half a dozen giga-ops per second (aka RAM) with any kind of f…
Depending on the storage technology the comparison to RAM is not that far off. Intel is trying to market it that way any way [0]. It's obviously not RAM but it's not the [0] - https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-tec...
Re: Modern storage is plenty fast, but the APIs are bad
#4Also: Modern storage is plenty fast, but also not reliable for long term use.
That is why I buy a new SSD every year and clone my current (worn out) SSD to the new one. I have several old SSDs that started to get unhealthy, well, according to my S.M.A.R.T utility that I used to check them. I could probably get away with using an SSD for another year, but will not risk the data loss. Anyone else do this?
Re: Modern storage is plenty fast, but the APIs are bad
#5> ...misconceptions... Yet if you skim through specs of modern NVMe devices you see commodity devices with latencies in the microseconds range and several GB/s of throughput supporting several hundred thousands random IOPS. So where’s the disconnect? Whoa there... let's not compare devices with 20+ GB/s and latencies in nanosecond ranges which translate to half a dozen giga-ops per second (aka RAM) with any kind of f…
The article isn't exactly conflating RAM and flash; if it were, the conclusions would be very different. A synchronous blocking IO API is fine if you're working with nanosecond latencies of RAM, or with storage that's as painfully slow and serial as a mechanical hard drive.
Flash is special in that its latency is still considerably higher than that of DRAM, but its throughput can get reasonably close once you have more than a handful of SSDs in your system (or if you're willing to compare against the DRAM bandwidth of a decade-old PC). Extracting the full throughput from a flash SSD despite the higher-than-DRAM latency is what requires more suitable APIs (if you're doing random IO; sequential IO performance is easy).
Re: Modern storage is plenty fast, but the APIs are bad
#6Also: Modern storage is plenty fast, but also not reliable for long term use. That is why I buy a new SSD every year and clone my current (worn out) SSD to the new one. I have several old SSDs that started to get unhealthy, well, according to my S.M.A.R.T utility that I used to check them. I could probably get away with using an SSD for another year, but will not risk the data loss. Anyone else do this?
The solution for this problem is raid. Way cheaper and far superior in terms of reliability than your solution.
Or if that isn't an option (laptop?) a good backup-solution that that runs daily or more often is also a better and cheaper alternative.
Drives may dail at any time, but they don't age the way your post would suggest.
Re: Modern storage is plenty fast, but the APIs are bad
#7Prior discussion from /r/rust where the author is present to answer questions: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/k16j6x/modern_storage...
Re: Modern storage is plenty fast, but the APIs are bad
#8Also: Modern storage is plenty fast, but also not reliable for long term use. That is why I buy a new SSD every year and clone my current (worn out) SSD to the new one. I have several old SSDs that started to get unhealthy, well, according to my S.M.A.R.T utility that I used to check them. I could probably get away with using an SSD for another year, but will not risk the data loss. Anyone else do this?
Every year seems like a very short lifespan, but I guess every usecase is different. I definitely replace drive when SMART is starting to look bleak, but that is far more infrequent in my usecase I guess.
Re: Modern storage is plenty fast, but the APIs are bad
#9Also: Modern storage is plenty fast, but also not reliable for long term use. That is why I buy a new SSD every year and clone my current (worn out) SSD to the new one. I have several old SSDs that started to get unhealthy, well, according to my S.M.A.R.T utility that I used to check them. I could probably get away with using an SSD for another year, but will not risk the data loss. Anyone else do this?
I think having a backup solution is the better choice here. You can use your SSDs until they die or become too slow, and you won't lose your data if it breaks before you replace it after a year
Re: Modern storage is plenty fast, but the APIs are bad
#10Also: Modern storage is plenty fast, but also not reliable for long term use. That is why I buy a new SSD every year and clone my current (worn out) SSD to the new one. I have several old SSDs that started to get unhealthy, well, according to my S.M.A.R.T utility that I used to check them. I could probably get away with using an SSD for another year, but will not risk the data loss. Anyone else do this?
No. Hardly anyone does this, because it's just conspicuous consumption, not actually sensible. Have any of your SSDs ever used even half of their warrantied write endurance in a single year?