This is relevant - "Why solid-state disks are winning the argument".

On 20/11/2014 17:17, PeterN wrote:
On 11/20/2014 2:45 AM, nospam wrote:
In article , David Taylor
wrote:

and way more reliable, even if you're hammering it.

This remains to be seen, over the long term. Though it seems logical
because of the lack of moving parts.

Well, no. The reliability depends on the use. Unlike HDDs, SSDs have a
limited number of write cycles,

hds have a limited life too. they don't last forever. nothing does.

and if you are using them in
applications where there is a high write throughput they /will/ fail.

so will a hard drive.

the reality is that ssds are more reliable than hard drives and don't
fail anywhere near as often as their detractors claim. see the link in
my other post.

Look at the manufacturer's lifetime throughput specification when
comparing. In mostly read-only applications they're usually fine.
Problems can include little or no early warning of failure.

ssds generally do give a warning of failure.

And will map out minor failures transparently.

I went through this with you about a year ago. The distributor advised
me that while they may be fine for an O/S and program location, They
would not be suitable for photographic images, where I am constantly
pulling out images and working on them. I have nearly 3T of active
images. The cost of SSDs to accomodate them is not justifiable for me.

How many do you ever work on at one time? A 64GB SSD cache on the front
end of a multi TB RAID array would seem to be a workable solution.

If we assume that each image is of the order of 100MB and you are
claiming that you have 3T of active images that is 30k *active* images.

I think you need to distinguish between "active" and "archived" images.

The only thing you have to watch out for with highly compressed material
is that some SSDs which use on the fly compression to game benchmarks
will bottleneck whereas better ones like Crucial and Samsung Pro are
just as fast when storing incompressible data.

You do so much photography, that for you the cost is obviously justifiable.

30k active images "constantly" being worked on sounds completely insane.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On 11/20/2014 12:55 PM, nospam wrote:
In article , PeterN
wrote:

I went through this with you about a year ago. The distributor advised
me that while they may be fine for an O/S and program location, They
would not be suitable for photographic images, where I am constantly
pulling out images and working on them.

why would a distributor, who wants to sell stuff, understand the
technology of ssd versus hd?

Because they are an honest dealer.



I have nearly 3T of active
images. The cost of SSDs to accomodate them is not justifiable for me.
You do so much photography, that for you the cost is obviously justifiable.

more of your lies and twisting. i never said anything remotely close to
putting 3 terabytes of photos entirely on ssd.


You ave to attack. If you read, you will see that I never said you did.
Obviously you are looking for a reason to attack. At least, if you are
going to, have a factual basis.

EOD

--
PeterN

On 11/20/2014 5:54 PM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 20/11/2014 17:17, PeterN wrote:
On 11/20/2014 2:45 AM, nospam wrote:
In article , David Taylor
wrote:

and way more reliable, even if you're hammering it.

This remains to be seen, over the long term. Though it seems logical
because of the lack of moving parts.

Well, no. The reliability depends on the use. Unlike HDDs, SSDs
have a
limited number of write cycles,

hds have a limited life too. they don't last forever. nothing does.

and if you are using them in
applications where there is a high write throughput they /will/ fail.

so will a hard drive.

the reality is that ssds are more reliable than hard drives and don't
fail anywhere near as often as their detractors claim. see the link in
my other post.

Look at the manufacturer's lifetime throughput specification when
comparing. In mostly read-only applications they're usually fine.
Problems can include little or no early warning of failure.

ssds generally do give a warning of failure.

And will map out minor failures transparently.

I went through this with you about a year ago. The distributor advised
me that while they may be fine for an O/S and program location, They
would not be suitable for photographic images, where I am constantly
pulling out images and working on them. I have nearly 3T of active
images. The cost of SSDs to accomodate them is not justifiable for me.

How many do you ever work on at one time? A 64GB SSD cache on the front
end of a multi TB RAID array would seem to be a workable solution.

If we assume that each image is of the order of 100MB and you are
claiming that you have 3T of active images that is 30k *active* images.

I think you need to distinguish between "active" and "archived" images.

The only thing you have to watch out for with highly compressed material
is that some SSDs which use on the fly compression to game benchmarks
will bottleneck whereas better ones like Crucial and Samsung Pro are
just as fast when storing incompressible data.

You do so much photography, that for you the cost is obviously
justifiable.

30k active images "constantly" being worked on sounds completely insane.


Please explain how you get 30K. I am not following. The RAW images
average 36 megabytes. I would have no problem using an SSD as a scratch
disk, but I am talking about images which I pull up from time to time. I
think of archive as there, but I will periodically pull up images from
several years ago. What am I missing?

--
PeterN

In article , Martin Brown
wrote:

and if you are using them in
applications where there is a high write throughput they /will/ fail.

so will a hard drive.

the reality is that ssds are more reliable than hard drives and don't
fail anywhere near as often as their detractors claim. see the link in
my other post.

Look at the manufacturer's lifetime throughput specification when
comparing. In mostly read-only applications they're usually fine.
Problems can include little or no early warning of failure.

ssds generally do give a warning of failure.

And will map out minor failures transparently.

hard drives map out bad blocks transparently too.

I went through this with you about a year ago. The distributor advised
me that while they may be fine for an O/S and program location, They
would not be suitable for photographic images, where I am constantly
pulling out images and working on them. I have nearly 3T of active
images. The cost of SSDs to accomodate them is not justifiable for me.

How many do you ever work on at one time? A 64GB SSD cache on the front
end of a multi TB RAID array would seem to be a workable solution.

an even better solution is have the computer actively manage what goes
where, rather than just a dumb cache.

If we assume that each image is of the order of 100MB and you are
claiming that you have 3T of active images that is 30k *active* images.

I think you need to distinguish between "active" and "archived" images.

The only thing you have to watch out for with highly compressed material
is that some SSDs which use on the fly compression to game benchmarks
will bottleneck whereas better ones like Crucial and Samsung Pro are
just as fast when storing incompressible data.

on the fly compression is not done to game benchmarks.

it's to minimize the amount of writing that needs to be done, which can
extend the life of the ssd but can also have an adverse effect on speed
for certain types of content.

there are advantages and disadvantages to both methods.

You do so much photography, that for you the cost is obviously justifiable.

30k active images "constantly" being worked on sounds completely insane.

more than just images can be on the ssd, including the operating system
and apps.

In article , PeterN
wrote:

I went through this with you about a year ago. The distributor advised
me that while they may be fine for an O/S and program location, They
would not be suitable for photographic images, where I am constantly
pulling out images and working on them.

why would a distributor, who wants to sell stuff, understand the
technology of ssd versus hd?

Because they are an honest dealer.

one has nothing to do with the other.

my auto mechanic is honest but he knows nothing about ssds.

I have nearly 3T of active
images. The cost of SSDs to accomodate them is not justifiable for me.
You do so much photography, that for you the cost is obviously justifiable.

more of your lies and twisting. i never said anything remotely close to
putting 3 terabytes of photos entirely on ssd.

You ave to attack. If you read, you will see that I never said you did.
Obviously you are looking for a reason to attack. At least, if you are
going to, have a factual basis.

i always have a factual basis in everything i say.

you are claiming that i said you should put 3tb of photos on ssd. i
never said anything of the sort. you are lying.

On 2014-11-20, nospam wrote:
In article , Rikishi42
wrote:

Where is the technical documentation for Fusion? How do you know how it
works?

because i've read quite a bit about it.

here's apple's tech note:

Sorry, Apple notes don't count.
They're from Apple, remember?

of course it counts. apple is who designed it. why would they lie about
it?

You kinda answered that question yourself, there.


--
When in doubt, use brute force.
-- Ken Thompson

In article , Rikishi42
wrote:

Where is the technical documentation for Fusion? How do you know how it
works?

because i've read quite a bit about it.

here's apple's tech note:

Sorry, Apple notes don't count.
They're from Apple, remember?

of course it counts. apple is who designed it. why would they lie about
it?

You kinda answered that question yourself, there.

there is no evidence that apple would lie about something, especially
in a tech note.

do you have any evidence it's not what they say it is?

On 20/11/2014 23:37, PeterN wrote:
On 11/20/2014 5:54 PM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 20/11/2014 17:17, PeterN wrote:
[snip]
would not be suitable for photographic images, where I am constantly
pulling out images and working on them. I have nearly 3T of active
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
images. The cost of SSDs to accomodate them is not justifiable for me.

How many do you ever work on at one time? A 64GB SSD cache on the front
end of a multi TB RAID array would seem to be a workable solution.

If we assume that each image is of the order of 100MB and you are
claiming that you have 3T of active images that is 30k *active* images.

I think you need to distinguish between "active" and "archived" images.

The only thing you have to watch out for with highly compressed material
is that some SSDs which use on the fly compression to game benchmarks
will bottleneck whereas better ones like Crucial and Samsung Pro are
just as fast when storing incompressible data.

You do so much photography, that for you the cost is obviously
justifiable.

30k active images "constantly" being worked on sounds completely insane.

Please explain how you get 30K. I am not following. The RAW images
average 36 megabytes. I would have no problem using an SSD as a scratch
disk, but I am talking about images which I pull up from time to time. I
think of archive as there, but I will periodically pull up images from
several years ago. What am I missing?

You claimed that you had 3T of active images "constantly" being worked
on. If your images are only 36MB then you have claimed to have 90k
images in "constant" use. This number of "active" images is crazy.

I was being generous and assuming you were on large format images.

A front end cache can make a lot of difference where you work on a group
of images at a time as can using an SSD for working storage. After the
first load or save the image is then in the cache.

The wondrously named Apple marketing of Fusion Drive is a reworking of
an old Norton tool that moved most frequently used files to the faster
access zone of a traditional harddisk. I doubt it really offers any
benefit over a conventional cache apart from a tiny increment in total
capacity. If the main HD is size A and the SSD B where A B.

ie Fusion drive is A+B total where as A cached using B is still A

It might be a feature but I doubt if it is a genuine benefit.
(except possibly for gaming some benchmark or other)

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On 20/11/2014 13:36, Whisky-dave wrote:
On Wednesday, 19 November 2014 03:24:51 UTC, Eric Stevens wrote:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/07/storage_ssds/

... Unless your workload is very specifically single source, massive
capture, then you should be running SSDs. Even if you are not running
pure SSD, the case for tiered or hybrid storage makes itself.

SSDs are faster. They have way lower latency. They consume less power.
They take up less space.

True but the downside is they cost quite a bit more and aren't readily avaible in the sizes some are used to.

They are worth having if only to speed up loading bulk data.
I guess it depends a bit how you value your time.

Which is also why they aren't yet used in servers or for most as backup discs.

Conventional magnetic storage for bulk data will be cheaper for the
forseeable future, but SSDs and flash media have come on a long way.

We now have sD memory cards and USB flash drives with capacity and
physical sizes that make Star Trek storage media look clunky!

The most cost effective way is to RAID0 a pair of SSDs on SATA3 to get
the larger capacities at lowest cost but decreased reliability. If going
for absolute maximum speed SSD scratch disk you have to accept risk of
data loss and keep a backup copy on other media too. Also if you go for
maximum performance use of SSD you must have a UPS to keep the system
running long enough to write back everything that is in cache. Default
option is the safer write through strategy.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On 2014.11.18, 22:24 , Eric Stevens wrote:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/07/storage_ssds/

... Unless your workload is very specifically single source, massive
capture, then you should be running SSDs. Even if you are not running
pure SSD, the case for tiered or hybrid storage makes itself.

SSDs are faster. They have way lower latency. They consume less power.
They take up less space.

Currently running a Fusion drive - 1 TB system HD integrated with 128 GB
of SSD. Most often read files are mirrored to the Fusion drive so they
load much more quickly. All is encrypted (Filevault) so when the drive
is at end of life all one needs to do is lose the recovery key and
remove the keychain entry for the drive (assuming the later is even
available after new disk installation).

--
Among Broad Outlines, conception is far more pleasurable
than “carrying [the children] to fruition.”
Sadly, “there’s a high infant mortality rate among
Broad Outlines—they often fall prey to Nonstarters.”
"Bestiary of Intelligence Writing" - CIA