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

On 11/21/2014 6:42 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
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)


It seems like we have a cummunication issue. My PC is set up with a .5T
drive for my system and programs; a 4T drive that holds my working
images; plus backup. This system works for me. I don't like futzing.

YMMV
--
PeterN

On 20/11/2014 7:05 μμ, Savageduck wrote:
On 2014-11-20 16:19:25 +0000, Tzortzakakis Dimitris
said:

On 19/11/2014 11:04 μμ, Savageduck wrote:
On 2014-11-19 20:33:28 +0000, James Silverton
said:

On 11/19/2014 1:11 PM, nospam wrote:
In article , Tzortzakakis Dimitris
wrote:

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

Yep!But they still are more expensive than conventional hard
drives.

you are paying for speed and reliability. if that isn't important,
then
get a hard drive, where capacity is a priority.
I do?I have both, as I am writing after that (both a hard drive and
an SSD)

most people have both.

I have an intel 520 series 120 GB that cost 62 euros, as a system
disk, I
also have autocad on it, and my only 2 games *wolfenstein new
order and
call of duty black ops. It goes without saying that as a data
disk I
have a seagate barracuda 1TB for my photos, mp3s, videos and other
programms that there's no room on the SSD for them. I'm very
pleased
with my SSD, the PC boots in less than 20 seconds. It is an AMD
FX4130 8
GB gigabyte 990XA-UD3 gigabyte nvidia gtx 650 PC.

20 sec to boot is rather slow, but more importantly, who cares how
long
it takes to boot. booting is rarely done. sleep the computer when
not
in use and it wakes instantly, exactly where you left off.

Yep! I usually turn it off when I'm not using it.

what for? sleep it. there is no need to turn off a computer anymore
unless you have to physically unplug it to move it to another room or
open it up for some perverse reason.

I just couldn't afford
even a 128 GB SSD (to the 120 GB I finally got) but it's enough, for
now. The barracuda ?TB cost as much as the 120 GB SSD, also 62
euros-but the speed difference is tremendous
even with an AMD CPU.

how long ago was that? i bought a 256 gig ssd for about $110 or so
about a month ago, which is about $88 euro.

That's a strange way of writing a price; it seems to imply that the
Euro is the European dollar. You can get the Euro symbol (€) by using
ALT-0128 or, if you don't want to do that, use the recognized
trilateral, EUR. I'll just list a few mo
British Pound GBP
US Dollar USD
Canadian dollar CND
Australian dollar AUD
Russian Rouble RUB

If you want others, look on http://www.oanda.com/currency/converter/

With a mac it is simple enough to get to; $, £, €, â‚*, Â¥, ₱, ₽, â‚«, etc.


I got everything correctly, duck. For the record yen is actually in
japanese en 円.Wonder if everyone can see the japanese character?BTW,
I'm running mozilla thunderbird on win7 664 bit.

Yup! I got that just fine, and with a Mac and the Yen, in addition to
the "¥" there are 4 related characters: 円, 圆, 圎, and 圓. Just how
those are used in written Japanese, I have no idea.

The last one, according to www.jisho.org (just copy and paste the
characters to kanji search), means also yen but is an obscure and mostly
unused character that doesn't even belong to the joyo kanji set of
characters (the set that one needs to know to be literate in japanese
and can read a newspaper or a book). Their count is ~2500. The other 3
aren't valid characters in either chinese or japanese.Maybe they appear
normally without their "boxes"? Now let's try hebrew!
שלו� ערב טוב shalom erev tov hallo good evening!

| It seems like we have a cummunication issue. My PC is set up with a .5T
| drive for my system and programs; a 4T drive that holds my working
| images; plus backup. This system works for me. I don't like futzing.

Martin and nospam are not talking about just switching
to SSD. They're both talking about different versions
of "smart caching", using a reatively small SSD in
combination with hard disks:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4329/i...ching-review/2

Basically it's a similar idea to buying lots of RAM
in order to reduce swap file usage. An SSD is faster
than a hard disk. With hardware and/or software
to decide what goes on the SSD you can theoretically
get much faster operation. The bulk of your data
can then still stay on a standard hard disk. The idea
makes some sense for OS files, assuming you're
willing to spend lots of money on the hardware required
to get that small speed boost.

In theory the "smart caching" would move a copy
of the photo your working on to the SSD when you
open it, so that your saves to disk can be very fast.
The whole 4 TB doesn't need to be on SSD.
There are two issues with that that I can see: First,
the "smart" part doesn't know to cache until a file
is in use. You're still doing a "slow" read from hard
disk. Second, writing to disk is an extremely fast
operation. I'm guessing that no one here finds
themselves twiddling thumbs while they wait for
image files to be written to disk. The big use of time
is in doing image manipulation on very large images
with complex calculations and/or use of swap.

In article , Martin Brown
wrote:

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.

no it isn't.

what you're describing is called hot clustering, which os x has been
doing for well over a decade.

fusion is something else entirely.

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.

it does.

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)

it is a benefit.

In article , Mayayana
wrote:

Basically it's a similar idea to buying lots of RAM
in order to reduce swap file usage.

not exactly.

An SSD is faster
than a hard disk. With hardware and/or software
to decide what goes on the SSD you can theoretically
get much faster operation. The bulk of your data
can then still stay on a standard hard disk. The idea
makes some sense for OS files, assuming you're
willing to spend lots of money on the hardware required
to get that small speed boost.

it's not lots of money.

a 256 gig ssd is currently around $100, which is a very cheap way to
drastically improve the performance of a computer.

In theory the "smart caching" would move a copy
of the photo your working on to the SSD when you
open it, so that your saves to disk can be very fast.
The whole 4 TB doesn't need to be on SSD.

correct.

There are two issues with that that I can see: First,
the "smart" part doesn't know to cache until a file
is in use. You're still doing a "slow" read from hard
disk.

only the first time, and you're ignoring the fact that the apps and the
system itself start off on the ssd.

also, when you first create a document, it will be on the ssd. after a
while of not accessing it, it might be move dto the hard drive.

Second, writing to disk is an extremely fast
operation.

not as fast as writing to ssd.

I'm guessing that no one here finds
themselves twiddling thumbs while they wait for
image files to be written to disk. The big use of time
is in doing image manipulation on very large images
with complex calculations and/or use of swap.

these days, most things are disk i/o bound, not cpu bound, which is one
reason why ssd is a huge win.

In article , Martin Brown
wrote:

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.

the most cost effective solution is use both ssd and hd, using the
former for the os, apps and commonly used documents and the latter for
lesser used documents.

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.

no you don't.

ssds have a capacitor which is essentially its own ups. in the event of
a power failure, the ssd will complete the write operation even if the
computer does not have a ups.

keep in mind that a hard drive is also at risk for data loss during a
power failure and they don't come with capacitors to finish the write,
so you actually need a ups a lot more for an hd system than an ssd
system.

| it's not lots of money.
|
| a 256 gig ssd is currently around $100, which is a very cheap way to
| drastically improve the performance of a computer.
|

The one thing I know for sure out of this
discussion is that you've bet the farm on
stock in SSD companies.

In article , Mayayana
wrote:

| it's not lots of money.
|
| a 256 gig ssd is currently around $100, which is a very cheap way to
| drastically improve the performance of a computer.
|

The one thing I know for sure out of this
discussion is that you've bet the farm on
stock in SSD companies.

as usual, wrong.

you've never used an ssd, have you? you're talking out your butt as
usual.

On 11/21/2014 11:55 AM, Mayayana wrote:
| It seems like we have a cummunication issue. My PC is set up with a .5T
| drive for my system and programs; a 4T drive that holds my working
| images; plus backup. This system works for me. I don't like futzing.

Martin and nospam are not talking about just switching
to SSD. They're both talking about different versions
of "smart caching", using a reatively small SSD in
combination with hard disks:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4329/i...ching-review/2

Basically it's a similar idea to buying lots of RAM
in order to reduce swap file usage. An SSD is faster
than a hard disk. With hardware and/or software
to decide what goes on the SSD you can theoretically
get much faster operation. The bulk of your data
can then still stay on a standard hard disk. The idea
makes some sense for OS files, assuming you're
willing to spend lots of money on the hardware required
to get that small speed boost.

In theory the "smart caching" would move a copy
of the photo your working on to the SSD when you
open it, so that your saves to disk can be very fast.
The whole 4 TB doesn't need to be on SSD.
There are two issues with that that I can see: First,
the "smart" part doesn't know to cache until a file
is in use. You're still doing a "slow" read from hard
disk. Second, writing to disk is an extremely fast
operation. I'm guessing that no one here finds
themselves twiddling thumbs while they wait for
image files to be written to disk. The big use of time
is in doing image manipulation on very large images
with complex calculations and/or use of swap.



OK. I will consider that my next Deesktop will have an SSD, but only for
programs and the OS. However, I am quite satisfied the the speed, now.


--
PeterN

On 2014-11-21, nospam wrote:
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.

It's a very big company. You don't need evidence, the mere fact they got
there is enough. At one point they will have used marketing crap claims.


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

I don't need any. What people need is prove - real independant prove - that
their claims have any value at all. Otherwise we can only guess.


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