Flash-Based Hard Drives Cometh

Page 3 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

mgr

Distinguished
Aug 16, 2007
22
0
18,510


Hmm...I know I'm being PITA here, but in the same article you quote above, I just finally (re)found the following...

"A 68-MB/s sequential read data transfer rate is an impressive result; especially as it doesn't decrease as you fill the drive with data. Write performance was well between 40 MB/s and almost 50 MB/s, which is well suited for sequential data-stream applications. Video editing is a good example." (my underline)

I'd read that earlier and then forgotten where I'd come up with the idea of SSDs for video editing which brought me here to explore the idea. So, the article seems to be at odds with itself, saying that SSDs are slower than conventional drives for writing...but that they'd be faster for video editing. Once again I feel like a complete idiot in the face of the ever-evolving computer.

I loved the ancient days of DOS in the '80s when one could keep up with everything! (Not that I'd go back.)
 

gwolfman

Distinguished
Jan 31, 2007
782
0
18,980

I guess since the video is one contiguous file the SSDs do ok at writing. I still wonder about the swap files though...? How much are you looking to spend on storage (HDDs) alone?
 

mgr

Distinguished
Aug 16, 2007
22
0
18,510


I don't know how much I'll spend on storage yet, but it's more or less in the whatever-is-necessary category without spending money on foolishness. My first thoughts have been a RAID-0 pair of SSDs for the OS (including its swapfile) and programs, and a third SSD for work disk and application swapfile, though I need to learn more about whether that actually benefits (it certainly would benefit PShop's swapfile...but I don't know about HD video editors). I'd also want a large fast conventional disk for storage...or two conventional disks if I don't get the third SSD for a work disk. So that's two SSDs for C: plus a work disk and a storage disk. I already have an external drive for backup.

All of this running off an Intel quadcore (specifics on that also still not firm).

I could live with a simple Core 2 Duo and two fast conventional drives, and I may go that way if it looks like the SSDs and quadcore would make only small differences. But at this early stage of research, it looks as if the extra expense makes a big difference. All I need to do if I go with the SSD setup, is find a maker that sells such configurations.

Not thrilled about building my own system...did it once and it almost killed me.

 

d_kuhn

Distinguished
Mar 26, 2002
704
0
18,990
I would not use a SSD for swapfile or user data... too slow writing, it would end up costing you performance. When I set up a SSD system, I will continue to use 15k scsi raid 0 for swap and user data (or 7200 or 10k sata if ultimate performance isn't necessary).

Based on the article... SSD is great for relatively static data, but a disadvantage for R/W work.
 

gwolfman

Distinguished
Jan 31, 2007
782
0
18,980

Ok. Thanks for breaking it down like that, now I have a good idea of what you're trying to accomplish.

How big are your video files going to be??? (avg. and max)

This is my recommendation off of what you just said.

1.) Get two SSD in RAID 0 for system drive (C:\) (and use it for the video you're editing if it can fit)
2.) Get a 150GB, SATA, Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM drive for you system/application swap files
3.) Get Western Digital WD7500AAKS (750GB - not the lower capacity ones as they don't perform as well), the Hitachi 7K1000 (1,000GB=1TB), or the coming soon Seagate 7200.11 (750GB? or 1TB) drive for your storage (those are all at the top of the performance list for 7,200 RPM drives)

Regarding point 1 above, these are the best SSD's out (quote: "Astounding 150MB/s BURST, 100MB/s sustained read, 80MB/s sustained write, <.1ms access time 76000 IOPS"). Review here: http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3064 but they cost more and can be purchased here (for example): http://www.dvnation.com/nand-flash-ssd.html
 

mgr

Distinguished
Aug 16, 2007
22
0
18,510

Not sure yet about the size of the HD video files. I have a Sony HDR-SR1 and have several recordings of an hour or less still in the camera. I can estimate sizes: the camera has a 30Gb HDD which holds 7 hours of standard def HD, making an hour of video about 4.25Gb. Most of what I'll be working with will be under an hour, actually most under 15 minutes. (I'm a longtime still photog and a musician and the video is for the music side of things.)

The SanDisk SSD RAID-0 OS setup was looking like a great starting place...until you pointed me to the MTRON review and its much faster speeds...well, until I saw the price. $3000 a pair for C: drive seems...well, yikes!!! And looking at the charts against the Raptor, the price seems like overkill especially as a single MTRON is actually slower than the Raptor in many tests. I guess I should wait for more reviews and more time to get a sense of whether it would be worth the extra $2000 over the SanDisks.

The Raptor for system/app swap files sounds like a good idea...except is the rule of thumb of never putting the OS swapfile on the same drive competing with an application swapfile no longer valid because of the Raptor's speed?

The Seagate 7200.11 for storage will surely be on the market by the time I'm ready...though I'm gettin' itchy to get this thing going (patience, Michael!).

Do you have any advice on a system maker to put something like this together. I suspect the likes of Dell/Alienware and the other big makers are not setup to sell such systems yet.

Appreciating the place to put down my thoughts and your thoughtful advice.




 

mgr

Distinguished
Aug 16, 2007
22
0
18,510



Yes, I'm (reluctantly) beginning to see the light about that. A really nice idea that just doesn't quite pan out for every use. I suspect a single Raptor or equivalent will end up being my work disk. Thanks.
 

gwolfman

Distinguished
Jan 31, 2007
782
0
18,980

Yeah, I'd wait till the prices come down on SSD's then you can buy those and improve your system.

Regarding the Raptors... (This sounds more reasonable than the price of SSD's) Get one 150GB for your OS and OS swap together. Get another for application swap. Get one of the other 3 performance with large capacity drives I mentioned above in bullet #3.

I'll look around for you, I think I know a few places that will put two Raptors in for you. You can wait and add the other drive later, plus I'm sure it'd be cheaper. Or even better, get the system with one Raptor, then buy one separate and the large capacity separate as well and add them yourself, you'd save money that way. That's probably your best bet.

What do you think?

And no prob for the advice/input.
 

gwolfman

Distinguished
Jan 31, 2007
782
0
18,980
Check this out: https://ecomm2.dell.com/dellstore/basket.aspx?cart_id=1002779951115&toEmail=
Click on "View Configuration Details" to see the setup. Basically it's a Intel Quad Core Q6600, 4GB RAM, WinXP Pro, weak video card (you should upgrade or replace), 160GB 10,000 RPM SATA drive, DVD burner, 7.1 Audio (recommend the sound card upgrade), Firewire port for $1708. The only thing I would check though is to see if it can support 3 or 4 drives and possibly RAID if you want. Not too bad a deal. Then the other drives are about $200 for another Raptor and $350 for the 1TB.

What do you think?
 

10bear28306

Distinguished
Aug 25, 2007
2
0
18,510


Excellent idea. The big question is who will be the first to do it?
 

mgr

Distinguished
Aug 16, 2007
22
0
18,510

Raptors for the OS and for the work disk sound like a more affordable and perhaps sometimes faster way to go. My only concern is noise with a sub-concern about heat. I use the machine in a small room where noise is a factor, and where even my current P4/32ghz system with 2 7200rpm disks becomes a factor in summer air-conditioning. I have concerns about three drives, two of them Raptors. Aren't the Raptors hot and noisey? I haven't read up on them in several years, but they used to be. Not that I couldn't live with that.

I'm still in research-mode around SSDs, but I am also anxious to get moving, and it looks as if it's a bit early for SSDs. I just saw an article on AnandTech that Seagate is coming out with a whole line of SSDs in '08, as I suspect everyone and his brother will be doing also...no doubt for less money and faster speeds. Perhaps the SSDs are for the next machine, not this one.

I appreciate your looking around for thoughts on a maker that deals in highly customized machines. I bought a machine once from Polywell who do extensive customizing, but had a lot of trouble with it and really bad customer support.




 

mgr

Distinguished
Aug 16, 2007
22
0
18,510

That's certainly very close to a workable system if I don't go with SSDs, and the price is stunningly okay (I was floored). I have an old P4/32ghz Dell which has been fine...but customer support has been almost fraudulently bad. Every once in a while I think of getting a Mac because its support is supposed to be the only decent one left on the planet.

Bookmarking the Dell link for ongoing consideration, thanks.
 

gwolfman

Distinguished
Jan 31, 2007
782
0
18,980
> Click on "View Configuration Details" to see the setup. Basically it's a Intel Quad Core Q6600, 4GB RAM, WinXP Pro, weak video card (you should upgrade or replace), 160GB 10,000 RPM SATA drive, DVD burner, 7.1 Audio (recommend the sound card upgrade), Firewire port for $1708. The only thing I would check though is to see if it can support 3 or 4 drives and possibly RAID if you want. Not too bad a deal. Then the other drives are about $200 for another Raptor and $350 for the 1TB.


You can easily build a better machine than Dell,
with better components and more room to grow:
why pay them profit when you can plow that "profit"
into better hardware?

If you want really fast storage right now,
a Q6600 or faster quad-core CPU can easily
handle RAID parity computations in software,
without requiring the 1333MHz Front Side Bus.

We're giving serious consideration to the
Highpoint RocketRAID 2340:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115031&Tpk=rocketraid+2340

This card beats lots of PCI-E RAID controllers currently on the market,
because it uses x8 PCI-E lanes instead of only x4 lanes: pay close
attention to the size of the edge connector on all PCI-E RAID controllers!

We plan to start with 8 x WD1600YS installed internally
in a Thermaltake Armor chassis; later, we'll run the
other 8 x SATA cables thru PCI slot adapters to 2 x Infiniband
MultiLane cables and this cheap external DVD duplicator:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811164079&Tpk=external+DVD+duplicator

(ignore the fan duct: that was a design error :)

www.cooldrives.com has a Rev.02 version of the host PCI slot adapter
which connects the SATA cables "in-line" with the PCI slot,
rather than crowding adjacent PCI slots with cables & connectors
turned 90 degrees to the slot.

We'll probably house the external HDDs in Antec's Hard Drive Cooler,
because we already have several of those, and they work great.

Our Thermaltake Armor chassis has 2 of its own "i-Cage" drive cages
(one came with, and we purchased a second one when we ordered that chassis).

With this overall strategy, you then have the option to go with
>2TB arrays by using 64-bit Windows, Windows Server
or Vista (I'm not sure if all Vista versions support >2TB now).

For example, WD's high-end 750GB SATA/3G HDD now supports
vertical recording and raw transfer rates of 98MB/second!

Thus, it would require only 4 of these 750GB HDDs
realistically to approach 360MB/second raw throughput
(say 4 x ~100MB/second - ~10% overhead). This initial
configuration would still allow for 4 more internal HDDs,
and 8 more external HDDs, for enormous future expansion
using the same basic system (depending on the chasses
you selected).

I hope this helps.


Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell
Webmaster, Supreme Law Library
http://www.supremelaw.org/
Yeah, but he didn't want to bother building a system.
 

mgr

Distinguished
Aug 16, 2007
22
0
18,510
Supremelaw-

I'm sure that's great stuff, but it's way over my head. I understand it all as info and have read about such stuff, but there is no way I'm prepared to find someone to build me a machine that complex. If I were going into pro level HD editing, sure, but this is for very limited distribution of HD content of my music and for my own records.

Aside from not being prepared to build a system, money savings or not, I'm trying to stay away from absolute state-of-the-art because of the pain that will come the following months when new stuff makes the machine look like a slug. <smile>

Not that I don't appreciate your time with the message and the thoughts and ideas it provokes. Thanks.
 

gwolfman

Distinguished
Jan 31, 2007
782
0
18,980

So have you decided what you're going to do yet? :bounce: Just curious as to what your final decision was. :D
 

mgr

Distinguished
Aug 16, 2007
22
0
18,510

After searching around, I ended up at the Falcon Northwest site (don't know much about them except that PCMag always reviews them as fast but expensive) and spec'd out two different systems, one with EVERYTHING including a RAID-0 pair of 32Gb MTRON SSDs (for an additional $3000 <smile>) for $14,500 just for a joke, and another much more reasonable system along your suggestions for about $4500.

If you want to play, you can spec your own for amusement at http://www.falcon-nw.com/config/build.asp (this is their "Bang for the Buck" starting point but you could have much more fun if you find your way back a bit and start with their "Bragging Rights" option :ouch: ).

What I will actually do is still up for grabs. The idea of the less expensive SanDisk 5000 SSDs still pulls at me. Fortunately, I have a trip planned in the first two weeks in Oct and have decided to wait until after that to make final decisions. Maybe I will know enough around the possibilities by then...
 

shadowmaster625

Distinguished
Mar 27, 2007
352
0
18,780
until someone releases a flash based HD that contains something like 8 32MB flash chips in an internal RAID configuration, they aren't going to get much performance. I'd love to get my hands on an 8X RAID flash drive! I dont know what they're waiting for. I guess it must be too expensive to wire them all together. Though if they can do it with 2 I dont see why it wouldnt be feasible to do it with 8. Hell why not put 16 or 32 flash chips in parallel and make a PCIe X16 card out of it? Can you imagine a HDD with read speeds of 1GB/s?
 

mgr

Distinguished
Aug 16, 2007
22
0
18,510

Wouldn't it be wonderful, yes!. But, as for their "wiring" two together now, I'm not a techie but I think they are not "wiring" them together at this time; they're just hooking them up in a standard RAID-0 config the same as with standard HDDs. Well, one could always hook up eight of them that way. :pt1cable:
 

gwolfman

Distinguished
Jan 31, 2007
782
0
18,980
Samsung just announced a 64GB SSD that should be available soon. It might be just to Dell and Alienware (all the same) at first but I'm not sure. Just thought I'd throw that out there. http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33773/135/
 

d_kuhn

Distinguished
Mar 26, 2002
704
0
18,990
I don't think you'd want to use an SSD for swapfile duty... write access would kill performance.

If I wanted to put together the ultimate screamer disk subsystem using SSD tech. I'd probably start with this configuration...

Small RAID0 SSD array (32GB) - Operating system read intensive OS components (Windows and Program Files directories).

Small RAID0 15k U320 SCSI array (72GB) - Swapfile and r/w intensive OS components (Documents and Settings subdirectory).

Large RAID5 or RAID10 SATA array (1-2 TB) - Application Data directories.


I currently have a couple systems running using 15k scsi RAID0 as the OS/Swapfile drive coupled to big RAID5 SATA data arrays... it's a very fast workstation disk subsystem. The addition of an SSD array would kick it up an additional notch (assuming you could sort out moving the Documents and Settings directory to a different drive).

You would of course be talking about a pretty expensive disk subsystem... 2 raid controllers, ssd's, 15k scsi... probably $3k+ in hdd hardware by the time you were done.
 

onestar

Distinguished
Aug 16, 2007
390
0
18,780
I remember the days when we used RAM disks for games that were disk intensive. You would reserve a portion of your sytem RAM as a dedicated drive letter. Windows ATTEMPTS this today (in a way), but fails to be very specific where it could count. It seems to me the most viable solution for todays usage would be to have a three tiered disk system. An SSD for OS loads and/or swap files, and a small Ram disk for frequented application files, and a hard disk for long term storage from which the RAM disk loads.

I remember my first 386 system...an old Compaq using static RAM which was terribly expensive. Compaq eventually left such poor memory management behind, but the ideas behind the practice were sound.

It could present some overlap problems, I am sure, however it could certainly present us with some inproved performance.
 

d_kuhn

Distinguished
Mar 26, 2002
704
0
18,990
Ramdisks aren't really useful in the current windows architecture... it would just increase your swapfile (which goes to disk). Windows already has a strategy for efficiently using all the memory that's available, by artificially reducing the free memory through a ramdrive you're just forcing the OS to use the swapfile more intensively.

Now back when Dos and the Early versions of Windows were used, swapfiles had a useful purpose (since the OS often had trouble using all the memory available to it).
 

Benfica

Distinguished
Sep 15, 2007
1
0
18,510
Note that most benchmarks compare SSD against fragmented HD after Windows installation.

It's a very deceiving tactic
 

d_kuhn

Distinguished
Mar 26, 2002
704
0
18,990
I think the tomshardware article was fairly even handed. They layed out the benefits and costs associated with SSD's (including the fact that they're basically unsuitable for r/w intesive use).
 

shacharoren

Distinguished
Aug 18, 2007
65
0
18,630
i understand that SSD's are very fast with seek time but slow on write.
may iask what is swapfile?
if we're talking about OS and apps like video editing and CS3,
what are they doing more? seek or write?
meanning if a sys is used for presenting large photo's, heavy work with CS# and video editing, will an SSD be a good choice?