Hard drives for SW purposes

Hey all,
My DIY workstation project continues...

I am looking at hard drives and wondering about real world performance for
SW sessions

There seems to be a few avenues to go down and I am not altogether convinced
the pursuit of disk speed is that important a factor in daily SW work.

Starting with RAID0 -
Previously (old pc) I have used this with PATA disks believing it gave a
boost to performance. I have the block size set at 64k.
According to a benchmark I get not less than 80mb/s across the entire 500GB
set like this and a max of 100mb/s.
Do I need 500GB? ah, no, actually...but they just keep making them big and
bigger...
OK seems fast to me for older disks however I have been reading here and
there and it would seem for the most part RAID0 does not actually give any
tangible boost except for certain tasks like copy,unzip and
defrag...hmmm...I thought it was peppier but...
I guess another benefit you could say was that the RAID controller was
sustaining speed across the entire disk better than a solo disk which falls
off to say 60mb/s... but then I don't use that much..

Does anyone have sound evidence that RAID makes SW noticeably faster?
By that I mean modelling parts /make assy ,dwgs, rebuilds etc.
OK and I know you can RAID all sorts of disks...not being specific about
that -

OK so next avenue -
Big fast SATA like a Seagate Barracuda 500 or 750GB, or WD Caviar SE16
640GB.
These new disks are very fast - getting up to the old Raptors - except for
access time where they are well behind (or at least on paper)
In the real world is the access time that relevant?
What's a few ms in the scheme of things? I don't seem to be sitting waiting
on a few ms when rebuilds take minutes...
If I RAID two of these big drives ( if it is even worth doing) it will poke
through a lot of mb/s and the cost is still less than a 300GB VelociRaptor
on its own.
Admittedly though even 150GB is a useful size for me so I don't think I am
ever going to need 1.5Tb....its well..they just keep making them big and
bigger..and they happen to be faster
( yeah I know they are coming out with a 1.5TB disk soon...)

OK next -
10000rpm Raptors and 15000rpm SCSI disks.
Now I know a lot of folks will automatically reach for one or two of these
as the thing to have for a workstation but I am unconvinced.
Yes they are fast and responsive on paper but are they worth the extra cost
for less capacity?
Presumably they are also somewhat more noisy...
If you slashed out on some of these what do you think objectively now about
them?Are you startled by the speed increase or are they just helping save a
few seconds a day that are just as easily lost somewhere else?

Finally SSD-
Very expensive although the price is coming down fast
I think Samsung have a 32GB out now for US$160
The better of these seem to have similar performance to the best hard drives
but have virtually no access lag and there is no fall off across the GB and
you can RAID them.
However I read that for some tasks SSD do not perform well - I think it was
random read/write -can't remember-..possibly it is some task SW performance
would be hurt by?
Has anyone information that says SSD will seriously help out for CAD? Not
meaning the benefits of no moving parts,noise,fast boots etc.

Related to disk set up -
Has anyone really noticed any real improvement from having the pagefile on
another separate disk? and if so is that for very large assys or even small
ones? Again I am not really concerned with ms

--------------------------------
So folks if any groupie has some experience , info or profound opinion on
the subject of disks for SW I would appreciate you sharing it. As I say I
am after tangible benefit rather than benchies and repeated theory.
thanks
Neil

 

I installed a pair of VelociRaptors last week as SATA drives.
Have a look at them.

 

I prefer drives that are about 160 gigs less time for the cleanup
maintenence. Swap file on a separate drive, reduces seeks. 1.6 gig local bus
would probabl speed things up. Faster video card. More memory, less use of
swap file. Larger processor cache. How many cores does SW actually use at
one time. Rebuilds of complex files seems to be the bottleneck. The use of
simplified models for things that are created or purchased from specs rather
than the CNC data extracted from the CAD models, for example gears,
hardware.

Bob

 

Better technology seems to be badly needed when it comes to hard
drives. Reading Tom's hardware forums I note where SATA II is
basically meaningless because drives are just beginning to reach the
limit of SATA I.

Seems like SSD are going to be the way to go in the future and might
have some serious benefits now.

Have you asked these questions on Tom's Hardware forums? I don't
think your questions are really not CAD specific and this might not be
the best forum to ask these types of questions in.

A lot of very knowledgeable people seem to hang out on Tom's Hardware
forums.

Jon Banquer
San Diego, CA
http://jonbanquer.blogspot.com/

 

Better technology seems to be badly needed when it comes to hard
drives. Reading Tom's hardware forums I note where SATA II is
basically meaningless because drives are just beginning to reach the
limit of SATA I.

Seems like SSD are going to be the way to go in the future and might
have some serious benefits now.

Have you asked these questions on Tom's Hardware forums? I don't
think your questions are really not CAD specific and this might not be
the best forum to ask these types of questions in.

A lot of very knowledgeable people seem to hang out on Tom's Hardware
forums.

Jon Banquer
San Diego, CA
http://jonbanquer.blogspot.com/

 

Jon, well the thing is that as knowledgeable as they might be they are not
CAD users and aren't familiar with the work flow of SW.
....plenty of gamers and enthusiasts ready with ideas for sure...

Looking at some of the forum posts at Tom's though it seems to bear out what
I have thought - that Raptors have a small edge that doesn't deliver that
much esp. in respect of the cost margin...or at least in those particular
uses...

I see one guy there talking about how he is returning raptors because they
are actually slower and noisier in RAID than the 7200SATA set up he had....
not sure about that case though..

What I want to know is how these thing pan out in real use.
If access times really do help CAD - the only real benefit I can see in the
Raptor specs - then going for SSD with no lag ought to be even better.(?)

Here in NZ looking at online suppliers the new 300GB raptor presently is 3x
the cost of a WD 640GB.
I am not sure it makes sense to buy one...
If you are happy to pay a premium price for high specs what about SSD
instead?

Looking at my new install on the old faithful pc XPpro, Office SBE, SW2005
and various drivers, readers and other bits consume about 7.2 GB - add in
some extra space and pagefile and 16GB could take care of the basics - add
in another SSD in RAID0 gives 32 gb.
This could be enough space for a CAD only situation...or more likely the min
capacity of SSD will be 32GB each so 64GB basic..fine..tolerable for me...
If you wanted you could put in say a 320GB 7200rpm drive as well for bulk
storage...

If you look at this page
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-hard-drive,1968-8.html you can see
how SSD are for the workstation I/O benchmark in comparison to laptop
drives - however what does that mean to a SW jockey actually? i dont
know..that is the problem.
Thats why I am asking here about peoples experience of various drive set
ups.

BTW a VelociRaptor scores 1280 in that same test and other raptors about
1100 whilst the best of the 7200rpm disks come in about 750-825 so
apparently SSD is not so hot despite the no lag spec...
So maybe quick boot ups but not a lot of good in SW use? dunno....
If SSD improve further and the price comes down it seems they might only be
on par with the best mech drives?

So my big question relates to actual seat of the pants experience.
Does it actually matter much what you use for SW??

thanks for the reply though

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks
[
RAID 0 (striped disks) distributes data across several disks in a way which
gives improved speed and full capacity, but all data on all disks will be lost
if any one disk fails.
.....
RAID 5 (striped disks with parity) combines three or more disks in a way that
protects data against loss of any one disk; the storage capacity of the array is
reduced by one disk. The less common RAID 6 can recover from the loss of two
disks.

RAID involves significant computation when reading and writing information. With
true hardware RAID the controller does the work. In other cases the operating
system or simpler and less expensive controllers require the host computer's
processor to do the computing, which reduces the computer's performance on
processor-intensive tasks (see "Software RAID" and "Fake RAID" below). Simpler
RAID controllers may provide only levels 0 and 1, which require less processing.
]

"which reduces the computer's performance"
"true hardware RAID the controller"

 

They use big words ...

 

Swap/paging bottleneck.
With enough memory thet should drop though. Should.
Also, there should be diagnostics somewhere. I know there are
for such as HP-UX.
Find where your specific bottlenecks are & spend there. Spending
elsewhere just wastes money (till that bottleneck is not the
worst one, then fix the new worst one).

 

Has anybody tried the new solid-state drives?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive
Swap/paging should be FAST !!!

Might not cost all that much if just used for the swap/paging
file ... IF that's a bottleneck.

 

Cliff,
Thanks for the wiki link
I see 200mb/s read and 160 write quoted for the latest Samsung which is very
healthy...
You are probably right about the page file use although with say 64 bit and
8gb you could run with no page file at all I think and it would be even
faster.

another possibility is something like this
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products...Storage&ProductID=2179&ProductName=GC-RAMDISK

I guess you would just have to have a SSD to test it to see if it really was
useful for SW - so far no one here has owned up to doing that or even
indicated they could afford it.

Maybe we can get someone to review one?
Perhaps Matt would agree to do it if a company sent him one (or two) for
appraisal...got to be good marketing value in that right?
Lots of lusting SW users out there eagerly read Matt's words every
day....hmmm...maybe we get XI Computers interested.. ;o)

The trouble with expecting SW tech people to give informed advice about
these things is that they are incapable of talking to users in anything but
monosyllables because that's how they have been trained to write the help
notes.(No bloody use at all)

Ok so my search for SW meaning continues...

 

I would suggest not running without a swapfile, it is also used by the
operating system and if you run out your computer crashes.

Drive speed is of relatively small consequence.

File fragmentation, processor speed, video card performance, memory access
speed, and amount of memory Are of great consequence.

If the application actually uses multiple processors then that is important.

The way that the program was written and the operating system overhead you
have no control over.

Raid and system back up are really important, if your system crashes.

How you work and rebuilds are probably the greatest performance hits.

Bob

 

Put the executable binary files used near each other
& on the outside of the disk(s) (less head travel
for seeks). This used to be possible by adding/installing them
first & other files later.
Also, IIRC, you have faster data on the outside of the disks
(more bytes per inch/second at the same RPM) though this may be
old info ... dod not check to see if current drives are like this.

 

No telling how old or incomplete it is.
But check the Web sites of some of the firms mentioned; probably
current specs there.

In theory the page/swap file is used when physical memory is full
(or has old & rarely used data). Don't know which way MS does things
but it may be on the MS support site. Worth checking I suppose.

Check with your local home-brew computer parts store. They just might
lend for a test? Or take your system in (case open) when they are slow
& they might help you try? IF they have parts to try. Epect to pay for
it if you break it though.

Contact SW, not your local VAR?
Or perhaps you could ask Phl Scott

 

IIRC You need 8 or so (exact same model) (hard, not logical) drives
in a RAID array to get a real boost. Logical drives would just slow things
way down.
You probably also need a RAID control card (and perhaps
SCSSI drives).

 

I have I-RAM installed just for the swap file it works great, don't have any software to check the actual difference
running swap file on HD or I-RAM so I can't say if it is better or not, but it fills like the PC is running smoother. I
someone could recommend good benchmark utility for SW I'm sure I can provide some numbers to prove or disprove it.



I call it redneck workaround to windows XP 4GB memory limit



If I was to do it over again I think I would get SSD instead mainly because this drives come larger than 4GB and have
SATA-2 on it

 

One of the guys here bought 10Krpm drives a couple of years back when they
were the ticket. He was disappointed in their performance, as he didn't
notice any improvment. He had quite a bit more trouble with his computer
that seemed to be attributable to the hard drives. The small size eventually
caught up to him as well. He has since moved on to another job and the
fellow who is getting his computer will be putting in new drives in a raid
configuration that our IT guys like.

I've got raid 10 on my machine using 7200 rpm SATA drives. I didn't notice
any big improvement in start up or file load times, but I didn't do any
testing either. This seems like a pretty good setup, as I should have pretty
good I/O speed and fault tolerance as well. It was cheaper than SCSI or high
rpm drives of lower capacity.

Jerry

 

redneck workaround to windows XP 4GB memory limit

hmmm... but windows will only use 2gb for an application in its native
setting...
so you have the 3gb switch enabled and the min/max pagefile is 4gb? and the
I-RAM is definitely helping you handle v.large SW files better?

I understand the memory is interfaced by SATA and you are limited by that
bandwidth so a 300mb/s SATA-2 vs 150 would give better numbers however to
summarise your present experience the pc feels a bit smoother but the actual
performance of the various tasks in a days SW work are not significant? i.e.
although you may be working with a large file you couldn't handle well in
2gb before the actual rebuild times etc etc have not changed...or perhaps
5-10% or so?

Sorry to quiz you -all info helps- and others reading here may find it
interesting too

 

yeah I am leaning toward just SATA perhaps in RAID as well.

Fault tolerance story to share with folks:

The hard disks I have on my old pc are actually the second set.
The first ones in RAID0 died prematurely together when we had a sudden power
outage here at home.

I read in the local paper a few days later that someone having a 21st party
had let off a tinsel streamer that went into the substation a few houses
along from the happy event killing the transformer in a pyrotechnic display
worth seeing ....about 2km away my pc stopped stone dead landing the heads
on the first partition...

Although I recovered almost all of the data from the other partitions with
rat like cunning the drives themselves were unusable for any new install (
Needless to say replacing the disks, retrieving the data, fresh install of
everything etc etc was a substantial time waster.
In this case RAID0+1 would not have helped

OK so lesson learned - on UPS (with surge protection) now ;o)

 

thanks for the link - interesting read...impressive numbers...Vista + pen
drives didn't really work out as well as they predicted though...

hmmm... so a 4 or 8 GB SATA-2 SSD if it were available and cheap might be a
useful thing for CAD pagefiles...while retaining 7200SATA disks for the
rest...perhaps a good blend of old and new at reasonable cost

thanks mr.T
BTW you haven't said what your other disk(s) are?