SSD advice

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freman
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SSD advice

Post by freman »

Hi,

I have a new system on SSD device. I'm wondering whether it is a good idea to put my FreeCAD build tree and build dir on such a drive. In view of the thousands of files in the tree and all the incremental writing , is this likely to shorten the life of the drive? Also how much of the build time is disk access vs compiler hard work, ie is there a significant speed gain to be had?

SSD seems most suited to system files which are more often read than changed. I building on SSD a sensible idea ?

Thanks for any knowledge and advice on this.
Syres
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Re: SSD advice

Post by Syres »

Touch wood, I've never had an SSD fail on me, probably because I have a proper Disaster Recovery setup but your general premise is correct SSD's should be used for more static file systems. Most Windows users in particular don't realise how many small files are being held in their Temp folder including all the FC icon files saved at each startup which by default is their C: drive and most new PC's have their boot drive as an SSD. I made a tiding up script to replace the StartPage.py back in 2019 but it had zero interest.
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freman
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Re: SSD advice

Post by freman »

thanks Syres, would you like post that script, it may be worth adopting.

I have /home on a separate partition on spinning silicon, so that's not a problem.
Syres
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Re: SSD advice

Post by Syres »

Not much point in posting it as it was in 2019, many changes have gone on and back then I only had Windows. It needs bringing up-to-date and Linux testing before I'll post it up. I'll see what I can do over the weekend but no promises.
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freman
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Re: SSD advice

Post by freman »

Thanks, don't spend time on my account. I just thought it might be worth looking over for ideas.
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f3nix
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Re: SSD advice

Post by f3nix »

Hello @freman.

I've been using a NVME for almost 3 years now. No ill effects on the disk.

It helps when you want to run with more cores. My old HDD could not keep up to serve data for the compiler when running with -j17 option. Some cores where idle waiting for data (8 cores, 16 threads).

After migrating to NVME all the cores are used 100% during make.

Just my 0.01$

Cheers,
Mateusz
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freman
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Re: SSD advice

Post by freman »

Thanks f3nix. That's the kind of input I was looking for.

Do you have both src tree and build dirs on solid state storage?

I suppose it's best to have dedicated device separate from the system drive in case it hits wear issues.
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f3nix
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Re: SSD advice

Post by f3nix »

freman wrote: Sat Apr 17, 2021 5:25 am Do you have both src tree and build dirs on solid state storage?
Yes. Everything.
freman wrote: Sat Apr 17, 2021 5:25 am I suppose it's best to have dedicated device separate from the system drive in case it hits wear issues.
Storage is quite cheap today. So no problem to migrate to a new one.

Mine has been going strong for 3 years now. Without any problems. Only time will tell if this was the right direction.

Cheers,
Mateusz
user1234
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Re: SSD advice

Post by user1234 »

I also have a SDD and have no issues.

My lifetime calculation is pretty simple.
- a 128 GByte space
- 50% are fixed for OS and static programs
- 1000 times overwrite lifetime (often datasheets says much more)
- 10 GByte / d turnover per day


128 * Gbyte * 0.5 * 1000 / 10 * (GByte / d) = 6400 d ≈ 17.5 years

Greetings
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