Re: nifty swapspace trick

On Monday 29 October 2007 13:46:53 Arthur Corliss wrote:
> On Mon, 29 Oct 2007, Jamie Hushower wrote:
> > A "typical" flash drive will not exceed the read/write speed of
> > a "typical" SATA drive. The theoretical *maximum* of a flash drive on USB
> > 2.0 is 60MB/s, but I suspect 30MB/s is more realistic for typical drives.
> > A typical 7200rpm SATA drive might average 45MB/s. If you have relatively
> > low disk I/O (though high RAM usage) to begin with, you might be losing
> > speed by using a flash drive for swap space. I'm curious what Microsoft
> > has to say on the matter, but am too lazy to look it up. Can anyone offer
> > better numbers than I have or refute it?
>
> Comparing storage devices on different buses is definitely a problem in
> itself. So, in interest of intellectual honesty, how about just comparing
> flash versus mechanical magnetic media on the same bus?
>
> The reality is that both outperform each other under different workloads.
> Recent flash memory types have worse write performance, on-par read
> performance, and tremendously better seek performance. The latter is
> especially important in the real world, especially when filesystems and
> multiple process concurrent I/O can destroy contigous reads and writes on
> mechanical systems.
>
> I personally don't get the interest in SSD drives or flash memory outside
> of very limited, specialized applications. A predominantly read-only
> database makes a good candidate for them (much higher MTBF when you
> eliminate write cycles), and consumers will like never having to reboot
> their laptops, just do a fast restore and roll. But beyond that?
>
> When MTBF isn't so horribly skewed by reasonable real-world read-write
> ratios, I'll take it more seriously.
>
> --Arthur Corliss
> Live Free or Die
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Arthur,

I agree with everything you've written so far. Given no external
limitations, more real ram is far better than anything else you can do.

But what is the solution for the old laptop, of which I have two, that is too
slow due to limited ram, but is also not upgradeable in any way, since the
standard practice back then was to put the ram on some little dingus board
buried under three others requiring two special screw drivers to get to.

This is a good solution to get a few more miles out of them before they go to
the recyclers.

Going off on a small tangent, what do you think about the plans of I think
Samsung to replace the drive with flash in laptops. Have they improved the
write cycle limitations to the point that this becomes viable?

Larry
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Received on Mon Oct 29 13:58:52 2007