crunching data on SSD

[WhiteFireDragon]

this is a no no because the amount of times it writes to the ssd. if i set it to write every few hours, this would not be nearly as bad as the OS reading/writing to the drive every few seconds would it? anyone else crunch on a ssd? i need this system snappy and also want to crunch on it because it's a daily machine as opposed to my other two dedicated crunchers.

[artemm]

If you're worried about it, put a cheaper mechanical drive into the rig and install BOINC on it, as others have suggested. The SSD will then be used only for daily driving purposes and not to write BOINC results. Besides, HDD performance is pretty much irrelevant to BOINC, so I think you can just go for the cheapest drive available.

Oh... and YGPM

[fallwind]

^^ That's what I did, my rig has 1 SSD and 2 mechanical so I installed BOINC on one of the mechs. No use putting unnecessary wear and tear on the SSD for no real gain. But if the SSD is your sole drive and there's no easy/cheap way to add a second, then don't worry about it. We haven't seen SSD's dropping dead all over the place yet so they're pretty tough.

[naokaji]

Even if it dies faster, who on xs really cares if it lasts 9 instead of 10 years? You are more likely to upgrade than see it die.

But as the others said, you can install boinc on a mechanical drive, most likely you are going to need one anyway due to the capacity of ssds.

But other than that, ssds work perfectly fine in a pc crunching 24/7.

[Jaco]

I remember jcool had issues with several SSD's.
Not sure which ones , I just remember him saying 'jmicrap'

[jcool]

anyone else crunch on a ssd?

Me.
I am using several old 30GB Jmicrap drives for crunchers because they are too crappy to use anywhere else
They used to die every few months, so I keep RMAing them
A while ago, it occured to me to increase the "write to disk at most every xxx seconds" from default 60 to 600. Since then, no more SSDs have died crunching.
So yeah, I recommend increasing that value to at least 600s.

[D_A]

Frankly I'd suggest doing that on a regular drive, especially if, like me, you wring the absolute last second of usable life out of every component ... or just can't afford to replace things at will.

[jcool]

I RMA things at will, not replace them - big difference

[D_A]

By the time I get them, RMA means something VERY different.

[jcool]

Trash can?

[zads]

Hey guys, so does putting the data/crunching on SSD improve the efficiency/output?
I always thought it is processor/GPU limited?
Sorry I'm new to this, I just finished my first two work units haha..
and I just might have some SSD capacity to spare:



Pardon the mess, I was testing out a new fan controller and SSDs
(capacity is another way to mitigate the write cycle count/"wearing out" on the individual NAND cells)

[D_A]

Trash can?

Now he gets it.

I haven't had an all new system since '99. Everything I've got is built out of second hand stuff I've been generously given or "acquired" from the local landfill.

[WhiteFireDragon]

i would just throw in a mechanical HD, but i'm severely limited on space because this is a mATX build. i3-530 @ 4.5ghz for my mom's daily usage, and it's crunching on the side. it will be a small case to be discrete and after the wire management, there's not much room for a large 3.5" drive, so i would like to avoid a mechanical drive if possible.

as for how much space the data takes up, when i check the "disk usage by BOINC", it's never more than 500mb and that's with WCG and GPUgrid, so i'm not really worried about the space. however, if i set it to write to the disk every 30min (1800sec), does that mean the disk space usage will increase as well? how much disk usage on your guy's machines?

Hey guys, so does putting the data/crunching on SSD improve the efficiency/output?
I always thought it is processor/GPU limited?

no, CPU/GPU clocks and threads (and to a small extent, memory, cache, and mobo settings) make a difference. the HD/SSD just merely stores the data, so put it on the cheapest reliable drive you can get. in my situation, i'm just limited on space to get an extra drive.

[Otis11]

All my machines are below 300 MB disk usage...

Was kinda surprised as it takes more ram than that, but w/e.

[D_A]

i would just throw in a mechanical HD, but i'm severely limited on space because this is a mATX build. i3-530 @ 4.5ghz for my mom's daily usage, and it's crunching on the side. it will be a small case to be discrete and after the wire management, there's not much room for a large 3.5" drive, so i would like to avoid a mechanical drive if possible.

as for how much space the data takes up, when i check the "disk usage by BOINC", it's never more than 500mb and that's with WCG and GPUgrid, so i'm not really worried about the space. however, if i set it to write to the disk every 30min (1800sec), does that mean the disk space usage will increase as well? how much disk usage on your guy's machines?


no, CPU/GPU clocks and threads (and to a small extent, memory, cache, and mobo settings) make a difference. the HD/SSD just merely stores the data, so put it on the cheapest reliable drive you can get. in my situation, i'm just limited on space to get an extra drive.

The longer you wait between writes the more has to be held in RAM. Disk usage won't increase but RAM usage will.
If you hunt around you might be able to pick up a second hand laptop hdd (1.8 or 2.5 inch instead of 3.5) to save space or just put in more RAM to accommodate the much longer write cycles.

Since we're on the subject ... in ABSOLUTE terms, running BOINC from a SSD will increase performance BUT the amount will be insignificant in real terms. Maybe a few seconds a work unit. (WAEG, ymmv but not by much)

[fallwind]

Also, I believe the "write to disk" setting affects work unit check pointing, meaning if you set it to 30 min, you may lose that much every time the machine is shut down. If ther machine is on 24/7 it's no biggie but something to consider if it's on and off frequently.

[DAK1640]

I have SSD's on 2 of my rigs. OCZ Vertex and Crucial M225. I have not seen any degradation whatsoever with either SSD/Rig. They both crunch 7x24 with Win7 X64

[don_xvi]

I have 2 machines with SSDs and they both crunch to the SSDs. One because that's the only drive it has, the other I moved the BOINC directory to the SSD because I wanted to prevent those pesky writes to the mechanical drive while gaming. I later figured out that wasn't the source of my problem, but (and I'm no SSD expert) I'm not concerned about suffering any significant loss of life. I've still got such ancient stuff sitting around, if my 60GB only has 56GB usable at some point... no biggie, the rest of my drives by then will be multi-TB SSDs and this will be relegated to some dedicated cruncher. Crunch away on it!

[Bobsama]

I have 2 machines with SSDs and they both crunch to the SSDs. One because that's the only drive it has, the other I moved the BOINC directory to the SSD because I wanted to prevent those pesky writes to the mechanical drive while gaming. I later figured out that wasn't the source of my problem, but (and I'm no SSD expert) I'm not concerned about suffering any significant loss of life. I've still got such ancient stuff sitting around, if my 60GB only has 56GB usable at some point... no biggie, the rest of my drives by then will be multi-TB SSDs and this will be relegated to some dedicated cruncher. Crunch away on it!

(1000/1024)^3 = 0.9313....

.9313*60=55.8793...

You're not losing any space, really. As for me, I actually setup BOINC to run off my second hard drive. I was getting really annoyed when it took 5s for something to load off the second drive so I kept it active with BOINC. If it dies, Western Digital gets it back.

And if you're worried about SSD wear and tear, why not use a USB flash drive? A $5 2GB stick should work perfectly.

[Mescalamba]

Just out of curiosity.. how do you switch HDD used for WCG/BOINC? Kinda cant found that option.. or is reinstall needed?

[123bob]

At the risk of not having read the entire thread, I will say this. I have a rig that is running on only a 30 gig OCZ SSD (That I won as a prize on the Tech Reaction forum,. Thanks enJoy!) that has been crunching it's butt off for at least 6 months. No problems seen yet. IDK...

Bob

[jcool]

Bob, I had a "good" Indilinx-based drive die on me after 6-8 months crunching (and using it for my main OS). So I would recomment increasing the write to disk setting regardless, if you haven't done so already.

[don_xvi]

(1000/1024)^3 = 0.9313....

.9313*60=55.8793...

You're not losing any space, really. As for me, I actually setup BOINC to run off my second hard drive. I was getting really annoyed when it took 5s for something to load off the second drive so I kept it active with BOINC. If it dies, Western Digital gets it back.

And if you're worried about SSD wear and tear, why not use a USB flash drive? A $5 2GB stick should work perfectly.

Sorry, I was unclear when I referenced only having 55GB at some point, I meant wearing out part of the drive, not saying anything about Windows' affinity for reporting GiB as GB.

But you've hit on the solution right there, dump BOINC onto a cheap flash drive if you've got any concerns about SSD longevity.

[[Ion]]

I keep BOINC on my WD Caviar Blue, I'm not sure if it would be bad to put it on the X25-V, but I'm not taking any risks

[Ashraf]

I have been crunching on an SSD for a year already. It is G.Skill Falcon 128GB and is my single drive for my main PC. I have never had an issue with it so far...