SSD roundup: Vertex 3 vs M4 vs C300 vs 510 vs 320 vs x25-M vs F120 vs Falcon II

[keiths]

Is that cache within the SSD?

I don't see any benefit using cache within an SSD, reason why I don't use cache within the SSD, but it might change in future. This reminds of compressible and incompressible data, Vertex 3 x M4 C400 all over again.

You're sidetracked, the point is it logs activity which shows writes are much bigger than reads. As for your sidetrack, fancycache can cache writes, in doing so consolidates them, which results in fewer writes to the underlying device, an obvious benefit to SDD longevity. As for speed, unless your SDD does 4GB/s, it's also faster.

[Metroid]

You're sidetracked, the point is it logs activity which shows writes are much bigger than reads. As for your sidetrack, fancycache can cache writes, in doing so consolidates them, which results in fewer writes to the underlying device, an obvious benefit to SDD longevity.

It seems you use programs that write more than read, not my or many others cases. I do not use cache within an SSD. So the longevity of my SSD will be many times greater than if I was using fancycache.

As for speed, unless your SDD does 4GB/s, it's also faster.

It can't beat memory ram and that is my point.

[keiths]

It seems you use programs that write more than read, not my or many others cases. I do not use cache within an SSD. So the longevity of my SSD will be many times greater than if I was using fancycache.

The use in question is caching of the OS drive, not a specialized use. Write cache reduces the number of writes to the drive, SSDs have limited writes, ergo, yes, will extend the life of SSDs.

> It can't beat memory ram and that is my point.

The point I saw you making was there's no point to using cache with SSD. How fancycache(memory) being faster than SDD makes that point I don't get, or I missed another point you were making.

[Ao1]

^^ A significant portion of I/O activity occurs within the windows file system without touching the storage device.

I think the objective of fancy cache is to better manage the Windows file system cache by using different algorithms to try and keep useful data in cache, thus limiting the requirements to re- read from the device to obtain dropped cache data.

Better cache management can in theory be very beneficial if the storage device is slow or if the cache management program can be specially tweaked for a particular application. I've tried fancy cache with SSD and it made no perceivable performance difference to me.

Windows does an excellent job at managing cache for general use. Of course there will always be situations when a more focused cache management system could do better for a particular task, but it might at the same time also slow things down elsewhere in the process.

SSD's are so fast that it negates the benefit that might be seen with HDD.

I'm surprised you are seeing more writes. Normal I would say it's a 10 to 1 (or less) ratio between reads and writes. Do you do a lot of tasks that write data?

Regarding write caching, don't forget that SSD's also combine writes to reduce wear. This happens within the SSD itself.

My 2c anyways. Maybe there is a better explaination on cache OS/ Cache programes work.

[keiths]

^^ A significant portion of I/O activity occurs within the windows file system without touching the storage device.

I think the objective of fancy cache is to better manage the Windows file system cache by using different algorithms to try and keep useful data in cache, thus limiting the requirements to re- read from the device to obtain dropped cache data.

Better cache management can in theory be very beneficial if the storage device is slow or if the cache management program can be specially tweaked for a particular application. I've tried fancy cache with SSD and it made no perceivable performance difference to me.

Windows does an excellent job at managing cache for general use. Of course there will always be situations when a more focused cache management system could do better for a particular task, but it might at the same time also slow things down elsewhere in the process.

SSD's are so fast that it negates the benefit that might be seen with HDD.

I'm surprised you are seeing more writes. Normal I would say it's a 10 to 1 (or less) ratio between reads and writes. Do you do a lot of tasks that write data?

Regarding write caching, don't forget that SSD's also combine writes to reduce wear. This happens within the SSD itself.

My 2c anyways. Maybe there is a better explaination on cache OS/ Cache programes work.

Again, it's not a special setup or usage pattern that's hitting writes harder, it's bog standard on both, regular xp x64 doing regular use, browsing, gaming, movies, text editing, etc. It doesn't take long to see the write heavy usage pattern of windows, install fancycache and keep the performance statistics window open. Fancycache is better than drive write combining, it can combine more because it can be set to delay writes longer and on a larger pool of data(my setup being ten minute write delay on a 2gb cache.)

>SSD's are so fast that it negates the benefit that might be seen with HDD.

There is a point of diminishing returns, fancycache gets you there without having to wait for the next gen SSDs or spending a few grand on a caching controller and SSD RAID setup or high priced PCIe SSD drive.

[Ao1]

Again.......

Not sure if you missed it but F@32 created a thread about FancyCache:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=267879

[keiths]

Not sure if you missed it but F@32 created a thread about FancyCache:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=267879

The xs threads on fancycache are where I found out about fancycache.

[Metroid]

The use in question is caching of the OS drive, not a specialized use. Write cache reduces the number of writes to the drive, SSDs have limited writes, ergo, yes, will extend the life of SSDs.

> It can't beat memory ram and that is my point.

The point I saw you making was there's no point to using cache with SSD. How fancycache(memory) being faster than SDD makes that point I don't get, or I missed another point you were making.

When I asked within an SSD I meant using the SSD as root cache for it, my point was not cache with an SSD and yes it was cache within an SSD, I have or had no idea that fancycache is a memory based cache program, reason I asked about it in the first place.

Well concerning the OS drive about writing more than reading, because if there is nothing much to read it will not do it. As soon as a game + some looped programs are opened then the reads will increase. I don't have time to test to confirm this but many around here can confirm this and I stand by my quote: "4K Random Read is the most important thing for 97% of users."