Root Access

Bob

22:01

@DragonLord you like it?

DragonLord

I've had it for more than three years and I really like it but it's starting to show its age.

Bob

ah

got a Nikon D3200 here. it serves well enough :P

actually, IIRC it also has a 16 GB SanDisk card in it, with another spare - but that's still plenty of space at ~30 MB per JPEG+RAW pair

Nate Kerkhofs

well, RAM became cheap as chips the past few years, so it would stand to reason that other memory would follow swiftly

DragonLord

Growth of SSDs has pushed the cost of high-performance flash memory way down.

Nate Kerkhofs

They're already working on 3D-stacked SSDs and memory that can increase storage capacity dozenfold

DragonLord

22:05

@NateKerkhofs Not new technology. My laptop has a 3D NAND SSD.

Look at the Samsung SSD 850 PRO.

Nate Kerkhofs

Really? that article I read about it must have been REALLY old then

DragonLord

Samsung was the first to market with 3D NAND; nobody else has a consumer-facing 3D NAND SSD yet.

Samsung is ahead of everyone else by about a year.

Nate Kerkhofs

since we're talking about SSDs: are there any downsides to using an SSD as a cache drive instead of as an extra storage drive?

I mean, I'm still going to put Windows on it, but I'm wondering whether to make everything else on the drive a cache drive (so basically 10 GB windows, 490 GB cache drive)

or put a few programs I always want speeded up on it for about 1-200 GB and use the rest as cache

programs would be World of Warcraft, Chrome, VS

DragonLord

You'll wind up with contention. If you want a separate caching layer, two separate SSDs may be better.

Nate Kerkhofs

contention?

I'm not sure I know what that means

I am also going to add 2X2TB in platter storage

DragonLord

22:13

You'll wind up with more concurrent I/O operations on the same physical disk than is genuinely necessary which degrades performance.

As I said, have one SSD for the system and another SSD to cache the mechanical hard drives.

Nate Kerkhofs

I'm only going to buy 1 SSD. Would partitions work?

because I'd rather not make the build too complicated. the more complicated the build is, the easier it is for something to fail

@DragonLord so, would partitions work?

DragonLord

You can use partitions, but the I/O is going back onto the same disk.

It'll certainly increase the performance of accesses to the platters.

SSDs attain their peak performance when doing many concurrent operations at once, but you'll suffer a system performance penalty when accessing the cache due to I/O contention.

Bob

I personally wouldn't even bother sticking Windows on the SSD.

Why would you need that?

The majority of the OS contains files that aren't gonna be touched anyway.

And then there's programs that'll insist on dumping files in the system FS. Even more wasted space.

Nate Kerkhofs

so everything on the HDD, and nothing on the SSD?

Bob

If you're going for cache anyway, just make the whole drive a cache.

Nate Kerkhofs

22:25

sounds even bette(

DragonLord

That would actually be slower.

Bob

If you don't like cache, then don't use cache.

Nate Kerkhofs

slower? why? @dragonlord

Bob

Also need to consider how you set up the cache. Intel's program is probably the most robust and possibly fastest, but requires some hardware support and has a 64 GB limit.

DragonLord

There's no guarantee that system I/O operations would all be cache hits.

Intel Smart Response Technology is capped to 64 GB.

Nate Kerkhofs

22:27

Doesn't Samsung have on of their own?

Bob

@DragonLord Anything frequent enough to matter will be.

Nate Kerkhofs

I mean, doesn't Samsung have a cache setup program itself? I remember this chat mentioning something to that effect

Bob

If you have a >500 GB SSD, then you mgiht as well use it as actual storage - unless you're caching an absolutely massive amount of data.

I'd say the cache should be no more than ~25% the size of the backing data, for general use.

Nate Kerkhofs

I play videogames, so I'd mainly do it for loading times

Bob

(it won't do any harm making it bigger, but you get diminishing returns... might as well buy a smaller SSD)

Nate Kerkhofs

22:29

WoW, GTA 5, Witcher 3, batman soon

DragonLord

If it's primarily for caching, I'd get a 128GB Samsung SSD 850 PRO.

Bob

@NateKerkhofs No. Samsung ("RAPID") performs RAM caching of data for the SSD.

It speeds up SSD access, which is mostly useless... mostly for benchmark bragging.

Nate Kerkhofs

actually sounds better than my original plan

Bob

The two full software SSD caches are PrimoCache and VeloSSD.

DragonLord

Tons of endurance thanks to the 3D NAND technology making it ideal for caching. It's also insanely fast and surprisingly affordable.

Nate Kerkhofs

22:29

which was getting a 1 TB SSD as a boot drive and keeping my old 1 TB drive as a data drive

Bob

I'm using PrimoCache right now, and it works pretty well - but I've experienced corruption with write caching before, so that's turned off.

I'm currently using a read-only cache.

IIRC @allquixotic is doing the same.

Nate Kerkhofs

but it might indeed be better to get 2X2TB in platters, and then a 128 GB SSD as a caching tool

would also be the same price as my original plan

Bob

@NateKerkhofs I still recommend cache + HDD for most people because the vast majority of their data is very rarely accessed

but it also depends on how much data you have

Me? I have a lot of data. Over 10 TB of HDD space on the desktop.

Nate Kerkhofs

I mainly play games on my machine

Bob

PrimoCache with a 96 GB cache is nearly 90% hits for my primary OS and data (2 TB total) volumes.

(most of that 10 TB is uncached backups and media)

Nate Kerkhofs

22:32

I mainly play games. I'm checking my c:/games folder right now. about 160 GB of games, but I just deleted 3X as much

Bob

That's my primary cached data volume, including games.

Nate Kerkhofs

"Registered" Does that mean you have to pay for it? @Bob

Bob

(the numbers are a bit low because I recently restarted... it only counts stats since last start but I think it preserves the cache across restarts)

the Intel Smart Response cache is still the best IMO, but there's the 64 GB limit and I actually can't use it because of the hardware requirements

the cache drive needs to be on a specific controller/port in relation to the backing storage

my current RAID setup prevents that

@NateKerkhofs Yes. $30 for a single licence. VeloSSD is $10.

Nate Kerkhofs

are there any free alternatives? or are those not mature enough yet?

Bob

@NateKerkhofs Intel's one is free.

FancyCache (beta version of PrimoCache) is also free and mostly the same, but no longer updated

Again - Intel's one is the best supported and most robust

Nate Kerkhofs

22:37

but is limited to a 64 GB cache

@bob games are already becoming bigger than that

GTA 5 is already 60 GB

Bob

@NateKerkhofs said previously - the majority of games are models and sounds that aren't even accessed

allquixotic

@Bob I stopped because all two of my SSDs are currently in use -- the second one got thrown in my mom's laptop for awesome performance under Windows 8.1

Bob

I have a 10 GB game here with > 1 GB in movies.

Movies as in cutscenes.

There's no need for high-speed access to those.

Nate Kerkhofs

right

so, 64 GB SSD as a cache, 2X2TB in platters as data

Bob

That's one option.

If you want full speed, and can afford it, you can just get the bigger SSD.

DragonLord

22:41

A 128GB SSD doesn't cost much more than a 64GB SSD, and it'll be considerably faster especially with writes.

Nate Kerkhofs

I got 200 EUR in gift certificates that I can put towards them

Bob

Cache is necessarily somewhat slower, but it's close enough that you generally won't notice, and far more cost-effective.

Also, consider what's actually causing your loading delays in games.

I've logged disk access and even put games completely on SSDs before.

They'll still pause on loading.

DragonLord

@Bob On my system, loading screens are CPU-bound the vast majority of the time.

Bob

Often not because of a disk bottleneck, but because of something else.

@DragonLord Yep.

CPU, GPU.

Lots of rendering.

Map layouts.

Placing entities.

Nate Kerkhofs

I can get a 128 GB SSD, but I can't use that as a whole for a cache

Bob

22:43

Disk bottlenecks still happen, of course, and it might get worse as games start assuming SSDs more often.

Nate Kerkhofs

and it's not nearly enough for daily use

Bob

But, again, consider: your game might be 60 GB, but any one loading screen will probably need less than 100 MB of that data.

Game binaries probably weigh under 100 MB themselves. Models per load are about the same, or smaller.

Sounds and videos tend to get rather large.

Textures too.

DragonLord

@NateKerkhofs It's still going to be faster. The extra space can be left unpartitioned and hence used as overprovisioning to optimize endurance and maximize performance consistency, or partitioned for use as a high-speed scratch space.

Bob

@NateKerkhofs First thing to consider: how much data will you store?

There's nothing worse than getting a 250 or even 500 GB SSD and finding in a year that you can't fit everything on it.

Nate Kerkhofs

Depends on whether you consider games data

Bob

22:45

Then you need to start shuffling things around. Nasty.

Nate Kerkhofs

I don't like uninstalling games

Bob

If you don't expect much data - go for the large SSD.

If you expect a lot of data - go for the large HDD and a small SSD cache.

Or go for an SSD anyway if you can afford it :P

Nate Kerkhofs

If I'm going to install dozens of games on my computer, is that a lot of data or not a lot?

Bob

Depends what games? I have dozens installed for a total weight under 100 GB, but most are fairly small.

You could easily exceed 500 GB if they're all big AAA titles.

Nate Kerkhofs

modern games: games that are easily 30-40 GB

Bob

22:47

Notice that SSD caches introduce more setup complexity and potential points of failure.

But manually managed SSD and HDD introduces more management complexity since you need to consider where to install things, and move them around when one gets full.

Nate Kerkhofs

I am going to play some older games, mostly to finish those that are in my backlog

Bob

Also, other thing about SSD caches: once they're warmed up, they fly. Anything accessed often, great! But if you jump between games a lot, a lot of that data will grow stale and fall off the cache.

Nate Kerkhofs

I'm already struggling with that on my laptop. the thing has 128 GB SSD and 1 TB HDD, and I already found that I basically cannot install games on the SSD because 1 game takes like 30% of my SSD

Bob

@NateKerkhofs Then even if you get a larger SSD you can expect to have to uninstall games now and then.

The other alternative, as previously mentioned, is to manually rotate games off as it fills up.

You can move them to a HDD so you don't have to redownload.

But that's manual shuffling. If you want to go that route, that also works.

You'll probably reduce the delay while actually playing, at the cost of spending some time now and then doing the moving.

Nate Kerkhofs

I mainly use 3-4 programs at a time: WoW, Chrome with youtube or Twitch, the current AAA release, and Civ 5

although I might be playing 2 or 3 AAA releases at a time as well

I doubt that's a situation where an SSD cache comes in handy

Bob

22:52

Hm.

Nate Kerkhofs

probably borderline

Bob

Yea.

The browser will be happy with a cache.

Civ probably too

WoW... dunno

Nate Kerkhofs

and I'd rather not muck around with moving games from one drive to another. some games get weird shit when you do that

Bob

large open-world games can be a bit iffy, depending on how they're structured

@NateKerkhofs well, you'd have to move them back before playing

or symlink to the new location

Nate Kerkhofs

I'm currently playing GTA V, Witcher 3 and I'll soon play Batman

Bob

22:53

the other alternative is to buy another SSD when your one fills up

@NateKerkhofs see, GTA V and Witcher 3 are both rather open, but there's a difference

GTA V is relatively cacheable - mostly fairly repetitive scenery

Witcher... is not

at least, afaik

Nate Kerkhofs

The problem is that I got money for either a 1 TB SSD, or a cache SSD and 4 TB in platters

not both

anyway, it's getting late. I'm off to bed

I'll probably come back in about 20 hours to discuss it further

Bob

@NateKerkhofs 1 TB could probably last you a good year or two minimum, depending on how quickly you go through games

so that might be the way to go

but you also need to remember that SSDs can and do fail, so you still need a drive for backup space

Bob

23:19

@NateKerkhofs Apparently the radio stations in GTA V (20+ total) are 150-450 MB each...

Cutscene audio is at least 1.8 GB

Interactive music 3 GB

Other ambient sounds, etc., well over 2 GB

what looks like (unsure) ~200 MB per language (speech)

...yea, probably at least 30% of that 60 GB is audio alone

DragonLord

23:58

I've had enough with our slow DSL connection

Problem is that my parents' email is tied to the ISP so switching to a different ISP is going to require a massive email migration

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