Using SSD in uA1 is it OK to use SWAP?

[fitzsteve]

Hi!

I've recently moved my uA1 into a tiny MiniITX case (Antec ISk-100) I'm really pleased with the results and have been using a laptop HDD and USB DVDRW which works great

I plan to replace the IDE 2.5in HDD with a nice PATA IDE SSD, but I'm wondering if its still safe to use SWAP partitions on the SSD?

I was thinking of doing away with the SWAP if its not advised on SSD and perhaps upgrading to 1gb Ram, would performance with the extra Ram be equal or better than my current 512mb setup with 1gb SWAP?

Any advice appreciated

Cheers!

Steve.

[Rigo]

You have to bear in mind that SSD drives only have a certain "write" life cycle. If you was to run into the swap memory often, this could reduce the lifespan of the drive.

Simon

[fitzsteve]

You have to bear in mind that SSD drives only have a certain "write" life cycle. If you was to run into the swap memory often, this could reduce the lifespan of the drive.

Simon

Yeah thats what I was worried about. Whats the performnance like without SWAP?

[Rigo]

Well, it's only used when physical memory runs out. In the case of AmigaOS, it can currently only address 2GB of memory at most, and 1GB is a hell of a lot to use. With this amount of memory, I doubt the SWAP will ever get used.

Simon

[ChrisH]

My Sam440 only has 0.5GB of RAM, and I *never* run out of memory, except when compiling fairly large programs. Something like Blender might use a lot of memory for large models. Otherwise the only situation I can think of SWAP being required is if you have a memory leak, and don't reboot!

With 1GB I can't imagine ever needing SWAP, and 2GB seems pratically "infinite" from my AmigaOS4 point of view!

[Slayer]

You have to bear in mind that SSD drives only have a certain "write" life cycle. If you was to run into the swap memory often, this could reduce the lifespan of the drive.

Simon

Yeah thats what I was worried about. Whats the performnance like without SWAP?

I've never used a SWAP partition once in any of my SAMs, I've never had any problems although one time a long time ago I think I couldn't unarc a .7z of a DVD iso and this is because for some reason you needed to unarc the complete uncompressed image in memory before writing it to the Harddrive hence my serious attitude against .7z ever since

For the purposes of beta testing however I'd be happy to install a SWAP partition etc

[fitzsteve]

Thanks for the info guys, when I get the SSD I'll do without SWAP then

*Heads off to eBay to look for 1gb Ram and an SSD*

[JurassicC]

A1XE and uA1c use ECC Registered RAM IIRC
Personally I'd leave it at 512MB and just use the 2.5 inch drive purely for SWAP if there is room in the case for it, unless you want to recycle the 2.5" drive in another machine.

[fitzsteve]

Thanks for the info Jurassic

I think it's going to be near on impossible to find 1gb+ in this specification Ram, but 512mb should be enough.

I got my SSD today but I'm having trouble prepping the drive with Media Toolbox. I have the drive showing up just fine and booting from CD I can install the SLB and partition the drive OK.

First time after I saved and rebooted the drive did not show up at all so I madea cold boot.

But still no raw partitions to format so I checked back in Media Toolbox and the drive had not saved the new settings, so I started to prepare it again only this time when I saved the settings it guru'd (DSI Error)

I tried again and the same issue.

Any idea's?

It's a brand new KingSpec SSD (16gb PATA IDE)

Cheers,

Steve.

[fitzsteve]

Just a little update, I was able to successfully prep the drive after using WinUAE to clear the erronous RDB and re-prep in the uA1, after reboot my partitions were available to I formatted them all and powered down, removed the drive.

I put my old HDD back and loaded my working install, I was planning as I done before to put my SSD in my USB Caddy and transfer the data (this worked for the last install) however the newly prepared paritions had gone

I had a quick look in MediaToolbox and it seems the RDB has corrupted its self again, do you think I have a duff SSD?

http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm10 ... G_1872.jpg

Thanks,

Steve.