Installed SSD Harddisk in X1000 today

[kicko]

Just bought this new SSD harddisk as i was curious on speeds in x1000. Its my first SSD disk. I configured it to look the same as the partitions on my 1TB sata harddisk.

As we know x1000 dont have Sata3 (6gbit/sec but Sata2 (3gbit/sec). The SSD is backwards compatible so no problems there.

What is good is SSD uses much less power. Speed is ofcourse the main thing here but my tests didnt show any win when comparing to my 1TB harddisk. I dont know why.

The IdeTool shows im runnng best/current DMA 70.

Booting my machine from pressing power to seeing workbench takes 52sec. With SSD it takes 47sec so the win was just 3 seconds but i believe this isnt the same every boot. Warmboot is the same 15-16seconds for both.

Copying a 175mb file to ram takes about 8seconds for both. The same for ram to harddisk.
Copying the same file to same dir takes 12sec on harddisk and 9sec on SSD.

I dont see any speedincrease while booting or copying files. Mui-OWB popups really fast when loading but that can be placebo effect or that the SSD havent been running much so no defragmentation.

I dont have much knowledge of SSD's so maybe someone can tell me if theres a way to get it faster or is there some limit somewhere with amigas using SSD etc. Anyway here is an review on the SSD.

http://thessdreview.com/our-reviews/sat ... sd-review/


Did some more test (15 may)

Starting OWB first time HD vs SSD: 3sec / 2.2sec
The second time is same 1.5sec for both

Loading Amigaworld first time HD vs SSD: 8.3sec / 2.3sec
The second time is almost the same for both. 2-3sec.

Copying system partition to another partition, HD vs SSD: 6.5min / 3.15min
Delete the copied system partition, HD vs SSD: 6.15min / 6.08min

LHA Pack system drawer to ram / HD / SSD: 8sec (the same for all)
LHA Unpack Ram / HD / SSD: 3.4sec / 5.2sec / 3.2sec

[ChrisH]

*Writing* to SSD will *probably* be significantly slower than it could be, due to OS4's (current) lack of support for 4k Sector (aka "Advanced Format") harddrives.

However, reading should still be very fast, so I don't know why booting is no faster. Perhaps your filing system is somehow the bottleneck?

[kicko]

I use the same filingsystem like on the harddisk that came with the machine. fastfilesystem for BHD0 where it have the bootfile. sfs2 for system and jfx for work and temp partition.Blocksize 512, buffer 2000. I was hoping for shorter boottime. Maybe i just move it into my Laptop with windows7 and use it there later.

[Calgor]

I would expect you see better performance (naturally) from SSD vs Hard Disk regarding the seek times/random access - which is what you observed in certain areas. So, as you surmised, I would expect to see more of a difference if the hard disk is more fragmented or you are copying more smaller files spread across your hard disk. AmigaOS' footprint is smaller than other OSes, so the hard disk would have to seek comparatively smaller distances until you fill up your hard disk. Don't forget the hard drive cache too.

Hard Drives these days have quite high (sequential) throughput, and SSD even higher - so your (rough) 9 to 12 seconds comparison may be indicative of the difference between the 2 (specific) drives you have for that.

If MUI-OWB has to read ~1000 files on startup (wild exaggeration), then maybe it really is that much faster to load with SSD - I haven't measured. I noticed on other OS machines, it was application load time that was more immediate with SSD vs hard disk. AmigaOS is relatively fast on most smaller apps, only the bigger ones like the web browsers you can notice the delay.

[kicko]

Updated first post with more test. Here it is also....

Did some more test

Starting OWB first time HD vs SSD: 3sec / 2.2sec
The second time is same 1.5sec for both

Loading Amigaworld first time HD vs SSD: 8.3sec / 2.3sec
The second time is almost the same for both. 2-3sec.

Copying system partition to another partition, HD vs SSD: 6.5min / 3.15min
Delete the copied system partition, HD vs SSD: 6.15min / 6.08min

LHA Pack system drawer to ram / HD / SSD: 8sec (the same for all)
LHA Unpack Ram / HD / SSD: 3.4sec / 5.2sec / 3.2sec

I think its enough testing. I will keep the drive in the x1000. Some stuff are faster like copying system parition to another. And theres the lower use of power and its silent. Only the CPU fan is loud. 120GB is not much but its enough for amiga and i will not use it as a media drive. I have the laptop for that or just enable the 1TB drive for that purpose later

[kicko]

*Writing* to SSD will *probably* be significantly slower than it could be, due to OS4's (current) lack of support for 4k Sector (aka "Advanced Format") harddrives.

However, reading should still be very fast, so I don't know why booting is no faster. Perhaps your filing system is somehow the bottleneck?

Do you know if there is any work on 4k Sector support, or todo plans ?

[ssolie]

Do you know if there is any work on 4k Sector support, or todo plans ?

It is on the to do list but nothing more yet.