My Intel SSD often gives the same performance as a mechanical HDD.Is this normal? Yes

Title says it all. The Intel SSD is a European one and expensive, good quality, so it's not the fault of the SSD, and my modern Windows 10 machine is set to AHCI (which turns out to perhaps be not strictly speaking a requirement according to one guy he https://superuser.com/questions/4662...led-for-an-ssd )

It's due to the nature of SSDs, which I've flamed in the past for fun but it turns out I was more right than I knew. The throughput* advertised of several hundred MB/s (mega Bytes per second or MBPS) is a marketing ploy that ignores the fact that with heavy use, the throughput drops to 10% of the rated high level. So when my Intel SSD was showing Write/Read speeds of about 90/160 MBPS, I thought there was something wrong (the drives are about 85% full, a bit of a red flag) but it turns out this is normal. References below. I still will get a bigger SSD since the prices are so dirt cheap these days. I'll even not buy a generic SSD but a name brand, I think Western Digital Blue is good and cheap.

RL

* Average IO size x IOPS = Throughput in MB/s (MBPS)

references:

(1) real world SSD throughput is 10% of 'rated' data throughput: https://www.seagate.com/tech-insight...ark-master-ti/

(2) https://www.enterprisestorageforum.c...hdd-speed.html (graph at end of article shows for a bigger 256 kB blocksize, a HDD equals a SSD for write speeds in MB/s, though read speeds for SSD are still higher)

(3) https://www.dell.com/downloads/globa...ance_study.pdf

Using a "load queue depth" - Queue depth, in storage, is the number of pending input/output (I/O) requests for a volume-- for a workload standard defined by Iometer org: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iometer) comparing the lowest performance enterprise SSD circa year 2011 with the best enterprise mechanical HDD for enterprise environments was found by Dell to be: Load 1: HDD beats! SSD (110 MBPS for mechanical HDD vs 70 MBPS for SSD), Load 2: HDD = 100 MBPS loses to SSD = 130 MBPS, Load 4: HDD = 130 MBPS loses to SSD = 205 MBPS. Higher load factors clearly favor the SSD. For ex., load depth = 64, HDD has 130 MBPS vs SSD has 230 MBPS.

RayLopez99 wrote:
Title says it all. The Intel SSD is a European one and expensive, good quality, so it's not the fault of the SSD, and my modern Windows 10 machine is set to AHCI (which turns out to perhaps be not strictly speaking a requirement according to one guy he https://superuser.com/questions/4662...led-for-an-ssd )

It's due to the nature of SSDs, which I've flamed in the past for fun but it turns out I was more right than I knew. The throughput* advertised of several hundred MB/s (mega Bytes per second or MBPS) is a marketing ploy that ignores the fact that with heavy use, the throughput drops to 10% of the rated high level. So when my Intel SSD was showing Write/Read speeds of about 90/160 MBPS, I thought there was something wrong (the drives are about 85% full, a bit of a red flag) but it turns out this is normal. References below. I still will get a bigger SSD since the prices are so dirt cheap these days. I'll even not buy a generic SSD but a name brand, I think Western Digital Blue is good and cheap.

RL

* Average IO size x IOPS = Throughput in MB/s (MBPS)

references:

(1) real world SSD throughput is 10% of 'rated' data throughput: https://www.seagate.com/tech-insight...ark-master-ti/

(2) https://www.enterprisestorageforum.c...hdd-speed.html (graph at end of article shows for a bigger 256 kB blocksize, a HDD equals a SSD for write speeds in MB/s, though read speeds for SSD are still higher)

(3) https://www.dell.com/downloads/globa...ance_study.pdf

Using a "load queue depth" - Queue depth, in storage, is the number of pending input/output (I/O) requests for a volume-- for a workload standard defined by Iometer org: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iometer) comparing the lowest performance enterprise SSD circa year 2011 with the best enterprise mechanical HDD for enterprise environments was found by Dell to be: Load 1: HDD beats! SSD (110 MBPS for mechanical HDD vs 70 MBPS for SSD), Load 2: HDD = 100 MBPS loses to SSD = 130 MBPS, Load 4: HDD = 130 MBPS loses to SSD = 205 MBPS. Higher load factors clearly favor the SSD. For ex., load depth = 64, HDD has 130 MBPS vs SSD has 230 MBPS.

TLC drives use an SLC cache, and can sustain writes for a short time.
Then they will be constrained by the TLC write rate.

They also make "MLC-like" and "MLC" drives, which likely cost a bit
more, and those don't use the SLC caching concept. Those sustain
write rates continuously.

Optane storage is "byte addressable" and doesn't have to
do operations in blocks.

There is a graph here with some mainstream products, and you
can see the Optane maintains write speed well. The others show
evidence of maybe an SLC cache being present (the SLC cells being
part of the main flash chips and not a separate integrated circuit).
[ The graph has a pulldown menu, so you can select different drive models. ]

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13759...-vs-hp-ex950/2

The market has a number of options, with prices to match.

Paul

On Sunday, April 28, 2019 at 5:53:24 PM UTC-4, Paul wrote:


https://www.anandtech.com/show/13759...-vs-hp-ex950/2

The market has a number of options, with prices to match.

Paul

Yes, the link above shows that in 'real world' performance using the BAPCo SYSmark benchmark, the SSD drives are all about the same, despite the Samsung 970 EVO nominally being ~17x faster than the Crucial P1.

Thanks,

RL

RayLopez99 wrote:
On Sunday, April 28, 2019 at 5:53:24 PM UTC-4, Paul wrote:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13759...-vs-hp-ex950/2

The market has a number of options, with prices to match.

Paul

Yes, the link above shows that in 'real world' performance using the BAPCo SYSmark benchmark, the SSD drives are all about the same, despite the Samsung 970 EVO nominally being ~17x faster than the Crucial P1.

Thanks,

RL

No, I wanted you to look at the sustained performance graph.

You complained that your cheap SSD didn't have the write
performance you were expecting, when a large file is transferred.

You pay the bucks, this is about as good as it gets.

https://i.postimg.cc/wjbnCwdN/ssd-su...unt-writes.gif

Paul

On Sun, 28 Apr 2019 12:49:48 -0700 (PDT), RayLopez99
wrote:

It's due to the nature of SSDs, which I've flamed in the past for fun
but it turns out I was more right than I knew.


-

Turns out that SSD SATA unacceptability, when I first encountered it
in the press or tech news, was for elimination of a SATA interface
altogether in favor of M.2. Although preposterous as it is and
sounds, that has to be tempered a little less so now. For some the
world revolves for them at a blistering speed and little else matters.
And for them the MB M.2 slots and support architecture is just a
matter of the best tools for the right job.

What is still not at all preposterous, for others and to include where
I'm at, is that for normal SATA storage considerations the SATA SSD
interface offers overall adequate speeds, even if they're not always
ideally boosted to 2 or 4 times faster than a mechanical drive.

More importantly, however, is a long term expectancy of SSD
compositions. My oldest SDD is still now a C:-type boot drive, which
is a 64G SATA Samsung model. That in itself makes all the above less
relevant to me.

Obviously, it's not about my Terabyte-class mechanical drives mounted
beside it. That the 64G Samsung has outlasted, already, a Western
Digital 2T Green, which developed issues and failed after perhaps 5 or
a little more years, means one less screw-ball drive for me to have
screw with when problems arise.

There's still no limit on SATA SSD longevity. What does that mean if
the results of the 64G SATA Samsung need to be reported in ten years
from now? Actually, what I have in mind is 20 to 30 years from now.

Consider it this way -- would you be surprised if you can find a
brand new motherboard model, with a 1.44 floppy drive port, first put
on a MB 40 years ago, still being put on it?

I wouldn't.

On Mon, 29 Apr 2019 16:58:35 -0400, Flasherly
wrote:

Consider it this way --

--

Or -- what if, say, last mid-year's $200 1T SSD - now available on
Chinese counterpart Amazon marketing channels for $80-90US - were
instead $50?

And what if, then, a $50 1T SSD were also available with a better
compositional build and focus on longevity.

What if, to say, how long is it going to take me then to ditch Western
Digital 2T considerations and buy two 1T SSDs?

(You can forget Sandisk SSD brands: Western Digital won't release
their compositional build specifications, prior to a sales point for
general publication, to all but their Enterprise grade HDDs. It
means, between one or another same-model WD SSD the build components
can widely vary for or against the end-purchaser.)

On Monday, April 29, 2019 at 4:58:40 PM UTC-4, Flasherly wrote:

Consider it this way -- would you be surprised if you can find a
brand new motherboard model, with a 1.44 floppy drive port, first put
on a MB 40 years ago, still being put on it?

I wouldn't.

For legacy read access you can't beat a non-acid, non-degradable paper book, or parchment / vellum.

Maybe magnetic tape? I still have a FDD on one machine but I had to disconnect it from inside BIOS when it started periodically acting up and not allow the PC to boot, since it was set to the first bootable device.

I got all my SSDs today, already replaced one notebook HD with an SSD and will switch to a bigger SSD on another laptop in a few hours, as soon as the Macrium backup is done. Paul was right, I right clicked on a Macrium Free image file and was able to see directories and copy files from inside it, awesome! I never knew that was possible.

I like old laptops since HD, uP, memory is not "sealed" the way the razor-thin laptops are today, so you, the consumer, can easily service them. Priceless and not the 'modern trend'.

RL

On Wed, 1 May 2019 11:16:21 -0700 (PDT), RayLopez99
wrote:

For legacy read access you can't beat a non-acid, non-degradable paper book, or parchment / vellum.

Maybe magnetic tape? I still have a FDD on one machine but I had to disconnect it from inside BIOS when it started periodically acting up and not allow the PC to boot, since it was set to the first bootable device.

I got all my SSDs today, already replaced one notebook HD with an SSD and will switch to a bigger SSD on another laptop in a few hours, as soon as the Macrium backup is done. Paul was right, I right clicked on a Macrium Free image file and was able to see directories and copy files from inside it, awesome! I never knew that was possible.


Looked at a "pro-series" 512G SSD today, a $50 unit, but may after all
wait for a 1T SDD if prices keep dropping.

I'll also be looking at paper books soon enough. I'd rather buy used
books online, but Cambridge University Press, certain works, are still
as expensive as any "legacy" door-to-door salesman, from the 1950s,
selling encyclopedias on a payment plan. I have the Cambridge in PDF
format. I've been down that road before, with a nine-pin dotmatrix
printing press of homemade, hand-rolled books.

At least a dotmatrix still can't be beat, in some instances, over
invariably either gummed-up lasers or mostly proprietary,
non-refillable ink cartridges.

That's good with Macrium. First I"ve heard and wasn't aware editing
within a binary-stream backup was possible outside of Enterprise
Ghost. (Ghost as well boots off plain DOS variants, which is a big
plus from the standpoint a partition boot arbitrator, quickly in
accessing other compliant partitions for imaging purposes.)

Data storage is what the "on the other hand" is about for computers.
You want it all, all the data in the world, be prepared to pay for
attempting it. Guarantees on data is not within a logical modality of
what unequivocally will compute.

There's only, on a chance, a SSD stuck into and continuously powered
in a computer, (with a methodology for maintaining ensured continued
data integrity, HASH or Checksum tables), that it may just outlive a
counterpart mechanical drive's, presumably higher, fault prone
liabilities.

On Wednesday, May 1, 2019 at 3:04:24 PM UTC-4, Flasherly wrote:

Looked at a "pro-series" 512G SSD today, a $50 unit, but may after all
wait for a 1T SDD if prices keep dropping.



Data storage is what the "on the other hand" is about for computers.
You want it all, all the data in the world, be prepared to pay for
attempting it. Guarantees on data is not within a logical modality of
what unequivocally will compute.


About six months or so ago I noticed memory prices started falling. So the bottleneck in DRAM from around a few years ago is finally over, possibly due to Bitcoin mining winding down.

Speaking of bottlenecks, is that memory that you insert in (?) PCIe slots worth it? I think it's actually a hard drive, SSD, looks like a memory stick. Intel sells one. I guess SATA can be a limiting bottleneck for some fast SSDs.

RL

On Wed, 1 May 2019 12:55:52 -0700 (PDT), RayLopez99
wrote:

About six months or so ago I noticed memory prices started falling. So the bottleneck in DRAM from around a few years ago is finally over, possibly due to Bitcoin mining winding down.

Speaking of bottlenecks, is that memory that you insert in (?) PCIe slots worth it? I think it's actually a hard drive, SSD, looks like a memory stick. Intel sells one. I guess SATA can be a limiting bottleneck for some fast SSDs.


Hopefully, when a NVME SSD does encounter bottlenecks, they won't be
reduced by a magnitude near to mechanical HDD performance, as can be
the case with a SATA SSD, depending on adverse conditions.

Do lots of research, spend lots of money, and yes, there are interface
standards stated to run at six-times the speeds of a SATA SSD.

Spend $900 for a couple 970 Evo Samsung 1T models and get a MB with
two M.2 slots.

https://www.pcmag.com/roundup/361090...te-drives-ssds

There's a lot more that can go wrong to NVME than just plugging that
cheap $50 1T SSD, someone needs to sell me, into a SATA cable on a MB
that relatively newer.