How much hard drive is needed for SW to run smoothly?

[steinmini]

My main (system) hard drive is a 1T WD Caviar Black 7200RPM 64MB Cache (WD1002FAEX) but the system partition is limited to about 100G while the rest is "D:" with data, backups etc. Somehow I feel that this 100G isn't quite enough when SW is in action (around 35G is free) but I might be imagining.
Is it better to give SW more room, that is, a bigger partition (up to the whole size of the drive) or it makes no difference? I couldn't figure out if SW uses swapping to HDD once it runs out of system memory (although I do have 16G of DDR3 - should be more than enough RAM for a standalone machine)
For other less important data I have two more 1T disks (WD Green)

So, should I expect any improvement by increasing the size of the system partition?

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[TheTick]

I found it helps to have a second hard drive to handle temporary files, etc. It has to be a second physical drive, not a partition.

This was especially true when running NASTRAN, which generated lots of data files while. It helped to have a drive that didn't have to split its time between writing temporary files and running the OS.

 

[EEnd]

I doubt that you would see any improvement from increasing the size of your system partition. With drives if it is not so full that you cannot defragment it, you have enough space. There are minor factors like access to data at the outside perimeter of the drive is faster, but these are very minor.

As long as you have enough RAM that the OS is not paging to the disk, I doubt that SW triggers much disk I/O apart from opening and saving files. You might get a small improvement from moving the window page file to one of your data drives.

The biggest disk related improvement would come from having a RAID for your system drive, but there are probably better areas to spend money.

Eric

Eric

 

[kellnerp]

When I built my new system, I installed a SSD for the OS and Programs. This has led to very fast boot times and very fast program loading times. The drive is quite small by todays standards, 80GB. A SSD is far faster than RAID using conventional HDDs and it uses a lot less power.

I keep my working files on a network drive or on a local drive that is again quite small by today's standards. This works out quite well.

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[steinmini]

I just replaced my Phenom II X4 965BE @3.74G (OC) with I-7 2600K (@4G OC) and the improvement is quite noticeable in many details. Now I'm inclined to investigate further areas where some improvement can be achieved, unfortunately, further investments will have to be postponed for some time. SSD is an idea I have for a while now, but the local prices per G of SSD space (vs $/G on regular mechanical disks) are still keeping my hand away from my wallet. I keep the drives clean, defragment them regularly, update regularly and try really hard to keep the things in the best possible condition (after all, this is my main tool to earn money) and my question is primarily focused on getting the best from what I have. I also found a way to increase the speed of working on my regular home-office-home "carry the work with you" - I'm doing most of the design work at home, take it to the office and do the corrections and mods, then, again, back home for refinement and so on, until it's all finished up to the expected level of perfection. Replacing the old MB with a new one and getting a new USB3 standard USB3 flash stick shows noticeable improvement in time needed for manipulation and saving of files I work on. Of course, I keep copies on both computers, but the latest revisions are always with me, and working on/from that stick proved to be great, I get no rebuild errors, no need to do the pack and go all the time (sometimes I do forget and waste a day of work because of that etc), so, I will keep on working as I did before and look for improvements somewhere else, maybe in further improvement of my skills
Thanks to everyone who tried to give a helpful advice

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[AnnaWood]

SSD's will improve anything that does reads and writes to disk.

If you do a lot of FEA, SSD's will improve performance since there are a lot of writes to disks while solving.

Cheers,


Anna Wood
SW2011 SP5, Windows 7 x64

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[steinmini]

Actually, I don't do (software) simulations at all. In the business I'm in (designing and building recumbent trikes), most of the stress on the frames is highly predictable once you have as much experience as I do. Then, just add a few reinforcements to the positions where force vectors hit a single spot to disperse them, and it's solved. Simulations I'd like to do can't be done in SW, primarily because of the fact we never know if the rider will be a 100 or 300 pounds, how much force can he/she develop, so we just do it in the "conservative" manner, using materials that can handle at least three times more stress than required to get the 1 safety factor. Special materials that are well known for resistance to corrosion, fatigue and deformation are used and we're on the safe side, as well as our customers. Sure, it usually comes with a bit higher weight and higher price, but hey, it's better to be safe then sorry. Those who mostly care about weight of their bike, always have the option to buy a very light high-tech road bike. What I'd like to have an option within SW is a simulation on assemblies with a lot of moving parts, however, that is not an option. Yet.

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