Solid State Drives and NX.

[wmalan]

I know they are still a bit pricey but since I'm upgrading...

Was looking at a Velociraptor 10k boot drive to put a new OS and my NX install on. About $150 bucks. But, for another $100 you can get a solid state drive. I've read some reviews on the SS drives but mostly from gamers and such. Was looking for NX users who've taken the plunge. Anyone?

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Bill

 

[hudson888]

I never tried but I can't see why not. Some say wait for the prices to drop further, others say that the older flash based technology which is currently I think what lies beneath some of the cheaper options can be slower to write but much faster to read than a standard hard disk. From what I've read price notwithstanding and disk capacity being smaller on the SSDs the ideal configuration seems to be installing your software and booting up off the SSD and then having some form of larger file storage on something like a good quality standard hard disk.

Like you I'd be interested to hear more from other users and/or hear back from you how things go.

Best Regards

Hudson

www.jamb.com.au

Nil Desperandum illegitimi non carborundum

 

[wmalan]

"From what I've read price notwithstanding and disk capacity being smaller on the SSDs the ideal configuration seems to be installing your software and booting up off the SSD and then having some form of larger file storage on something like a good quality standard hard disk."

Just what I was thinking. Currently I have everything on one big disk (xp32) but need to do a reinstall to win7 64 so I thought... why not? From what I've read, put all the apps in the the smaller fast boot disk and your project files on the bigger (slower) drive. Have to make a decision soon as a might have a huge project that needs the additional ram a 64bit os can offer.

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Bill

 

[potrero]

We just configured an HP Z600 workstation with an 80 GB Intel X25-M SSD for the OS and programs, a 160 GB Raptor for project data, and a 1 TB drive for large seldom-accessed files. We also have a Z800 workstation with a 15,000 rpm SAS drive, and the SSD is noticeably faster on many tasks including startup and program launch.

 

[wmalan]

"We just configured an HP Z600 workstation with an 80 GB Intel X25-M SSD for the OS and programs, a 160 GB Raptor for project data, and a 1 TB drive for large seldom-accessed files. We also have a Z800 workstation with a 15,000 rpm SAS drive, and the SSD is noticeably faster on many tasks including startup and program launch."

Well, after a little discussion over at the NX support BBS as well...

A good point was brought up that I think you address with the Raptor drive. While the system boots up fast and NX loads quickly with SSD, the working part file requires read/writes as your working.

I will have a lot of Wave Linked and cam geometry. So perhaps I'm really just needing a large enough Raptor for the OS, programs, and current and recent working part files. The increased cost of faster startup and program launch from an SSD are not required as much as fast read/write of the current working part files. The Raptor sounds like a good price point for this.

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Bill

 

[Arkance/PhoeNX]

Here's the response to Bill that I posted on the NX BBS.
I use a Dell Precision M6300 laptop and fitted a 256Gb SSD and 8Gb RAM when I switched to Windows 7.

It is massively quicker. I would go from pressing the power button to ready to use (including the login) in less than 40 seconds. Reboots are so fast as well.

It has slowed down over time but is still very fast. All my data is stored locally on the SSD and I have NX4 up to NX7.5 installed (all the MR releases so thats 17 versions) and all a very quick to start. On average 13 seconds first time, 6 secs subsequent. Any time you do a disk write it measures over 100Mb/s. Just got new USB3 enclosures and the write speeds to those peak at 70Mb/s and average about 40Mb/s.

If you have the budget I would recommend an SSD but make sure you do the research into the one you want and investigate the trim & wiper programs. I didn't understand it fully but unless you use Windows 7 don't bother with SSD.

If you have an test you want run, I can try for you but remember there are a lot of other factors in place (ie graphics, processor, RAM etc). I have a +800 component assembly (over 1.15Gb in space) that takes abou 1min 30 to load on this system. I think it would be faster if I had a better graphics card as it get's to 55% and then the status is displaying.

If possible I would use the local SSD to save your working data, then move off to the other drive. Read/write operations associated to the NX part files is greatly improved when using the SSD. If you have to use another drive try and get a faster 10K RPM drive.

Since you have a lot of wave linked geometry, it will be doing a lot of reading from the drives to get the data.

The drive I have is the Patriot Torqx M28 256GB SSD. Was installed by me as Dell are too expensive for SSDs and the laptop was already 18 months old. Also bought 128Gb SSD drives for the other techs I work with but since they all use Windows XP (driver issues with Windows 7) the improvements are there but the slowdowns after time is more noticeable.

To recap, bigger drive better, Windows 7 only, 10K RPM for storage if cost is an issue.