I queried in an earlier post what benefits there might be in using an SSD drive for Logos 4 Mac given that it has to access the hard disk frequently. At that time it seemed that no-one had undertaken the exercise. My dear wife (with explicit information from me!) got me a 60GB OCZ Vertex2 SSD drive for Christmas.
As performance is a current topic, and people may be wondering about using SSD drives, for everyones' benefit please find below detailed information what I did and results.
I used the same (personally made up) tests I mentioned first in this post. For purposes of hard drive testing I left off test one.
Preparation:
Installed the SSD drive into my 2008 MacPro (that was fun [not], have to still get special adapter, at moment it's taped in!).
Then I copied the whole Logos 4 folder in ~/Libary/Application Support/Logos4 (where ~ = user home folder) to the SSD drive to folder named /Logos4. I left original folder and just renamed it.
Then made Unix soft link to the new folder "ln -s /Volumes/SSD/Logos4/ Logos4". I believe it is better to keep the standard L4M folder structure, the application might get upset if it doesn't find files in expected location. Using the Unix soft link command makes this very easy to achieve.
Benchmarking Drive:
To compare the performance of the two drives I used the disk tests in XBench (http://xbench.com/). The results are below. The most significant differences, as would be expected, were in the area of random reads. The SSD drive walks over the HDD.
Tests:
For the tests I used the real world examples I first mentioned in my post here and listed also below. Here are the results, HDD first, SSD second.
Test 2 - Open passage in layout
HDD = 10.4 sec
SSD = 6.4 sec
Test 3 - Information panel
HDD = 7 sec
SSD = 4.2 sec
Test 4 - Basic Query (588 resources built from original Scholar's Library)
HDD = 5.8 sec
SSD = 3.9 sec
Test 5 - Morph Search
HDD = 2.8 sec
SSD = 2.5 sec
Conclusion:
In the hard disk write/read tests it shows the performance gain, especially for random reads, possible with an SSD drive. This raw data also translated to better performance in the (rough) real-world tests done in Logos 4 Mac.
I would say anyone looking to get better performance for L4M without going to expense of totally new Mac would benefit from an SSD drive (my 2008 MacPro, though fast, is not as fast (CPU, mainboard) as some latest iMacs and MacBook Pros). I got a 60GB SSD unit as this was enough to comfortably hold my 10GB Logos 4 Mac folder.
I trust this information can help anyone using L4M. Again, also, it helps to have quantitative numbers rather than people making vague statements like "it's slow", people may also find that their performance may be due to corrupt installations where it is not fair to state (incorrectly in those cases) that L4M is slow.
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XBench results
Disk Test 311.81 (SSD drive, OCZ-VERTEX2)
Sequential 190.86
Uncached Write 244.02 149.83 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 248.94 140.85 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 97.46 28.52 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 387.22 194.61 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 851.29
Uncached Write 848.05 89.78 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 452.46 144.85 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 3120.13 22.11 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 1011.17 187.63 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Disk Test 84.90 (HDD WDC WD6400AAKS, 10K 1TB drive)
Sequential 148.33
Uncached Write 165.46 101.59 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 158.75 89.82 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 104.74 30.65 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 196.99 99.00 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 59.47
Uncached Write 20.96 2.22 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 238.15 76.24 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 103.51 0.73 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 175.69 32.60 MB/sec [256K blocks]
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Logos 4 Mac Tests
Test 2 - Open passage in layout
From home page use Go to open passage, I used one verse, John 3:16, to focus on how long it would take to open all resources.
Use standard layout
- Passage Guide panel with Commentaries expanded, all the rest (Cross References through to Sermoncentral.com) collapsed
- Exegetical Guide panel
- Bibles panel with 5 Bible tabs (ESV, NAS, NIV, Lexham, NLT)
- Commentary panel
- Information panel (set to click not hover)
- Text Comparison panel
Test 3 - Information panel
Click on word 'God' in Bible text ('God' being a word which returns large number of results). Time till Information panel finishes display — spinning wheel stops.
Test 4 - Basic Query (588 resources built from original Scholar's Library)
Search 'All Text' in 'Entire Library'
Query text "resurrection WITHIN 8 words (love,kingdom)" finds
Time to end of query with results fully displayed
Test 5 - Morph Search
In ESV version text in John 3, right click on word "darkness", from context menu choose 'Morph Search : σκότος'
Search panel - 'All Morph Text' in 'All Passages' in 'English Standard Version' with 'Logos Greek Morphology' for "lemma:σκότος"
Time to end of query with results fully displayed
