Anyone using an SSD to Run Logos 4 on a Windows Platform?

Hi all,

Browsing at my local Micro Center, I see that they have a 64GB SSD available for $169. That's within the range I would consider reasonable if there's a decent performance boost to Logos 4.

I'm running on an AMD quad core with 8 GB RAM and a Hitachi 1TB SATA HD. OS is Vista Home Premium.

Is there anyone who's got an SSD and can relate what their experience with Logos performance has been?

I've looked around on the forums, but most everything I've read seems to be from Mac users.

Blessings,

Jim D.

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JimTowler

Sorry Jim, I can't help you with an answer to this. I too would be interested in knowning.

[ I was watching drive-usage reporting in Vista at one point, and Logos4 hits a lot of updates back to the PreferencesManager database/journal. So for an SSD, I was wondering about memory-usage-leveling and possible lifetime of the SSD in this context. If its going to live for 7 years instead of 10, I think thats ok. If it dies in 6 mths, rather than 5-10 years, then that might be too expensive. But it might go nice and fast in the meanwhile.

I would love informed feedback on this aspect if someone is a subject-expert in these matters for SSDs.

Actually, if SSD lifetime is really a concern, I would expect early netbooks to be showing these kinds of issues, but I'm not been looking/reading in the kinds of places where this would be discussed. ]

Tom Traubitz

I have a 128GB SSD in my Sony Vaio. (It's a 2 x64gb with integrated striped RAID 0 in a SATA form-factor) Windows experience index for Primary HD is 7.6 which is up from 5.5 on my previous notebook. I feel that Logos4 does really well with this setup. The Passage Guide, for example is quite snappy.

Compared to the other notebooks (a Toshiba Netbook and an ASUS G50) it's a good step up. It sounds like you have a good amount of RAM and CPU, so you probably should see some nice improvement. You might want to see if the manufacturer of the SSD has down an Windows experience index for Primary HD and compare against your current HD.

HTH,

-Tom

Ward Walker

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/121932#Comment_121932

I'd suggest this thread for earlier analysis: http://community.logos.com/forums/p/4390/34262.aspx#34262

I recall another thread somewhere saying that an SSD made the re-indexing much much faster.

Bottom line is that the graphics card you use has the most influence over logos 4 speed.

NetworkGeek

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/121935#Comment_121935

On my laptop Logos 4 is running on an SSD (Dell XPS m1530). SSD's are very fast, I runs with no problems for anything. That's my disk of choice from here on in on laptops. Soon we will use them on desktops as well once storage gets bigger.

Michael Krogstad

I am running Logos on Windows XP on a Dell Lattitude D4200 with a 64GB SSD drive in it and 3 GB of ram on a Duo2 dual core machine and I find that it is really nice to have the speed. Load times are significantly better than my other machine. Initial boot time on it from cold start was less than 30 seconds to login. I typically find that the SSD load time is less than half the time of spindled drives, even faster 7200 RPM drives. If you would like some comparison times, I can see if I could get some.

Fred Chapman

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/122050#Comment_122050

I have read that SSD's typically have a much shorter lifespan than standard drives; has anyone found that to be the case? If so, how long could I expect an SSD to last?

Jim Dunne

Well, I took the plunge. The installation was painless - about the only thing that was unexpected was that I needed an adapter bracket to get the 2.5" drive to fit in a 3.5" drive bay. No big deal.

There was no documentation of any use with the SSD, but that really wasn't an issue. It installs and sets up just like any other SATA hard drive. There are some decent sites on the web that outline useful tweaks that need to be made to windows to maximize the performance of the SSD, as well.

I installed this drive as an additonal drive on my system - I didn't move Windows to it. So with the exception of Logos (so far), everything else on my system runs from the main hard drive.

Moving Logos over to the SSD was "interesting". The information on the wiki was a great help, though, and I got it done.

I'm not really one for doing comparative analyses on things, but subjectively, I can say that there is a definite, noticable increase in overall Logos performance running from the SSD. I will mention one obvoius difference - the initial program load went from approx. 45 seconds down to approx. 25 seconds.

Books load faster, layouts reload faster, the information window populates faster as your mouse hovers over words. There's stil a small amount of hesitation, but it's down to under 2 seconds, roughly.

YMMV, of course, but so far I'm pleased with my investment.

Friedrich

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/122056#Comment_122056

I have read that SSD's typically have a much shorter lifespan than standard drives; has anyone found that to be the case? If so, how long could I expect an SSD to last?

seriously? I would have thought they'd last much longer. I am no techie, so I speak from ignorance, I guess. But I thought that durability was one of their attributes (in addition to speed)

JimTowler

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/122233#Comment_122233

Dan,

For an SSD and related things (USB Thumb drives, SD cards in your camera, Flash Card ...) a READ is very fast, and for practical purposes, has no "cost" on the device life, and little on power usage.

HOWEVER, for a WRITE, even if changing a single typo in a note or prayer list, an entire BLOCK of memory must be erased and rewritten. That block might be, for example, 8 KB.

For a given single storage cell in the memory device, the write-life for devices as recent as 2008 can be as low as 1000 times!

The devices typically automatically does wear-level-balancing, so it attempts to wear the entire memory device out at about the same time. So, if you updated a small memo 1,000,000 times, those data writes might be spead all over your 32GB card and no single block would have been updated more than a very few times.

Unlike a physical disk drive, an SSD does wear out from writing to it.

I did a very small about of looking in Google last night, but NOT in any depth, and it seems 5+ years can be expected for typical PC use, but they can wear out in a few months for some kinds of usage.

I repeat my comment in the 2nd post here. I would love to hear from someone that understands this aspect in depth, rather than the light overview I have suggested here.

Ron

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/122242#Comment_122242

Almost all consumer SSD drives use MLC technology and are rated for 10,000 erase cycles PER CELL (even the ones from 2008). The others use SLC technology, which is rated for 100,000 erase cycles PER CELL. A desktop user will have no problem with either type of these drives lasting 5+ years...even if you are a ridiculously heavy-duty Logos user. I don't care how hard you push your desktop, it is not going to get anywhere near the I/O load of a database server or file server. They are (and have been) recommending SSDs as being long-term reliable enough for servers. I know the Intel drives have a MTBF rating of 1.2 million hours. They also have a 3 or 5 year warranty (don't remember off the top of my head) The other factor is that when an SSD "dies" it is still readable, you just can't write to it any longer...so you don't lose your data and it is easy to transition to a new drive...try that with your mechanical hard drive.

If you want a competent primer on SSDs including the technology, reliability, etc, take a look at these articles from AnandTech:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2614 - 9/2008 review of the 1st Gen Intel X25-M

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2738 - 3/2009 article "Understanding SSDs"

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2806- 7/2009 preview of the 2nd Gen Intel X25-M

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2829- 8/2009 article "Understanding and choosing the best SSD"

In reply to the original question, I'm running Logos on a 2nd generation X25-M. I can't offer a legitimate apples-to-apples comparison to running on a non-SSD, but it is extremely fast and responsive. I hit the home page in 10-15 seconds, a PG on a "normal-sized" pericope takes 2 seconds to display the first information and 20 seconds to fully populate, and a 3 chapter PG takes 5 seconds to display the first information and 40 seconds to fully populate. My other relevant specs are: 3GHz Core 2 Duo, 8GB RAM, and a 4-year-old 7600GT video card.

EDIT - Oh, and a full re-index of my relatively small (300 resources) library typically takes about 10 minutes.

Robert Pavich

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/122373#Comment_122373

I had an SSD in my laptop for quite a while and ran L4 on it but when I got my new laptop I sold it.

It was only 80gb 60GB and in my mind...keeping a clean machine and having at least 7500 rpm caused performance to be 90% of the SSD's speed while having a much larger HDD.

IF SSD's ever got into the 200gb range...and affordable (translated to mean only 2X as expensive as the equiv HDD) then I'd switch back.

NOTE: It was a vast improvement over my previous 5000 rpm drive as noted in the other thread.

toughski

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/122373#Comment_122373

I also read just recently that not all of the notebook chipsets have SATA II controllers, which is basically to say that an improvement from a SSD upgrade will not be fully realized due to the speed limitation of SATA I channel. This is generally not an issue for desktop computers.

Ron Corbett

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/122379#Comment_122379

How interesting to find this topic here . I was just doing some reading on the SSD's the other day.

There are alot of articles here: http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html

One day (should the Lord tarry) these SDD's - or some morphed clone of these - will probably be in all of our machines.

Ward Walker

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/122373#Comment_122373

...If you want a competent primer on SSDs ...

Awesome reference links...really glad to know the perils of buying OEM-supplied [samsung] SSDs...thanks!

Ron

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/122397#Comment_122397

Awesome reference links...really glad to know the perils of buying OEM-supplied [samsung] SSDs...thanks!

No problem...just so you know though, the "stuttering" problem cited in those articles has completely disappeared in recent drives due to implementation of the Trim command and its support in Windows 7.

Jim Dunne

I decided to do some benchmark testing, drive vs. drive. Here's what I found using CrystalDiskBench 3.0:

Hitachi 1TB Deskstar A-Data S596 SSD

Sequential Read : 107.723 MB/s 210.663 MB/s

Sequential Write : 95.822 MB/s 99.845 MB/s

Random Read 512KB : 36.681 MB/s 175.545 MB/s

Random Write 512KB : 55.471 MB/s 81.838 MB/s

Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.823 MB/s 16.790 MB/s

Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 1.345 MB/s 9.476 MB/s

Test : 1000 MB [C: 20.4% (187.0/916.9 GB)] (x2)

Test : 1000 MB [K: 25.6% (14.4/56.2 GB)] (x2)

Date : 2010/04/27 14:30:31

OS : Windows Vista Home Premium Edition SP2 [6.0 Build 6002] (x64)

There's obviously a performance difference, particularly on sequential/random reads and sequential writes.

I'm really curious to see what happens the next time Logos pushes down a significant update that requires rebuilding the indices.

Blessings,

Jim D.

Jim Dunne

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/122379#Comment_122379

I also read just recently that not all of the notebook chipsets have SATA II controllers, which is basically to say that an improvement from a SSD upgrade will not be fully realized due to the speed limitation of SATA I channel. This is generally not an issue for desktop computers.

That's not really true. "SATA II" doesn't really exist - it's a misleading phrase cooked up by marketing folks to refer to the SATA 3.0 gb/sec standard. The point is, there's no drive in existence that can even come close to this in performance - "For mechanical hard drives, SATA 3 Gbit/s transfer rate exceeds drive throughput, and will for some time, as the fastest mechanical drives barely saturate a SATA 1.5 Gbit/s link."

So a SATA controller should be fine handling an SSD.

Here's the wikipedia article the above quote came from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA

Blessings,

Jim D.

Ron

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/123051#Comment_123051

The point is, there's no drive in existence that can even come close to this in performance - "For mechanical hard drives, SATA 3 Gbit/s transfer rate exceeds drive throughput, and will for some time, as the fastest mechanical drives barely saturate a SATA 1.5 Gbit/s link."

So a SATA controller should be fine handling an SSD.

Here's the wikipedia article the above quote came from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA

The key phrase in your quote is "For mechanical hard drives". You left out the very next sentence, which says: "However, high-performance flash drives are approaching SATA 3 Gbit/s
transfer rate, and this is being addressed with the SATA 6Gb/s
interoperability standard." A Solid State Drive is a "high-performance flash drive". The newest SSDs are fully saturating SATA 3Gbit (let alone SATA 1.5Gbit, which Vladamir correctly points out is what many notebooks are still stuck with) and are able to take advantage of the extra overhead offered by SATA 6Gbit.

So, while you are correct that a SATA (1.5) controller should be fine handling an SSD, it is less than ideal...1.5Gbps is fully saturated and then some by even a 2 year old SSD. To see the full benefit of an SSD, you really want SATA 3Gbps

Brian McKenzie

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/123083#Comment_123083

Hi. My recent experience upgrading to an SSD might help others to know what to expect.

Before upgrading opening Logos 4 was painfully slow. It would take 1 to 2 minutes to load including recreating whatever passage study I had previously had open. It was so slow I frequently asked myself if I really needed to open it if I was curious about something small like the exact wording of a Bible verse. In fact I would usually go to a Bible Website rather than open Logos if I wanted to quickly get a quotation from the Bible (1/2 the time!). But this problem is history after upgrading to and SSD. Also I appreciate that exegetic studies are faster too.

However, the improvement was much less than I expected. Even after the upgrade Logos takes 20-25 seconds to start up depending on what passage study I left open when I had closed Logos down (Logos has to recreate that study report as part of starting up). That is less than half the time it used to take with the old hard drive. So it is a very real improvement.

To put my experience into context there is the background:

My Logos4 folder is a big one (15GB -- I have a lot of books). Windows 7. Intel cpu with lots of power (4 core, 2.33GHz) and lots of RAM (8GB, but windows never reported more than 4GB in use even with Logos and several other programs open). Graphics is ATI 4350 which is not a gaming card but is a lot more powerful than regular graphics. So the bottleneck was the traditional desktop hard drive (7,200 speed with lots of space so not congested or fragmented). The new hard drive is an OCZ Vertex SATA 2 with 120GB which reviewers say has average "write" speed for a MLC SSD and good "read" speed. I figured read speed was the key thing for speeding up my Logos experience.

I am glad I upgraded. Even though Logos 4 is still much slower than my other software (Word, Excell, PowerPoint, Outlook now open instantly), the SSD has made using Logos 4 is much nicer experience.

Brian M.

Brian McKenzie

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/167638#Comment_167638

While trying out Logos with my new SSD I found a strange thing. Logos seems to be using less than 1/2 of my computer's CPU capacity even after that hard drive bottleneck has been removed. I have run several exegetical studies of complete chapters and Windows Resource Monitor reports that the SSD drive will run at 3-8MB/sec for a second or so at the start and then drops down to 20-80KB/sec for the rest of the time the exegetic study is built up. However, the CPU never runs full out. Instead it bounces around at about 35-45% for the entire time the study is built up.

It appears that the hard disk is not the slow down in exegetic studies, at least not after the first couple seconds when the hard drive up loads the raw data. What else could be holding the CPU back? Could it be that the Logos programmers have purposely set Logos to use less than 1/2 the CPU power so that the computer will be responsive to the use during the minute or two it takes to build a large exegetical study on an entire chapter? Or is there some other bottle neck holding the CPU back?

A very curious Logos user,

Brian M

TCBlack

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/167655#Comment_167655

Brian,

One of the programmers may come along and answer this, but I will say this:

During the early beta testing we all had some serious questions about multithreading, CPU utilization etc. and we were assured at the time that Logos will make full use of the CPU as it needs it. Typically the highest CPU hit will be during indexing (how did THAT go on your SSD?) After that some of the graphical reports which are harder on your GPU than your CPU will take some effort.

I suspect that what you're seeing is a situation where there is a sudden burst of many threads who are completing their work early, while the remaining threads take longer but use less CPU.

It is just a guess based upon what I now vaguely remember from last years early beta.

Brian McKenzie

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/167712#Comment_167712

Thomas:

Thanks for the quick response. Based on your comments I paid more attention to the details of the individual CPU cores loads when starting Logos this morning. And to get a second perspective I had Logos do an exegetical study work up on a new chapter (just in case it had cached results from a previous chapter, or in case Windows had cached the disk access for that previous chapter work up). Here are the results.

During the 20 second start up all 4 of my cpu cores increased their load. They bounced all around in percentage load during the start up. For just under 1 second the combine load of all 4 was about 90% but for most of the 20 seconds the total cpu load was well under 50 percent. As for the disk's bandwidth that was hard to observe because it bounced around even more than the CPU load, but one thing was very clear -- the SSD was not running anywhere near full bandwidth for long enough to register on Windows Resource Monitor's graph. As for the Resource Manager's numeric display of SSD bandwidth, that also bounced around a lot, but it too was not near maximum for any significant length of time. So if the CPU is only running at 90% of load for 1/20 of the start up time and the SSD bandwidth is equally under used, where is the bottleneck. It can't be my graphics card, because for 1/3 of the start up all that is displayed is the Logos 4 logo, for the next 1/3 it is just a blank Logos window with the little Windows wheel rotating and only for the last 1/3 is material being displayed to the screen and even then it is just test that is being written. Oh, I wonder if the bottleneck could be the RAM. My system has DDR3 which Windows Performance Experience rates as over 7. Start up behavior is a real puzzle.

I am also puzzled by Logos's behavior during its preparation of lengthy exegetical studies although it does appear that there is some advanced load leveling (likely to keep a good portion of CPU available to the user for other tasks). Oh, for these tests, I had Logos work on chapters I have not studied for months so avoid any possibility of caching of previous results. On my system Logos takes between 30 and 60 seconds to prepare exegetical studies on entire chapters. Here is the pattern I see.

For the first 5 to 7 seconds after I click the start arrow to begin the study, very little seems to happen. CPU load increase a very small amount but little else that I can see. Then after that initial hestitation of 5 seconds or so, the SSD gives a major burst (at a rate several MB/sec) that lasts 1/2 to 1.5 seconds. About the same time the CPU load increases to around 25%. Then the SSD load drops 10 K/sec or less (often zero for a second or two at a time).

As for the CPU, its load is low until the SSD has supplied its initial burst of data. Then the CPU settles into a 40% load that is fairly well distributed across all 4 cpu cores. Typically, the first core has a load of about 60%, the 2nd about 40%, the third about 30% and the 4th about 40%. The individual cores bounce around by 10% above or below the above mentioned averages. What is remarkable is that the total of combined load of the 4 cores is much more consistent than the individual loads of the cores. It would appear that if one core is having a temporary up spike of 10% another core is usually having a temporary valley of 5 or 10%. So although the 4 cores bounce up or down by 20%, the total of the 4 cores only bounces up or down by 5% or so. Looks like some sort of intentional load leveling -- and a remarkably good one at that! The only other alternative I can think of is that my RAM can't supply the data to and from the CPU any faster. In any case the CPU is speeding about 60% of its time being idle for the major of the exegetical preparation time. And the SSD hard disk is spending 95-98% of times time being idle.

Oh, one more note: During the exegetical study build up, none of the cpu cores ever hits 100% load. There is a brief moment around the time the SSD uploads data to RAM that the first core hits 70% but then that core settles back to the 60% load range as noted above.

If this load leveling behavior is built into Logos 4's programming code, then I'll just accept that this is as fast as I can get Logos to work. However, if there is some other bottleneck on my computer, I would like to know in case I can fix it.

Thanks again for your response.

Brian M

TCBlack

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/167753#Comment_167753

Great analysis Brian.

I'm going to sit back now and twiddle my thumbs while I wait for a comment from Bradley to see what it all means. [:D]

Brian McKenzie

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/167768#Comment_167768

Hi Thomas:

I've just sent an email to Logos support asking for someone to check out this thread. Hopefully, we will get some clarity in a day or two.

Brian

BillS

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/167753#Comment_167753

if there is some other bottleneck on my computer, I would like to know in case I can fix it.

In an unrelated post on Smart Tags in this thread (http://community.logos.com/forums/p/22045/167803.aspx#167803 - a response to a question whether a 64 bit build of L4 would speed things up), Bradley offered an insight into 32-bit memory utilization that may have some bearing (bold underline mine, not his):

A 64-bit build of Logos 4 would probably eliminate Out of Memory Exceptions because it would increase the available address space from 2GB to 16TB. (Even if you have 32GB of RAM, Logos 4 is limited to 2GB due to the limitations of 32-bit processes, and the actual limit is closer to 1GB due to the overhead of .NET and other DLLs that are loaded.) However, allowing the application to use an (effectively) unlimited amount of memory isn't necessarily a good idea; on most systems it could cause a huge amount of paging, which would drastically slow down the application. Additionally, slowly leaking memory would slow down each .NET garbage collection, causing the application to run slower and slower over time. Sticking with a 32-bit process is probably better because it requires us to keep our long-term memory usage low, leading to an overall better application.

Furthermore, in a 64-bit process, each pointer (or reference, in .NET) is 64 bits, rather than 32, which (simplistically) doubles the memory usage of the application. The 32-bit process might run just fine on a computer with 2GB of RAM, but the 64-bit process could require 3-4GB just to achieve the same performance. This may not be a big concern once all new desktop computers are shipping with 8GB+ of RAM, but it's still an issue right now.

It's not clear that running a 64-bit process delivers obvious immediate performance gains. In some cases, loading and processing 32-bit data incurs a performance penalty.

As I understand the gist of his comment, 32 bit may be optimum for now given inherent limitations of a .NET framework & other DLLs. All that makes me wonder if you've hit the upper limit of performance in that same framework, by essentially minimizing all the other wait times.

Brian McKenzie

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/167804#Comment_167804

Hi Bill:

Thanks for pointing me to the advantage of 32-bit applications as noted by Bradley. I will keep that in mind for other software that I buy in the future.

As for Logos 4, I don't think 32-bits is the limiting factor at least on my computer. After reading your post I shut my computer down completely and restarted (a cold boot rather than sleep or hibernate). On boot up here is the memory usage according to Window 7's Resource Monitor (memory tab):

In Use = 1.5GB, Modified=0.16GB, Standby=0.68, Free=5.8GB. I assume Standby are items that Windows has prefetched from the hard drive just in case I open it. I am sure Outlook is prefetched since I open it a lot. Perhaps Logos 4 is also prefetched as well).

After loading Logos 4 the memory use is as follows:

In Use = 1.94GB (up 440MB), Modified=unchanged, Standby =1.13(up 450MB)

Then I had Logos do an exegetical study for all of Titus 1 which took about 50 seconds, a typical time and the CPU load was also around 45% which is about 5% higher than I observed in my prior tests using chapters from Romans and 1 Peter. As for memory, after the exegetical study was complete the memory was as follows:

In Us = 2.01GB(up 70MB), Modified unchanged and Standby=1.16GB (up 30MB).and Free RAM was 4.8GB.

In summary, it does not appear that Logos 4 (on my computer) is using anything close to the 2 GB limit for 32-bit applications. Instead it appears to take only 500MB or so from the above observations.

Since there is a possibility Logos 4 was already partly in the "standby" portion of RAM, I had a look at the Windows Resource Monitor (Memory tab) and saw that the Logos4.exe "process" has a 402,566 KB "working set" commitment with 86,624KB of hat being "shareable" and 315,948KB is "private". So it looks like Logos4 is a compact program that is not pushing any 32 bit limits. My assumption is that the "shareable" portion of the RAM usage might be portions of the NET framework that Logos uses but would also be usable by other programs.

Blessings to all,

Brian

Brian McKenzie

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/167638#Comment_167638

Just finished re-indexing after installing new books. The Logos icon in the tool tray estimated it would take 95 minutes, but it finished in 29 so indexing looks to be about 3 times faster. My CPU average load was about 25-30% so the bottle neck appears to still be the disk drive, but at least the SSD is a faster than what I had before.

Michael March

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/182009#Comment_182009

Ok, just a word here. I was so worried about my new laptop's ability to run logos 4 before it arrived after getting caught up in the race for speed that I tried to cancel the order (unsuccessfully). When the laptop got here (lenovo x201) I just couldn't help trying it out, even though I thought I'd probably be sending it back. Now when I see the actual speed this laptop works logos without a dedicated graphics card and "only" 6 meg of ram and a paltry 7200 rpm hd, I have to admit that this is truly more than fast enough for me.

At some point we're just doing benchmarks that have little or no meaning. I admit to being something of a computer geek and also to a love for fast to the extent that I ALWAYS overpay for the latest processor that never really gives enough bang for the extra buck. But seriously--in actual use, that is to say, real life research, working on a sermon, trying to understand the Word even better, does 10, or even 20 seconds honestly make a difference (consider now that you can already check the first resource while you're waiting this extra 20 seconds for 50 more resources to open)?

I am the first to admit that checking for speed and benchmarks and windows experience indices are really fun, but in actual, practical, sermon preparation, I spend FAR enough time reading articles and resources that a ten second burst here or there makes no real difference at all.

Not trying to start a fight or anything, just a dose of reality perhaps...

Brian McKenzie

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/182173#Comment_182173

Michael:

Very good points. The money saved on not getting an SSD could buy quite a few books. Also, my SSD reports show that the speed up by switching to an SSD is not as dramatic as one might expect, so this may be helpful to others who might wish to save money by using a traditional hard drive.

I agree with you that for a long working session when studying a passage for the first time, Logos's long build up does not matter at all, especially when one can start reading the first commentary while Logos finishes the build up. But I frequently want to check a single fact about a passage I know well so I am not interested in re-reading the first commentary Logos makes available. In these cases the 60 second time it used to take Logos to re-build a passage study or exegetical study from a traditional hard drive always felt like an irritation since it was only going to take me 3-5 seconds to verify that single fact. And if I want to verify a fact from 3 different passages, I found Logos's 60 second build ups to be very, very irritating. Now that the SSD has reduced the wait to "just" 20 seconds per study build up Logos's speed has become tolerable. This of course is a personal thing. Others might well have a study pattern better suited to Logos's speed characteristics with a traditional hard disk.

Glad to hear you are fully happy with the 7,200 speed HD.

Blessings,

Brian

Michael March

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/182285#Comment_182285

I see your point Brian, and it's a good one. I actually had a second bible study program for quick word searches and lookups just because of that slowness for a simple task. Now it seems I just leave logos up and running. But I agree with your point when you're just trying to find a bible passage, L4 is a bit cumbersome to open up.

Brian McKenzie

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/182301#Comment_182301

Michael, like you I used to use another Bible program for quick look ups and searches rather than opening Logos. Since moving to Windows 7, my non-Logos Bible program does not work. Rather than upgrading that other program, I used the saved money to help pay for part of the SSD cost. I was expecting the SSD to make Logos very snappy. In reality it did not help as much as expected, although I am pleased enough I would do it again. -- Oh, if I were to do it again I might cut my cost in half by getting a small SSD just for Logos and leaving the operating system and other programs on a regular 7,200 hard drive.

Blessings,

Brian

John Hopcraft

I just got a new desktop with an SSD (64bit win 7, i7 processor 16gb RAM, 256 gb SSD Dual monitors) L4 runs just beautifully in this new system. The SSD has made a very worthwhile difference.

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/382565#Comment_382565

I just got a new desktop with an SSD (64bit win 7, i7 processor 16gb RAM, 256 gb SSD Dual monitors) L4 runs just beautifully in this new system. The SSD has made a very worthwhile difference.

It does indeed. I got an Intel 180 GB SSD and put it into my laptop. According to the Windows Experience Index the speed of memory is limiting things and the SSD has the highest rating (the HDD had the lowest rating).