SSD Advice

Even with the slower throughput, the SSD will be much faster than your current spinning hard disk. Well worth the investment.

Mark Barnes said:

Jerry Bush said:

Is it worth it, considering that my motherboard only supports the 3gb transfer rate?

Yes. I have a SATA II and a SATA III drive. The III is obviously faster than the II, but they're both streets ahead of traditional hard disks.

Jerry Bush said:

Is the install pretty easy? I am not going to try and transfer and image, but just reinstall everything.

It will be find so long as the new SATA drive uses the same interface type as the old drive. You won't be able to switch to RAID/AHCI/SCSI if you mirror (unless you hack the registry). Then again, you probably won't need to.

Jerry Bush said:

Is there anything else I should consider, watch out for, etc?

The Samsung 840 is a great drive. I have the PRO, but the standard drive is only slightly slower.

I have the cache drive you referenced sitting on my desk... It pales in comparison to an actual ssd.

I noticed the most difference with the ssd vs a cache drive on boot.

With the SSD and my efi bios motherboard, my system boots faster than one of my displays turns on.

With the cache drive I was down around 20 seconds(i timed it!). Now its more like 2-3 ish (guestimate, doesn't take long for a display to power up).

On Thursday 6 days ago a computer workshop imaged my 0.3 TB HDD to a SATA II ½ TB Seagate 5400 rpm hybrid drive with 8 GB SSD and 64 MB cache and put several times more RAM in it. I had first bought the parts separately. The workshop charged $90 for those measures. I've posted reviews of that drive in a recent post in the Build[...]PC -thread.

This really made a difference. The first time I started Logos after that it started very fast, same with Microsoft Word. Now both Word and Logos start somewhat faster than they used to before the hardware upgrade. Logos doesn't seize up like it used to. I've been mainly using Internet Explorer since, so it's probably not caching Word and Logos a lot or putting much of them on the SSD.

I conclude that most of the difference is when it puts just a few of the Logos software or .NET files on the SSD. Searched my entire library, ~1,050 books, index file size 2.22 GB and it's not a lot faster, but a hunch better to work with the results. And it doesn't seize up a lot anymore while listing more search results.

I have another computer, with slower CPU, less RAM, and SSD (but external 7200 rpm 250 GB HDD for temporary files). Indexing is three times as fast on it, and Synchronization about twice as fast on a slow internet connection (same connection for both).

Mark Barnes said:

The problem with an SSD acting as a cache is that for Logos to be truly optimised, you need to store all your indexes, resources, the Logos program and the .NET system files on the SSD. If you use Logos a lot, then your common resources, the program and .NET will probably end up being cached, but your indexes very likely won't, because the main index file will probably be too big, and there are so many 'lookup' indexes that they each individual file doesn't get used often enough to get cached.

The irony of this situation is that the files most likely to get cached on the SSD are also the files most likely to be cached in RAM in Windows. You therefore only notice the benefit when you first load Logos, because after that everything is in RAM anyway.

Thats true. General system performance would improve, but indexing (a relatively rare event) would be slow. As would checking the index (searching).

mab said:

Older machines seem to benefit the most from SSDs. Since you are going through the trouble, a clean install would be most beneficial by itself. If you can do it, get your whole OS and program files onto the SSD. Leave the HD to store your music and documents.

I have one machine with an SSD only config. What's not to like? If I blink I miss the boot time.

I think it is clear that no matter the circumstances, the drive under consideration will be considerably faster with Logos operations than a standard drive.  Clean install is definitely the way to go.

Update on the SanDisk ReadyCache.

Installation was straight forward except for one issue. It took longer than expected to Windows to find the new hardware. There is not point in even trying to install the software until the drive shows up in Device Manager. It took a couple of reboots for Windows to find the drive. I have no idea why it took so long. This is definitely an issue that would give a non-computer nerd trouble.

Second issue that is annoying is the graphic user interface generates a UAC warning every time the computer restarts. This will be fixed in the 1.3 update of the software, but for some people I can see this being a "no starter" issue.

Now for how it works!

Reboots and app launching is definitely faster! Compares very favorable to my other two computers with SDDs. I am sure it is a few tenths of a second slower, but unless you have a stop watch I doubt you will notice.

Logos starts much faster after you have started and restarted it a few times. The first search is slower than a pure SDD, but all subsequent search as lighting fast (in fact it seems a little faster). My guess is that this is because the caching software creates a 1GB RAM drive which is always faster than flash memory. Finally, indexing does not seem to benefit at all, just like a regular HDD.

Cost wise there is no comparison. This is definitely a more economical solution for the average user. There is also the advantage of not having to having to transfer data from the HDD to the new SDD. However, the issue of Windows taking so long to find the drive (BTW the Bios found it right away I check those things when I add new hardware!) and the UAC box popping up each time you reboot makes it hard for me to recommend this drive to the average user. This is really too bad. At $44 it is a great solution.

PCI-E vs SATA 3 is not a straightforward comparison. PCI-E has faster throughput, but lacks some of the performance features that SATA has. That means the performance differential is less than the raw stats might suggest. You can't boot from many PCI-E drives, even (so check before you buy). That said, PCI-E is generally thought to be particularly good for databases, so might suit Logos very well.

However, the big problem is price. PCI-E SSDs are very expensive. I'm really not sure the performance gain is worthwhile at the moment, frankly.

Larry Good said:

Jerry - It boots fine on my Mac Pro Server -

Not sure where Mark B is coming from. You can discuss supposed PCI-e vs Sata bla, bla, bla.

If you can afford a machine with the spec of a Mac Pro server, then PCI-e is much more likely to be affordable and worthwhile. But on slower machines, and in different environments, the results are likely to be much less spectacular.

As for booting, that depends on the firmware of the card, because there's no standardisation in implementations, so everything has to be managed by the firmware. Older PCI-E cards didn't boot at all, and even now not all the newer ones do. This also means you often can't implement RAID or even TRIM on PCI-E implementions.

Mark - You are so wrong on so many levels

1. My Mac Pro is ancient and did not cost that much

2. PCI-E is PCI-E

3. The card boots fine on windows hardware

4. If you want to play technician on this forum I guess we can do that.

5. Any decent computer Intel Based Windows or Mac with a PCI-E slot will benefit

6. Let others decide what $$ are worth what. But if you are trying to talk someone out of it have at it.

http://www.storagereview.com/owc_mercury_accelsior_pcie_ssd_review

7. I am going check out of this thread. I have way to much experience in this domain. I've managed massive cutting global distributed filesystems and have had articles published about architectures I've implemented. All I can say is I have zero hesitation in recommending a PCI-E solution for someone who wants top I/O performance on even a modest machine - I'm out of here -

Larry Good said:

PCI-E is PCI-E

Of course. But not all drives are alike. Some PCIe drives are only x1 or x2. Even worse, some cheap PCIe drives are just mSATA drives with a convertor. Just because they're PCIe drives doesn't necessarily make them better. Equally, if your processor can't cope with the throughput, then performance gains will necessarily be more limited. The lack of TRIM support and even RAID support on some implementations has a performance hit that won't necessarily show up immediately, but needs to be taken into consideration.

Larry Good said:

The card boots fine on windows hardware

I wouldn't be so foolish to dispute with you that your card can boot, when I don't even know what card you have. My simple point was that not all PCIe drives are bootable. If you look at the bottom of the review you linked to, for example, you'll see that the Intel 910 isn't bootable.

Larry Good said:

Any decent computer Intel Based Windows or Mac with a PCI-E slot will benefit

Probably. Again, I never disputed that. I said, they "might suit Logos very well", and acknowledged a "performance gain".

Larry Good said:

Let others decide what $$ are worth what.

I don't believe I made any decisions for anyone. I simply expressed an opinion that "I'm really not sure the performance gain is worthwhile at the moment". Naturally everyone looks at the data, weighs others' opinions, and makes their own decision. You did that and bought a PCIe card, I did that and bought a fast SATA III drive. Right now I can get a 240Gb RevoDrive 3 (not even the x2) for £362 on Amazon UK. The Samsung 840 is only £126.  To save the £235 price difference, I would have had to drop from 16GB RAM to 8GB, and from an half-decent i7 to a slow i5, and probably I'd have needed a cheaper graphics card, too. I decided that I'd get better performance overall with the SATA drive. I could be wrong... and unless someone buys me an i5 and a PCIe drive we'll never know... but I still think I made the right decision. 

Larry Good said:http://www.storagereview.com/owc_mercury_accelsior_pcie_ssd_review

My comments were never about raw performance, but always about value for money and compatibility. I stand by what I said. For the average user, I'm really not sure the performance gain is worthwhile at the moment.

Larry Good said:

I have zero hesitation in recommending a PCI-E solution for someone who wants top I/O performance on even a modest machine

I agree with you — if I/O performance is all that matters to that person. But I have zero hesitation in recommending SATA III for someone who wants very good I/O performance, and needs to save some dollars for Logos books, or to spend on other parts of the system.

Larry, I'm sorry if I upset you. I'm not suggesting that PCIe is the wrong choice, or shouldn't be considered. Perhaps the continually lowering price point makes it more of contender since I last seriously looked. You said earlier, "It might not be worth it to Mark, but for me it is." I'm sure that's true. We have different needs, a different set-up, and perhaps a different budget. It's no surprise that we make different decisions, and no doubt Jerry will make his own decision, based on his own needs, too.

Mark

abondservant said:

Perhaps I'm not the average user, but I noticed a significant difference. Though I think I was running an older version of the software (1.1 I believe).

Its sitting on my desk... I'll install it in my laptop as a secondary drive and see how the cacheing works for it (older i5, and relatively slow).

I am using version 1.2 of the software. I agree that it significantly increase the overall system speed, I was just surprised that version 1.2 installation software had a difficult time finding the drive and that it has the annoying pop-up warning every time you reboot. I think a lot of inexperienced users would have difficulty with this. Hopefully version 1.3 will fix all this.

Jerry Bush said:

1) Is it worth it, considering that my motherboard only supports the 3gb transfer rate?

If you would post more details about your system you would get more reliable answers. Generally speaking, Yes it is worth it. But if your system is a dog, lacks memory or is too outdated you might be better off to upgrade the whole system.

What processor? How much RAM? What video card?

If your system is not "too" old, say maybe a Core duo chip, later, or equivalent, and has plenty of RAM already, and the video is good ... its an easy decision. You might even want to spend a whopping $18 to bring your motherboard up to Sata III speeds

I have this card in my system because I ran out of Sata ports on the motherboard. Speed tests show it to be just as fast as the Intel 6Gbps ports built onto the motherboard. The ASM1061 Chipset is the same that is used on non-intel Asus motherboards or to supplement the Intel ports on Intel boards.

Jerry Bush said:

2) Is the install pretty easy? I am not going to try and transfer and image, but just reinstall everything.

If you buy an Intel SSD, you can download a free Intel version of Acronis True Image. Makes Imaging a snap and handles sector alignment automatically. It is also fairly easy to install Windows on a New SSD given that you are a little bit familiar with computers.

Jerry Bush said:

3) Is there anything else I should consider, watch out for, etc?

Yeah, make sure you have plenty of RAM. 8 GB minimum for Logos. You didn't state what your MB was so I cant tell you how much it supports or what type.

No need to buy the fastest, latest and greatest SSD either. Look at your current disk usage, and shoot for an SSD at least 150% of that size. Better to have too much space than not enough. SSD's need extra space in order to maintain performance. When a file is deleted, the sector does not become available immediately for rewrite as it does on a hard drive. Extra space ensures you will always have free space to write to at maximum speed.

If you run across a good price on earlier generation Intel SSD's in a size that works for you, don't hesitate to grab them. You might even find used ones out there. The X series or 300 series, are known to be reliable, and perform well enough to saturate your Sata II speed. If the newer models are cheaper, go for those. They will be backward compatible with Sata II and can be used in future systems if the need arises. (motherboards do fail sometimes)

PCIe SSDs will also bypass the Sata II limitation, but are generally more expensive than a Sata III SSD and a PCIe Sata III card.

Then again, I have not been in the market for a while and have not paid attention to prices. Maybe things have changed.

And watch out on the forums for well intentioned people who know just a little bit [:)]

John said:

If you buy an Intel SSD, you can download a free Intel version of Acronis True Image. Makes Imaging a snap and handles sector alignment automatically. It is also fairly easy to install Windows on a New SSD given that you are a little bit familiar with computers.

Cool! I was going to advise that you'd need the paid version of Acronis True Image with the "Universal Restore" add-on in order to do that. I didn't know about the special Intel version of Acronis. Here's more info on it. If it can handle copying over the boot sector, and you're wanting this SSD to replace your boot drive, or if you only want it as a data drive, then yeah go for that.

Jerry Bush said:

assuming I have a PCI-E slot open, and I have not looked to see if I do, will I be able to boot from that?

Yes, you will be able to boot from it (see my comments above, though). But you will likely need to go into the BIOS and change the boot order so that this drive is attempted to be booted off first, and THEN the other drive only if this one fails to boot. Sounds like you're pretty tech savvy. Have you booted into the BIOS setup program before? It's not that hard. You just have to find out what key to hit while your computer is starting up to direct it into the BIOS instead of its normal boot sequence (it's shown on the screen during startup; it's usually something like F12 or Delete, depends on the manufacturer). Then navigate through the menu system (no mouse; use arrow keys) until you find the Boot menu, and there should be some way to reorder the options there. Do this after you've installed the new drive, obviously. And then you have to exit out of the BIOS (choose the option to exit and save changes). Then it will reboot and you should be all set.

Jerry Bush said:

My specs were not stated in my post, but are at the bottom of every post in my signature. The basics:

oops [:O]

Sorry I didn't see them. I personally would not upgrade that system. The Core i-3 is a dog with fleas. A crippled CPU with little cache. Everything happens slowly on a processor with too little cache on the chip.

You would be waaay better off getting a newer system altogether, with at least an i-5 but preferably an i-7.

But that is just my opinion. Your budget is the determining factor. I am assuming a tight budget here ... If an SSD is about all you can afford, by itself it is still probably the best bang for the buck. If you have any money left over, it might be possible to upgrade the processor. Most motherboards that accept an i-3 can also accept an i-5 or i-7. From your description it appears that your MB is a socket 1156. For $220 you could drop in a Core i7-860 processor. This would increase your clock speed, double the number of cores, double the amount of L3 cache, and turn a dog into a racehorse [H]

The i5-750 at $185 would also double your cores and cache, but the price difference would not be enough for me to compromise ... But it should be sufficient for Logos ... right?

6GB is borderline for Logos from what I understand. If you have free slots and can add RAM without throwing any away, it will help. But not nearly as much as the SSD and processor upgrade. I still do not know what brand your motherboard is. I am assuming it will support the i-7, but before you tried it, you would want to be 100% sure.

The SSD and i-7 processor together would add up to close to $400. This is a large chunk of money that could go toward the purchase of new system that is already fast. Ultimately the decision is yours because it is your budget. There are $700 laptops out there with third gen i-7's that are smoking fast, come with 8GB of RAM and all you would need to add is an SSD upgrade to have the latest and greatest.

Anyway I hope all of this (and what everyone else typed too) will help you make an informed decision. The SSD upgrade alone will definitely boost your startup times and performance with Logos. If that is the route you take it is the most bang for the buck and you will not likely regret it.

John

My i3 happens to be the 1155 variety.

Jerry Bush said:

As far as migration, I was planning on starting from scratch: Loading Win 7 (I am using 64 bit) and then all my programs. I like the idea of a clean install - it has been a couple of years and it is always a chance to dump the crud that I forget I install along the way and no longer use.

Yeah, I know the feeling. I was forced to do a clean install a few months ago because my original SSD died. I've got a new one in there now, but it's only 240GB and it's already 3/4 full and that's not ideal for an SSD. At present I have everything on it, and a completely empty 2TB internal HD. My plan was to have just Windows and Logos installed on the SSD and install the rest of my programs and all my data on the HDD. But due to bad planning (I didn't actually think of the right plan until I'd already reinstalled all my programs on the SSD) I'm kind of stuck in the current situation. I don't feel like taking the time to uninstall and reinstall all my software yet again. And when I tried to relocate my Documents folder onto the HDD (which should be fairly straightforward), all hell broke loose. It broke Outlook and other apps. So I put it all back to the way it was and have been avoiding dealing with it. I think I'm just going to get a bigger SSD (found a 960 GB one) and use the HDD just for large media files (photos, music, video). Shouldn't be as many vital apps relying on the C: location for my Pictures, Music, and Videos folders.

Rosie Perera said:

And when I tried to relocate my Documents folder onto the HDD (which should be fairly straightforward), all hell broke loose.

Hey Rosie,

Have you tried the Win 7/8 Libraries Feature? I use this to store all my documents, photos, music, etc. on a fast 1TB external HD. Works very well, and mostly invisible once you set your new folders as defaults for those libraries. This also simplifies backups: I have another external that I hookup occasionally and mirror to, using FreeFileSync. And of course, I run nightly backups to yet another external HD (2 TB) using Acronis.

Rosie,

Symbolic Links should sort out those problems for you.

Either:

1. Boot into Safe Mode, and move as many of the subfolders in Program Files onto drive C (a few won't move because they'll be in use), or
2. Boot to a command prompt and move the entire folder.

Then create symbolic links from D to C. I've performed that operation several times, and it's flawless. The easiest way to create symbolic links from Windows is http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html (if you take the command prompt option, you can google for the syntax). You don't have to worry about the registry or settings, or anything.

As for Oulook PST location, you can change that from the Mail control panel applet. Just click Data Files, then Settings, click on the Advanced tab, choose Outlook Data File Settings, and then hit Browse. You might have to re-set the datafile to the default, if you can't send/receive. To do that, switch another PST file to the default (create one if you need to), then switch it back to the original.

As you've discovered, Windows won't seamlessly update references to the Documents folder in your registry, unless apps have stored their settings relative to the documents folder rather than as an absolute path. It's easy to fix, though. Personally, when I've done this in the past, I've following these steps:

1. Run a reg-clean programme to sort out any errors.
2. Move the folder
3. Run the regclean programme again, and get it to delete all the keys with invalid paths, after backing them up to a .reg file.
4. Run find/replace on the regfile, in your favourite text editor.
5. Merge the reg file back into the registry.

A final tip if you do search/replace for paths in the registry. Remember that a few applications use the old DOS 8.3 filenames. So you'll also need to do a search/replace for c:\users\rosiep~1\docume~1 or whatever.

Mark Barnes said:

Symbolic Links should sort out those problems for you.

With Windows 7/8 Libraries you don't need Symbolic links. Just highlight the folder, right-click and select "include in library". Its that easy.

This does not work on removable or network drives. Then you might need Symlinks [:D]