On Wednesday 02 June 2010 02:43:01 Graham Anderson wrote:
You really need to use an SSD and then try to go back to using mechanical disks. The difference is _very_ noticeable. From grub boot menu OS selection to fully loaded KDE4 desktop (with all the previous apps that were running in the last session) in under 10 seconds.
Having read what I typed I couldn't help but think it was unrealistic and rather misleading about the time of under 10 seconds. I had measured this (very roughly) when I freshly installed M6 but that's not really a fair real world scenario, and it was an extremely minimal installation. I wondered if this still holds true now that I have been using the SSD for few weeks and my workstation installation is no longer freshly installed. Curious for answers I decided to perform some completely unscientific tests on my current workstation and setup. Hardware ----- Gigabyte P55 UD4 CPU/RAM: Intel i7 860 @ 3.5GHz, 8GB RAM @ 1600 (8-8-8-8-24) SSD: 2 x OCZ Vertex LE 100GB (non raid) HDD: 4 x Samsung F3 500GB, 7200 RPM (LVM + software raid) HDD: 1 x Samsung Spinpoint 250GB, 7200 RPM Partitioning/OS ------------ SSD1: /dev/sda1 /boot (200MB) /dev/sda2 swap (2GB) /dev/sda3 / (20GB, openSUSE 11.3 M7) /dev/sda4 extended /dev/sda5 / (20GB, openSUSE 11.2) SSD2: /dev/sdb1 /home (60GB) /dev/sdb2 /workspace (20GB, source, git repos, eclipse, OBS projects) HDD: /dev/sdc1 /boot (200MB) /dev/sdc2 /swap (4GB) /dev/sdc3 / (20GB, openSUSE 11.2, old setup) /dev/sdc4 NTFS (60GB Windows) LVM: /dev/vgData /data /dev/vgHome /home ( old home location for HDD sdc 11.2) /dev/vgBackup /snapshots (rsnapshot sets) Methodology ----------- Create new user and set automatic login for user to a KDE 4.4.3 desktop with konsole, dolphin and chromium applications running in the session, server daemons running at startup are httpd & mysqld. Booting 11.3, 11.2 from SSD with no mechanical HDD based partitions mounted at boot. Booting 11.2 from SSD with /home & /data mounted from mechanical disk based LVM. Booting 11.2 from mechanical HDD with /home & /data mounted from mechanical disk based LVM Boot each OS install 3 times, record the time from grub boot menu selection to fully loaded desktop. Launch eclipse, with -clean option to a busy workspace, record the time taken to launch application + plugins, then rebuild the workspace. Launch eclipse 3 times and average the result. Use an Identical Workspace with 7 projects open, 70k source/project files, first is stored on SSD, second is stored on HDD Results (timed with extremely accurate fingers and mobile phone stopwatch!) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- OS | Boot Time | ---------------------------------+--------------+ openSUSE 11.3 (SSD) | 15.8 seconds | openSUSE 11.2 (SSD) | 17.3 seconds | openSUSE 11.2 (SSD + HDD mounts) | 35.2 seconds | openSUSE 11.2 (HDD) | 58.5 seconds | Now these results really need to be taken at face value for what they are, and that is to say they are rather meaningless because I could not spend the time to ensure that the HDD based 11.2 system is loading the same kernel modules/daemons as the SSD based systems. Having said that, seeing as I am currently using the 11.3 M7 as my day to day OS. I can only think of the VirtualBox kernel module that would be loading on the HDD system and not the SSD systems. It should also be noted that the SSD based systems use tmpfs for /tmp Eclipse | Launch + Rebuild Workspace --------+--------------------------------- SSD | 24 seconds HDD | 3 minutes, 13 seconds This result on the other hand can taken rather more seriously. I can control the environment and make sure the workspace is identical, the eclipse version and plugins are identical, using the same version of JVM. If I have some spare time, and can be bothered, I may follow this up with a kernel compile. Feel free to draw your own conclusions and flame away for being completely pointless and unscientific benchmarks ;) Cheers the noo, Graham -- “What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.” - Christopher Hitchens -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org